Shifting face-to-face classes to virtual classes requires re-envisioning how to teach class content and to build effective classroom community. Here are some resources for how to do that transition effectively, in ways that honor our liberal arts context.

There will also be special @4 Spring 2020 programming, with notes and videos.

Puget Sound's Educational Technology page provides assistance with the technologies our campus supports for virtual teaching.

Connecticut College provides a small liberal arts college view of "11 Things to Consider When Moving Your Course Online" quickly during this outbreak.

"Hope Matters": Mays Imad offers 10 teaching strategies to support students and help them continue to learn during this time of uncertainty.

"8 Ways to Be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching" offers strategies for making expectations clear and welcoming students into discussions online.

Purdue University's Repository for Online Teaching and Learning is a well-developed repository of strategies for teaching and learning that is organized into categories, such as online teaching persona, social presence, and cultural competence.

"Five Tips for Improving Online Discussion Boards" suggests ways to divide students into manageable working groups, direct discussion traffic, help students engage in specific ways, and help students interact with each other, and hold students accountable for doing the preparatory work necessary for successful engagement in discussion.

Duck of Minerva offers this helpful advice on the ongoing importance of the kind of face-to-face connections at which we already excel: “Maintaining connections with our students and keeping them engaged as our classes go online should take top priority. My research shows that when faculty build rapport with students, they are significantly more likely to stay enrolled and finish the class successfully. We can do this through just being ourselves in our videos, calling our students by name, reaching out through personal emails, and connecting on a human level. Our efforts are put to much better use engaging with our students rather than wrestling with technology… Our greatest priority right now should be retaining our students—especially our most at-risk students—for the remaining weeks of the semester. Multimedia elements can be helpful for engaging students in online classes, but even if you don’t have the ability or energy to add those right now, know that many of us have an advantage that online classes usually don’t—we already established in-person relationships with these students in the first part of the term. We just have to make sure we maintain those connections and keep them engaged for the rest of the term.”