Strategies

Below are several tips that may be helpful when needing to continue your instruction online.

Communicate Clearly

Identify your new expectations for students.
Communicate with students as soon as possible by sharing your expectations for checking email or BlueLine (Canvas).
Message students and use Announcements in BlueLine. Refer to the Canvas Guides on How To Add an Announcements in a Course.

Distribute Course Materials

Upload the course syllabus and course documents to the BlueLine course. By adding files to a content page and publishing the page, students can access the materials digitally. This prevents the need to send multiple emails and gives you and your students one place to access the course materials. Refer to the Canvas Guides for more information on Uploading Files.
Learn more about the tools in BlueLine, how to organize content, and making your course available to students by viewing this Faculty Guide on BlueLine Tools and Organization.

Make use of BlueLine activities

Online discussion boards encourage student engagement and can help keep students motivated to participate in course activities. Refer to the Canvas Guides on Discussions and this guide for Creating Authentic Discussions.
If the campus were to close, asking students to submit assignments via BlueLine will help to avoid multiple email attachments being sent. The Assignments in BlueLine time stamp each submission and allows for placing grades into the Blueline Gradebook. Refer to our Faculty Guide on BlueLine Assignments for more information.
Quizzes and Surveys can be completed by students within Canvas. Refer to our Faculty guide on BlueLine Quizzes and Surveys for more information.
BlueLine has some great tools for grading student assignments and for managing an online gradebook. For more information, please refer to the BlueLine Faculty Guide on Grading.

Continue teaching with Panopto

Panopto Lecture Recordings - Record lectures with Panopto from your computer from anywhere and distribute the lecture to your students easily. The Panopto software works well on most laptop and desktop computers with a microphone and allows for recording lecture presentations on and off campus. Refer to the BlueCast (Panoppto) Faculty Guide for more information on how to download and use the Panopto recorder.
Panopto can also be utilized for students to record presentations or videos. For more information on how to set up a student Assignment folder, take a look at Panopto's instructions for How to Allow Viewers to Record Videos Using Assignment Folders or contact the TLC eLearning team.

Why is Zoom not recommended in this situation?

While Zoom is a great tool for video, it is resource heavy in terms of bandwidth and internet connectivity requirements. If a user has slow internet speeds, it can cause degragated video quality and disrupted connections. Zoom requires high-bandwidth to function properly, which may not be available in unusual circumstances. In contrast, Panopto is an asynchronous tool that can function even in low-bandwidth situations.