Academic continuity planning begins with asking yourself questions about the preparedness of you, your students, and your course for an emergency scenario.
As you create your plan, use the questions below to think about how you will address continuity for each of the teaching activities in your courses.
Communicate with students
- What will your initial communication to students about your continuity plan look like (content of message, how communicated)?
- How often will you communicate with students and what tools will you use for communication (e.g., Moodle quickmail and course announcements, Zoom, Google Hangouts)?
- How comfortable are you with the tools available for communication? How can you increase your confidence in using these?
Ensuring access to course materials
- Are all your course materials (e.g., readings, resources, syllabus and course schedule) currently available to students online? If not, how will students be provided access?
- How will you make students aware of changes in course materials and readings?
- Are there copyright issues to consider? (see this helpful reference)
Delivering course content through lectures, classroom activities, and applied experiences
- Lectures: What strategies will you use to deliver lecturers, either synchronously (via Zoom or Google hangouts) or asynchronously (via audio or video recordings, or narrated PowerPoints)?
- Classroom activities: How will you engage students virtually, through online discussions, small group projects, or reflection-oriented activities?
- Labs, studio, or field experiences: How can these activities be altered in such a way that your learning outcomes are still met? Could alternative independent learning experiences be developed?
Reorganizing course content
- Pacing: Given likely differences in pace when teaching remotely, how might the timing of course content, assignments, and assessments need to be adjusted?
- Reevaluating: Being mindful of your overall learning outcomes, can or will you adjust content, materials, and assignments to more explicitly align with course goals?
Maintaining classroom community
- How will you encourage communication and collaboration among students in your course?
- How can you maintain a cohesive sense of classroom community?
Assignments and assessments
- How will you need to adapt planned assignments and how will students submit these to you?
- What quizzes, tests, or exams will be affected and what modifications will you need to make in assessing student work? If necessary, can students demonstrate their learning in different ways (e.g., projects, portfolios)?
Academic support and accessibility concerns
- How will teaching remotely affect your students currently involved in peer tutoring or other forms of academic support?
- How can students with academic accessibility concerns be fully supported?
To help in your planning, we have provided a fillable Course Continuity Plan template
Google Doc – Make a copy