Preparing Faculty & Students for Online Learning
Preparing Faculty & Students for Online Learning
In response to the recent developments due to the coronavirus, SkillsCommons and MERLOT has partnered with the Southern University System Office of Online Learning Services (OOLS) to create this FREE online resource to help both Faculty and Students from the System prepare to start teaching and learning online.
Free Teaching and Learning Online Materials
Looking for free, online mini-courses to help you learn the basics for teaching online? Here are two courses developed by higher ed for higher ed funded by federal grants. You can download the course files or take the course "in the cloud".
- Designing and Teaching Online course has six (6) easy-to-review modules to cover the basics created by Tyler Junior College.
- Introduction to Distance Education course has five (5) easy-to-review modules created by the Kenai Peninsula College and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Includes FLASH videos so Internet Explorer browser works and Chrome browser might have problems.
MERLOT has create a collection of free and open virtual labs across a variety of STEM disciplines that can be very effective in supporting online instruction for laboratory courses.
Virtual Labs Teaching ePortfolios
The Virtual Labs portal also provides a collection of teaching ePortfolios by faculty implementing virtual labs and research on the effectiveness of using virtual labs.
MERLOT non-STEM Collection of Simulations
MERLOT also has collections of simulations that can support laboratory-like experiences in non-STEM disciplines:
MERLOT is your free and open library of free and open course content across all academic disciplines. In addition to its over 90,000 materials, it also simultaneously searches over 70 other free and open libraries as well as a dynamic, education-aligned searching of the web.
SkillsCommons is your free and open library of free and open workforce development and training resources funded by the U.S. Department of Labor. It is a national repository of workforce OER that supported over 700 community colleges creating enhancements and innovations in their workforce curriculum that is now OER available to you.
The OLC has responded to the many needs of institutions for professional development and instructional design support in order to quickly move face-to-face classes online. Learn more about the free resources and shared expertise the OLC has to offer your institution and faculty.
The Quality Matters Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) Checklist is a tiered list of considerations, tips, and actionable strategies to enact during an institutional move to temporary remote instruction of classroom-based courses.
TechSmith is helping organizations and academic institutions who are preparing for prolonged absences and/or campus closures due to COVID-19. TechSmith is offering free access and expanded usage of tools that help enable business and educational continuity through June 30, 2020 to any organization that needs it. Learn more....
Intellectus is a single sign-on, web-based, statistics platform designed to support learning and performing statistical analyses online. The platform enables faculty to quickly and successfully transition from their face-to-face mode to online delivery of their course. Intellectus is offering it's platform for free to all faculty, staff, and students through the end of the semester (June 30, 2020) Contact Intellectus and they will get you set up and ready to teach online with the personal support so you can succeed.
Adobe is offering greater access to Adobe Creative Cloud desktop apps to facilitate distance learning. Learn more about the Adobe services that are now available for free.
Flipgrid is a free, simple way to foster short video-based discussions on classroom topics. Educators, learners, and families can use Flipgrid at school or at home to stay connected and share their continued learning experiences. Learn more.
The Southern University System has developed a strategic plan that outlines the goals and mission of the institution.
Your students need to be prepared to learn online. You can provide them self-assessments about their readiness to learn online and easy-to-use tutorials to learn the skills they need to be successful in online learning
- Self Assessments on Readiness for Online Learning: Explore a collection of these self-assessment organized within MERLOT and choose ones that are right for your students.
- Tutorial for Online Learning: The California Community College's Online Education Initiative created eleven (11) modules and 4 interactive tools to help students learn skills and plan for being a successful online student.
MERLOT, SkillsCommons, and Gooru have created a self-paced, competency-based tutorial that faculty can add to their course as a supplemental learning activity.
- College Skills Navigated Learning Tutorial – You can explore and adopt this course, for Free!
- Customize the College Skills Course - you can customize this college skills tutorial for your institution. Learn more...
The tutorial is like “Google Maps for Learning”; after a diagnostic to assess the learner’s current knowledge, the Navigated Learning tutorial delivers a pathway of learning resources and assessments to the learner’s destination. The knowledge domains of College Skills includes guidelines for seeking advice, engaging with faculty, time management, and more as well as how to be a successful online learner. The tutorial provides the faculty a dashboard on every learners’ progress in attaining the various competencies.
MERLOT and SkillsCommons are free and open online libraries for everyone to use, including students!
Students can find and share online learning resources that work for them. Over 50,000 students from around the world are MERLOT members (it’s free to join) and have used it to support their own online learning. Students can create their own personal collections of learning resources and easily share them with you and their fellow students. Providing your students an assignment to explore MERLOT and SkillsCommons and share the online resources they find most valuable helps them learn (and develop ICT literacy skills) and reduces faculty workload in finding the “good stuff” on the web.
- Have students become MERLOT members for FREE so they can participate in the worldwide community of online learning throughout their lives.
- Explore MERLOT’s tools to build and share personal “bookmark collections”.
- Explore SkillsCommons collection of free online learning materials to prepare for jobs in a variety of industry sectors.
- Reuse/revise a Class-Assignment.docxfor your students at the start of your transition to online learning. Use the pandemic as a topic and have your student create opportunities to contribute to the course as it moves online.
When you adopt any of these activities, you would be practicing “Open pedagogy -the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it" (ref).
Face-to-face learning is essential for learners in apprenticeship programs and mentors face-to-face teaching is essential for successful learning. There are many ways that online learning and teaching can augment and complement work-based learning. SkillsCommons has organized a wealth of resources that can help you integrate online teaching and learning within work-based teaching and learning.
- Apprenticeship and Work-based Learning Portal - Explore and use this free and open resources by SkillsCommons.
- Apprenticeship Program Models - SkillsCommons also provides exemplary models for apprenticeship program that were funded by the U.S. Department of Labor grants.
- Workforce Development Online Curriculum - Explore the wealth of free and open online curriculum in a variety of workforce development areas.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education released today a webinar on ensuring web accessibility for students with disabilities for schools utilizing online learning during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In addition, OCR published a fact sheet for education leaders on how to protect students' civil rights as school leaders take steps to keep students safe and secure. These resources will assist education leaders in making distance learning accessible to students with disabilities and in preventing discrimination during this Administration-wide response effort.