CTL Updates to chairs and deans

March 12, 2020

The following is from Allison Lehr Samuels, Director of the CTL. Please share this information with your course coordinators.

Dear Colleagues,

As promised, following are updates.

On Thursday, March 12 at 10:30AM you are invited to participate in a Zoom meeting in which I’ll review our plans, discuss our approach, field questions, and hear concerns. This meeting will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Directions to join this meeting are copied at the bottom of this email.

CTL Workshops (in the format of Zoom webinars) have been posted to the CTL events page. Please direct your faculty to this events page and encourage them to participate. We will record most webinars and later post links so that colleagues who aren’t able to join synchronously may access the material at a time of their convenience. Please note: we are not holding in-person workshops at this time. More workshops will be added for next week.

Upcoming workshop topics include:

Writing Assignments

Discussion Boards

Assessment strategies

Online quizzes & tests (focused on Blackboard)

Overview of tech tools

Free Digital Humanities Tools

Drop in Q&A

The CTL staff will be working remotely this Friday, March 13. This will allow us to test out and make sure we have a solid business continuity plan to support you should we suddenly need to close the campus.

In the upcoming days, the CTL could use your support in the following ways:

1. Please ask your faculty to read and review what’s already posted in preparation for going online when classes resume on March 19. We’ve been adding more resources for faculty and know there are many more out there. Given the large demand for assistance and my limited number of mostly part-time staff, we ask that everyone first read the resources that are already provided and participate in/review a webinar before making a one-on-one appointment. (We’re getting a lot of questions that are answered in the Resources for Maintaining Business Continuity document, particularly around Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate.) After next week, I hope to have capacity to offer more one-on-one appointments. One-on-one consultations can be scheduled on the CTL website.

2. Faculty should develop low-tech ways for students to participate in their class. Using synchronous technology such as Blackboard Collaborate and Zoom are attractive to faculty because they seem like they will replicate the classroom experience. Be mindful that sometimes there are wifi issues using these technology and that students may not have the privacy to engage in a class discussion or might be joining by a mobile phone which makes it more difficult to see the material. We strongly recommend that faculty focus on asynchronous teaching, in which students are not required to gather at the same time. We will cover this more in our workshops.

3. Encourage faculty to have a flexible mindset when approaching this transition. We understand and agree that this transition is disruptive and is more work for faculty. We are empathetic that most faculty have a way of teaching their course that has been successful for them. However, I think it’s helpful to manage expectations and let faculty know that in most cases they will not be able to exactly replicate the in-person experience online. This is a time when they might have to try out something new that may not be perfect, and that may not be in their comfort zone. While many faculty are understandably initially resistant to these new things, most wind up appreciating that they have a more diversified set of teaching approaches.

Thank you for your patience, support and flexibility as we move forward. I anticipate that the nature of our support will evolve in the upcoming weeks as new questions and needs arise.

Best,

Allison

Allison Lehr Samuels is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: CTL Plans Update
Time: Mar 12, 2020 10:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting https://baruch.zoom.us/j/382107155 (copy and paste this link in your browser. You do not need a Zoom account to join.)

Meeting ID: 382 107 155

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Subject: Re: CTL Updates to chairs and deans

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for today’s good questions and patience as I tried out doing a Zoom webinar. (t was certainly a learn by doing moment!

In the interest of time, I am posting here the link to slides and the audio recording. Before the weekend we should have a system in place where we place the webinar recordings.

Best,
Allison