More Reading and Resources about Academic Continuity during COVID-19

Supporting Students

Education is, first and foremost, about students. As faculty adjust how they instruct to meet new realities, they need to do so with a conscious awareness of how to best support and reflect student needs in their courses.

Bowen, José Antonio. 12/7/16. "Helping Students Embrace Discomfort." InsideHigherEdWhile this was written long before the current issues with COVID-19, much of what Bowen writes is good advice in this context.

  • "The first stage of college is finding a safe home. We learn much more when we explore from a place of safety, have the rights tools and feel accepted as equal partners in the discourse."
  • "Pedagogy is about moving from comfort to discomfort and eventually finding comfort in discomfort."
  • "We must also be intellectual and ethical role models, so on our campus, we are responsive and transparent about student concerns."
  • "Thus, to help our students embrace discomfort, we must first establish a home for them."

Hole, Anne. 3/14/20. "When the VLE becomes your campus: some thoughts on engaging learners online." ALTC BLOG: News & Views from the ALT Community.

  • "Your students may be feeling a sense of isolation, as well as some anxiety about learning online. You can help by setting a welcoming, inclusive tone in all your communication"
  • "Social engagement is extremely important in online learning"

Kamenetz, Anya. 3/19/20. "Panic-gogy: Teaching Online Classes During the Coronavirus Pandemic." National Public Radio.

  • "On one level, Panicgogy means understanding students' practicalities. Some only have smartphones. Some have family responsibilities. Some have been sent home and need to find a new place to live, new job, and new health insurance."
  • "Really, what we're doing is we are trying to extend a sense of care to our students and trying to build a community that's going to be able to work together to get through the learning challenges that we have."
  • "The idea here is really to help our students feel included in the process of rethinking education for a challenging time."

Pacansky-Brock, Michelle. "How to Humanize Your Online Class."

  • "Humanized learning increases the relevance of content and improves students' motivation to log-in week-after-week. When students relate to an online instructor as something more than a subject matter expert and begin to conceive of themselves as part of a larger community, they are more likely to be motivated, be satisfied with their learning, and succeed in achieving the course objectives. (Picciano, 2002; Rovai & Barnum, 2003;  Richardson & Swan, 2003)."

Reed, Matt. 4/9/20. "Grading in a Dangerous Time." Confessions of a Community College Dean, from InsideHigherEd.

  • "Our students are fragile, especially now.  Everybody is. It would be easy to try to hide from that, which works until it doesn’t."
  • "With every gesture of decency, every recognition of humanity, we kick at the darkness. Sooner or later, it will bleed daylight.  It always does."

Tobin, Thomas J. 3/25/20. "Student Agency in Uncertain Times." InsideHigherEd.

  • "What's on the rise is not academic dishonesty, but suddenly online instructors' fear of losing control over the conditions under which assessments are handled."
  • "Put plainly, students are most tempted to act dishonestly when they feel anxiety and pressure."
  • "The best thing that we can all do, regardless of the subjects we teach or support, is to offer students options, voices and choices."
  • "The real number to think about is that in your specific course, in this specific semester, we're really talking about 1 to 2 percent of interactions seeing dishonest conduct. The vast majority of students, when we tell them what honest work and study look like, will do as we ask them to do."

Walker, Will. 3/16/2020. "Don’t Forget About Us Minority Students: An Open Letter to University Administrators." InsideHigherEd.

  • "As it stands, I have three credit card bills, multiple medical bills and a cellphone bill that do not care about the coronavirus. Regardless of where I am and what I am doing, my creditors expect to get paid. And it will be me via my credit score that takes the hit if I cannot pay them."
  • "Students are not faculty and staff members with guaranteed salaries."
  • "[W]e need strong directives and guidance that are fully fleshed out and considerate of the challenges that we face."
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Adjusting to Teaching Online

The articles and posts here offer valuable advice to keep in mind while adapting to education under COVID-19.

Chick, Nancy. 2013. "Teaching in Times of Crisis." Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.

  • "Taking a moment of silence"
  • "Minding the cognitive load"
  • "Assigning relevant activities or materials"
  • "Talk directly with your students about the crisis"

Darby, Flower. 3/24/20. "How to Recover the Joy of Teaching After an Online Pivot." ChronicleVitae, from InsideHigherEd.

  • "I’ve taught hundreds of online classes over the past 12 years, so I’m well aware that it can feel like a grind, if you let it."
  • "Be transparent and vulnerable with your students, too. Talking with them about the challenges you’re all facing will help them process this experience."
  • "We faculty members are prone to being distracted by bells and whistles. As every instructional designer will tell you, if there’s not a pedagogical purpose to a technology tool, don’t use it. Be careful, too, about asking students to use third-party software that requires a new log-in or might not be fully accessible."
  • "Teaching well online requires intention, effort, and a commitment to working with students in different ways than you do in person."
  • "We can be kind to one another amid all the crazy. It can only help."

Dennihy, Melissa. 3/25/20. "For the Love of Learning." InsideHigherEd.

  • "Online education is not valueless; it is a different form of instruction, but it is not objectively inferior to traditional instructional modes."
  • "[O]nline learning can allow for more inclusion and make space for marginalized voices and perspectives"
  • "We can all learn from getting out of our comfort zones and trying new ways of delivering content and engaging with students. Again, these are not ideal circumstances, and there will be serious limitations. But don’t assume failure before you have begun."

Golden, Cynthia. 3/23/20. "Remote Teaching: The Glass Half-Full." Educause Review.

  • "The next weeks and months will be challenging. Our recovery will be long and hard, but we will get through it. And when we do, I hope that one of the things we learn is that what we did was not launch 'online learning' at my institution—or any other institution in the country. Rather, we lived through a period of temporary, remote teaching. There is a huge difference."
  • "What I hope the experience will do, however, is show us how resilient we are as a community. I hope faculty who may have been reluctant to use educational technologies will now see some new possibilities."

Green, Jody. 3/17/20. "Keep Calm and Keep Teaching." InsideHigherEd.

  • "Stop saying we’re 'going online.' We’re not. We’re moving to remote instruction"
  • "Stop worrying about testing and start thinking about learning."
  • "Stop obsessing about cheating and start talking about academic integrity."
  • "Be kind. I mean, extra, extra kind. Nearly everyone who works on a college campus right now is facing a world of pain, uncertainty and difficulty."

Johnson, Stacey. n/d. "Dealing with the Unexpected: Teaching When You or Your Students Can’t Make it to Class." Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.

  • "Promote communication with and among students."
  • "Create sites of interaction."

Johnson, Stacey. 3/6/20. "Putting some of your course content online in a hurry?" Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.

  • "Create space for thinking and reflection"
  • "Keep expectations realistic"
  • "Capitalize on technologies you are already using plus one or two new ones"

Miller, Michelle D. 3/9/20. "Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start." The Chronicle of Higher Education.

  • "How will you give [students] opportunities for practice and feedback, for both small-stakes and high-stakes assignments?"
  • "Decide what you’re going to do about any high-stakes assessments, particularly exams."
  • "In the face of all this uncertainty, you need to explain — as clearly as you can and in a variety of places — what students can expect about the course in the next few weeks."
  • "[F]or now, the focus is on students, and on using what we know to help them move forward under some really difficult circumstances."

Milsom, Alexandra L. 3/15/20. "Your Suddenly Online Class Could Actually Be a Relief." InsideHigherEd.

  • "Go easy on yourself."
  • "Be generous with extensions and excuses."
  • "Foreground life-sustaining resources in your course information."
  • "Do not rely on synchronous meetings."
  • "Limit your reliance on lectures."

Richards, Reshan and Stephen J. Valentine. 3/13/20. "A Letter to Educators Teaching Online for the First Time." EdSurge.

  • "Simply put, if you’re asked to teach online, we encourage you to find ways to be present for your students. Your presence is all that many of them have ever needed, and this does not change if you are teaching from your living room or local library."
  • "You’ll find new things to do—things you couldn’t do offline. Students will show you their learning in ways they wouldn’t or couldn’t offline."
  • "What’s more, when you are back offline, when you walk into your old brick-and-mortar classroom, one last surprise awaits. You might keep some of what you found in the online wilderness. You might use collaborative documents in new ways. You might find new ways to access student voice … or allow students to show their thinking in ways that they—and you—never could have imagined."
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More to Explore

One of the challenges about supporting learning during this time of COVID-19 is that so many people are generating so many sets of resources that it's almost impossible to keep up with. That being said, here are some additional resources you might like to explore.




Page last modified April 9, 2020