My first oliah blog post had to do with prioritizing the establishment of clear lines of communications with students when you are trying to create online learning in a hurry. Once you have that out of the way I think the next step is still not the development of instructional content.
I say the second thing you should do is create a “Pivot Strategy Document”
We already talked about how you may have needed to rethink your communication plan and communicate that to the students; so, that should be one of the first parts of this document. This should be stated clearly along with all the other major changes to the class in one place.
Did your syllabus, which was first written for your face to face class, have something about “participation” and did you have points tied to that? That is going to need updating.
With everything going on you may want to rethink policies that you set for the class on late work. Students may simply need more time to adjust to technology changes or work through potentially caring for themselves or loved ones.
I’m going to finalize my Pivot Strategy Document in the next day or so and my plan is to share it with my students and ask them for feedback and suggestions before it is finalized.
Finally, I’ll say you can call the document whatever you want. If you prefer Syllabus Addendum then go for it. But I’m thinking things are still pretty fresh in this particular crisis and things are changing quickly. I’m trying to position the document as something itself that could pivot if needed and I don’t want to end up in a situation where I’m doing an addendum to the addendum. Rather, this is our plan and we may need to update it but here is where we are at for now.
By Autumm Caines on March 13, 2020
