Additional Resources for Online Teaching

On This Page:

Resources for Moving Teaching Online in a Hurry

Most of these articles touch on a common theme – keep things simple, accessible, and flexible. They remind us that we are teaching online under special circumstances that COVID-19 has caused disruptions in many aspects of our lives. Be realistic about your expectations of what you and your students can do. Some of the common practices for online teaching may not be feasible or applicable (e.g. you may need to think carefully about synchronous activities for your class).

In addition to general articles, we have also included ones that are discipline-specific.

Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start – a great article that helps us think through what we have to take into consideration for our courses, including links to other useful resources.

Your Suddenly Online Class Could Actually Be a Relief – a short, straightforward guide with simple and practical suggestions.

How to Transition to Online Teaching during these Difficult Times  – a short, to-the-point article

Thoughts & Resources for Those About to Start Teaching Online Due to COVID-19

How to Make Your Online Pivot Less Brutal

Biology: Biology Teaching in the Time of COVID-19: How to Transfer to Online Learning

Chemistry – Teaching in the Times of COV19

Languages – Putting Our Language Courses Online 

Creative Writing – Rapid Response Pedagogy Resources: Moving Your Courses Online

Humanities (from MLA) – Bringing Your Course Online

Best Practices When Moving Your Teaching Online in a Hurry  – this is an excellent place to start – this video is only 30-minutes with great tips on things that might not have crossed your mind.

Setting Up Online Quickly – a four-part series from the Online Teaching Collective with short, practical videos – Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 & Part 4

Spring 2020 Online Learning Collective – a group with a large membership and tons of resources; excellent in terms of the quality of resources and advice you can find there. It gets lots of posts in a short period of time and can be a bit overwhelming to keep track of. Do a keyword search within the group to find what you need.

Pandemic Pedagogy & Pandemic Pedagogy – there are other Facebook groups out there, including two of the same name. Also, check out Online Teaching Tips for the Plague-Averse and Chronicle of Higher Education’s Higher Ed and the Coronavirus. Just some options in case you don’t like the first one listed.

Strategies for Teaching Chemistry Online

Teaching Effectively in the Time of Disruption – a very comprehensive guide developed by Stanford University with some detailed instruction on the use of technology.

Teaching in Time of COVID-19 – a very well-organized, easy-to-navigate list of resources

Remote Teaching resources for Business Continuity – another very well-organized crowdsourced list of resources (additional resources tab); it includes also a list of resources from different universities (form responses tab)

Biology: Biology Teaching in the Time of COVID-19: How to Transfer to Online Learning

Online Learning Collective – a website from the Spring 2020 Online Learning Collective Facebook group mentioned above, it can get a bit overwhelming following the Facebook group and it’s easy to find specific resources here.

Teaching Online With Care – a crowdsourced list that focuses on the human side of the sudden transition to online teaching/learning, such as anxiety, social isolation, & accessibility.

You may not need to create all the online content yourselves. There are Open Educational Resources you can use for your classes. Merlot is a very comprehensive depository of Open Educational Resources for online teaching. Check out our EWU Libraries’ Open Educational Resources for Online Teaching. Our colleagues in the library will be adding more resources on this page. Also, you can contact the subject librarian for your department if you want assistance in finding more discipline-specific OER resources for online teaching.

Science & Math: https://phet.colorado.edu/

ChemCollective: http://www.chemcollective.org/

Vendor Love in the Time of COVID-19 – this is an expanding list of materials that are normally not open access but the publishers/organizations have made them free for a limited time in response to the COVID-19 situations. For example, MIT Press is making its e-book collections available for free until the end of May. JSTOR is offering free access to 26 journal archives in Public Health until June 30, 2020. Cengage is offering free access to its online platforms and textbooks until “the end of the semester.” It’s worth spending the time going through the document and find out what resources may be available to you and your students.

EWU Resources

To find out updates on campus resources available to students, check this student information page.

There also may be updates on the websites of the different units:

Other Resources

Beyond the Food Pantry: Supporting #RealCollege Students During COVID19 – it lists some of the resources for their academic and non-academic needs they may find useful.

Comcast’s Internet Essential Program

Advice to students who unexpectedly enrolled in an online university

Keep On Learning – a simple guide for students from Virginia Commonwealth University that may give you some ideas for advice to give to students to help them with the transition.

COVID-19 Mental Health Resources from University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign’s Psychology Department – it is a very comprehensive list of resources that apply to all even though it contains some local information; there are specific tips for students and for faculty.

CDC’s Guide for Managing Anxiety and Stress

Care for Your Coronavirus Anxiety

Coping With Stress During Infectious Disease Outbreaks

How to Use Technology for Online Teaching

Using Zoom for Online Instruction: Tips for Undergraduate and Graduate as well as Adult Education Courses

How to hide your messy room for a Zoom video conference – also good for faculty who want more privacy or simply want to have a cool background for their Zoom sessions.

Video Communications Best Practice Guide  – great tips on Zoom including some on small things we might not pay attention to, such as “don’t sit too close to the camera” or “adjust your camera” so that our students are not seeing only the tip of our heads.

Keep Zoom Meetings Private – learn Zoom settings that address potential privacy issues. For example, there have been incidents of “Zoom Bombing” where strangers try to intrude on a Zoom meeting/class.

Tips on Recording Lectures  – tips on lighting, camera set-up, etc. to get better quality videos.

Here are some videos made by our own colleagues:

Gina Petrie, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, put together an excellent video to show us our we can make our Canvas course site a welcoming space for our students.

Kevin Decker,  Philosophy Program, has created a fantastic video on the basics of using Zoom and Panopto in your classes.

Jamie Chaffin and Susan Ruby, Department of Psychology, created this video with the help of volunteers to demonstrate the Poll function and Breakout Room function on Zoom for real-time interaction with students.

Jillene Seiver, Department of Psychology, gave a workshop at the Faculty Commons based on her own research on student engagement and success in online classes. In the video, she talks about how you structure Canvas site for easy navigation and the use of peer review as a way to get students engaged.

Here are other videos:

How to make a video from PowerPoint

Teaching Tip: Designing Online Lectures and Recorded Presentations – including tips on your presentation slides (e.g. fonts & color contrast for video) for recorded lectures

Zoom’s Privacy & Security Concerns

Privacy Tips from Zoom

These Zoom articles address what we can do on the users’ end to address some of the privacy issues:

Zoom Privacy Tips from EWU

Please also check out EWU’s Privacy Best Practices for Online Conferencing

General Online Teaching Tips

Associate of College and University Educators (ACUE)  online teaching resources (both short videos and printed guides) – it has good recommendations on creating micro-lectures (not just the technical aspect) and tips for engaging students with the readings and micro-lectures.

Chronicle of Higher Education’s free downloadable collection of their best advice on teaching online.

Faculty Focus’s articles on Online Education – articles cover a wide range of topics on online teaching.