Remote Teaching Development for Grad Students and Postdocs

Develop your teaching... remotely!

We're all trying to navigate this new remote teaching and learning environment and we can find success if we continue to work – and learn – together. Explore all of the webinars, services and programming available exclusively to Laurier's graduate student and postdoctoral teaching communities.

Consultations

As members of Laurier's graduate and doctoral teaching community, you have access to one-on-one consultations to support your teaching development. Request your appointment today.

The Guide for Remote Teaching, Learning, and Assessment

Laurier’s Teaching and Learning team created this comprehensive Guidefor Remote Teaching, Learning and Assessment to take instructors through everything they need to consider when planning, building and teaching a remote course – from theoretical concepts grounded in research all the way through to practical execution. Topics include:

• Understanding Your Teaching Environment
• Understanding Your Students and Their Learning Needs
• Strategies for Student Engagement and Motivation
• Integrating Authentic Assessments and Tools to Support Academic Integrity
• Using Zoom as a Pedagogical Tool
• Reflecting on Your Teaching

Online Modules

The Remote Instruction MyLearningSpace module has been designed to support and prepare you for your upcoming remote GTA roles this academic year. It introduces the concept of remote teaching, as well as best practices and what you can expect in your remote GTA role.

• Registration: Self-register on MyLearningSpace. Select “Self Registration” from the top left-hand navigation and find “Remote Instruction GTA” on the alphabetized course list.  
• Time Commitment: Estimated time to complete is about 1–hour.

Curated Resources

The following resources about remote instruction from external sources provide further background, ideas, and considerations when transitioning to teaching in a remote environment.

• 'Keep Teaching'​ Resource | STLHE: The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education is a national organization providing a comprehensive list of curated teaching and learning resources. These support resources are constantly developing and offers good insight into how institutions across the country and responding to the move to remote instruction. They offer categories such as Teaching and Assessing, Well-Being, and Institutional-level resources and include a series of future and past webinars that can be watched for best practice tips.  
• The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning | Charles Hodges, Stephanie Moore, Barb Lockee, Torrey Trust and Aaron Bond: Article examining the difference between Online Learning and the shift to Remote Teaching in post-secondary education in response to the COVID-19 World Health Crisis. 
• Tools for Online Asynchronous Learning | Wiley Education Services: Simple resource that talks through preparing yourself for asynchronous delivery of courses and connects you to potential tools that can assist with your remote instructional goals.
• Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All | Daniel Stanford: Discusses two key factors, bandwidth and immediacy, to consider when thinking about using synchronous and asynchronous approaches to teaching. Outlines in a clear diagram the different choices you have from an instructional point of view when considering combining high and low levels of both bandwidth and immediacy.  
• Eight Steps for a Smoother Transition to Online Teaching | Faculty Focus: An article providing several tips for creating engaging experiences for students in a remote learning context. All of these tips offer equal relevance for remote teaching environments and outline some key questions to consider in ensuring that your course builds engagement and focuses on intended student outcomes. 
• On Accessibility and Community Amid COVID-19 | Stanford University: An opinion piece written by a student at Stanford University facing accessibility issues in a Zoom classroom. Very brief at 1,362 words, and well worth the read to keep accessibility issues on our radar in a time when already marginalized communities are experiencing exacerbated levels of marginalization. Student also highlights importance of community.   
• Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During COVID-19 | Steve Joordens: Free online course created by Dr. Steve Joordens, a professor at the University of Toronto, which takes approximately nine hours to complete. Content includes understanding the anxiety response, managing anxiety, relaxation, managing the consumption of news, mental distraction, explaining physical distancing to children, the effects of isolate, strategies to make isolation more bearable, guarding against depression, and more. 
• What Online Teachers Have Learned From Teaching Online | Inside Higher Ed: Reflections from faculty who have been teaching online for years about their journey, great for any level of online teaching experience to read what people thought going in and how that has changed over time. Useful to consider how these lessons would translate into a remote learning environment. 
• Oxford Epigeum Training Resources | Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press is making its Epigeum training resources free and available during the Covid-19 pandemic. This training can assist with assisting in re-imagining your course for a remote environment with the Blending Learning training being the most pertinent.  ​
• Pedagogy, Self-Assessment, and Online Discussion Groups | Mary Kayler and Karen Weller: Research article focused on the development of discussions as an extension of instructional practices that supported dialogue, reflection, and self-assessment for the purpose of continuous professional improvement and facilitating independent learners. The research question that guided this study was, how can we develop self-monitoring and acceptance of online discussions so that students become independent learners?