As the priority is maintaining continuity of teaching, this may not be the best time for dramatic experimentation in your use of technology. Please work within your comfort zone. 

As we’ve mentioned, we encourage a mostly asynchronous course. This means that students can check in whenever they like, but still have deadlines. This doesn’t mean you can’t check in from time to time, but don’t penalize folks for not having the technology or for suddenly having other obligations at class time.

Major (and not-so-major) assignments:

• As your students will not have in-person time to discuss your assignments, it’s all the more important that each assignment clearly articulates the goals, actions, deliverables, scaffolding and timeline for producing it.
• Be realistic. What do you think you and your class will be able to achieve? What learning goals can you set aside this semester?
• As always, start with your end goal and work backward. If you have two major essays yet to complete this semester, what tasks do students ABSOLUTELY have to finish to get there?

A few options for “class time”:

• You may ask students to read a text, watch a video or listen to a podcast (look for something with transcription or close captioning!) then write a blog post or do some other writing activity. Then ask them to comment on their peers’ posts! This can be done on Blackboard, OpenLab, on GoogleDocs, or even in small email groups.
• Have students do “presentations” either on videos on their phones, or power point/ prezi presentations that they share with the class.
• Have small groups work on group projects via group chat/ email/ google hangouts.
• Peer Review! You can give students a form (On Google Docs, on Google Forms, on Blackboard, etc) in which they review the work of their colleagues. And then maybe they can chat on a discussion forum about it!
• See “Assignment Ideas” section for more ideas—we’ll be adding ideas all semester, so keep checking back.

Conferencing with students:

• You may want to schedule short meetings, either one-on-one or in small groups with your students, either to go over essays, or to check in on projects, as long as everyone has the technology to meet. It may be more possible for students to meet for a short amount of time and these meetings will help students (and you!) feel connected.
• You can also send a video of you talking about their essay, or a Jing (see the “possible technologies” section for more info) which is a screenshot video that records your voice—great for voice commenting on papers.