The Teaching Commons Has Your Back

By Geneviève Maheux-Pelletier

"COVID-19 provoked a long-awaited disruption to higher education, pivotal to ensuring students are well equipped for the future of work in a digital and artificial intelligence era" (Naffi et al. 2020: 17).

I am here, staring at my computer, and hoping I can craft a message that will resonate with most of you. I am pretty sure that the quote above, as inspirational it may be, is far from your immediate concerns.

Perhaps I should simply acknowledge the truth: our “return to campus” amidst the pandemic will be hard. On everyone. Learning under such circumstances will be challenging in ways that we probably do not fully grasp yet. Teaching remotely will prove exhausting. Course delivery plans will need to be adjusted constantly to respond appropriately to real and difficult issues students will undoubtedly face around access, hardship, and mental health. We will all need a great deal of compassion towards self and others.

I am also pretty sure that overcoming these challenges will bring positive by-products. Perhaps you will decide to ditch the final examination to favour a cumulative final assignment that will enhance how your student demonstrate what they have learned. You may discover creative ways to engage students that work for you and them. Maybe the videos you decided to create can be shared with colleagues at other institutions, and vice versa, or be reused in a future course. Your students may reach out to you for help in navigating their challenging learning journey and in turn give you a window into their reality. This insight could help you plan your delivery in ways that facilitate learning for all. Or you may decide to connect with colleagues and professional staff across York and discover that there is a lot more informal and formal support for teaching and learning than you had even imagined.

No matter how you anticipate the semester to unfold, connecting with others will indeed be more important than ever. If you need to talk to someone about teaching, drop in our daily virtual drop-in hours from 10 am to 12 pm or reach out to your liaison developer directly with a question, concern, or request for longer-term support. You can also join a community of practice interested in eLearning or create your own, perhaps around an aspect of remote teaching you find particularly challenging (email Mandy Frake-Mistak to inquire).

You may wish at some point later to share your experience with others. You can do so by contributing a blog post in a written, video, or audio format or by facilitating a webinar on a particular topic of remote (!) interest (reach out to teaching@yorku.ca to let us know).

For your course planning and delivery, visit Going Remote, a bilingual website created in-house that contains a plethora of information to help with anything from  recording a lecture to protecting your intellectual property. You can use the Remote Teaching Essentials Checklist available at the top of the page to navigate the most important sections of the website.  Should your students be looking for resources on online learning, direct them to the Student Guide to Remote Learning.

After the dust settles, you may wish to up your game by taking one of the courses we specifically designed to help instructors cope with remote and online teaching.

The Teaching Commons has your back. Please reach out to us and we’ll do everything we can to guide you through remote teaching. In the meantime, I hope that we all have a safe and productive semester.

About the Author

Geneviève is the director of the Teaching Commons, providing leadership to a highly competent team to deliver on a wide range of programs, courses, and initiatives to promote and enhance teaching excellence at York.  She is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of university teaching experience, and her research interests focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and evidenced-based practices in educational development. Her most recent book chapter (Brill, 2019) re-frames the purpose and value of  writing communities for engaging academics in SoTL writing. She is an expert in experiential education, and collaborates with colleagues at all levels across the university to actively contribute to strategic initiatives related to teaching and learning. You can visit her professional portfolio here.

Reference

Naffi, N., Davidson, A.-L., Kaufman, R., Clark, R.E., Beatty, B., & Paquelin, D. (2020). Disruption in and by Centres for Teaching and Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Leading the Future of Higher Ed. International Observatory of the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology. Retrieved 09/03/2020 from <https://observatoire-ia.ulaval.ca/en/whitepaper-leading-the-future-of-higher-ed/>