A (longer) thread (39 tweets) about developing asynchronous online teaching assets for instructors at @GrinnellCollege

#COVIDー19 #CovidCampus #LiberalArts #InstructionalContinuity #OnlineLearning #RemoteTeaching #HigherEd

1. An essential part of the teaching that happens at liberal arts institutions is the face-to-face instruction and personal contact that occurs in the classroom. We've discovered that this is difficult to replicate during the current pandemic.

2. Although we hope the pandemic will be over by Fall Semester 2020, this may not be the case. Even if students are all back on campus then, a recurrence will require faculty to pivot rapidly to online instruction again (see this thread: https://twitter.com/doktorfrag/status/1240394790316974085).

3. Current synchronous video conferences are a quick stopgap measure, but do not scale well with students in different time zones, with different Internet connections speeds, and on different devices. Video conferences should not be the only long-term solution.

4. We clearly need digital teaching assets in place for a Fall Semester 2020 that only meets online, or that eventually gets quickly taken online. Some of these assets will need to be asynchronous. This raises some important questions.

5. How do we maintain a personal relationship with our students through an impersonal medium? How can we effectively deploy asynchronous teaching assets online to meet students when, where, and how they are?