Remote Instruction Resources | William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning | Michigan Tech (2024)

Zoom offersDaily Webinarsas well as aRecorded Sessionthat will help you learn how to use this tool in an educational setting.

• Topics covered in the training webinars include:
  • How to download the Zoom applications and join a Zoom meeting.
  • How to schedule a meeting and send out invitations.
  • In-meeting controls and tools (including the waiting room, share screen, breakout rooms).

MTU Zoom Accounts

All Michigan Tech faculty, staff and students have Zoom accounts. Anyone can create, host and/or participate in an unlimited number of meetings with up to 300 participants.

• Login to your Zoom Account:Sign in with your Michigan Tech SSO credentials

• Review thisCollection of Knowledge Base Articlesto learn more about integrating Zoom into your online course and organizing recordings so you and students can access them.

Zoom Meeting Tips for Instructors

1. Consider establishing expectations for participation and “in class behavior”. We’ve compiled some Example Communications that could be used as a starting place, or you might adapt thePolicy that was used for some of our Online Courses at Michigan Tech.
2. To avoid and prevent “Zoom Trolls” from interrupting your class, and to encourage smooth communication, Review your Meeting Settings and consider the options to either require registration or allow only authenticated users to join. These settings are available in the meeting details when you create a new meeting in your account. If you plan to record your meeting, you should probably leave “join before host” disabled to ensure students don’t jump into your meeting before or after class, creating additional recordings.

Michigan Tech uses the Canvas learning management system (LMS) for all course modalities (face-to-face, blended, fully online). Canvas is commonly used to provide students access to course instructional materials (including content pages, documents, and videos), administer assignments, quizzes, and exams, conduct online discussions, as well as share feedback and grades with students.

• To find the Canvas information you need efficiently please review the Getting Started with Canvas Guide. This guide provides curated information to begin using Canvas.

• The full Canvas Instructor Guide is also available.

The Panopto-Huskycast video platform is the best place to record and host video mini-lectures for your courses. While there are many recording tools available to create course videos, a good first option is Panopto recorder. The software is available for Windows and Mac computers and allows instructors to record their desktop, webcam, document camera, and presentation slides. Recordings can be uploaded to the Huskycast folder in the Canvas course for all students to access. Below are relevant Panopto guides to help you get started.

Using Panopto-Huskycast

• Download and Install Panopto Recorder Software (Windows/Mac, Video tutorials (Windows/Mac)
• How to Record with Panopto for Windows
• How to Record with Panopto for Mac

• Creating a Huskycast (Panopto) Folder in Canvas
• Creating a Huskycast Student Assignment Folder
• Moving a Huskycast Recording to Another Folder

The Michigan Tech Testing Center is working to provide as much support as possible for high stakes exams being administered remotely. For exams within Canvas, we have secured Respondus Lock Down Browser and Monitor to remotely proctor online quizzes and exams.

Daily Trainings Currently Available Online from Respondus

Canvas Quiz Conversion

Testing Center staff is currently available to assist with coding paper/pencil quizzes/exams into Canvas.

• To do this:Send the exam (Google or Word Doc) totechtesting-l@mtu.edu.Include any special instructions, date exam is needed and title of exam. A canvas course, containing the quiz, will be created and shared with the instructor. The instructor can thenImport the Quizinto their current canvas course.
• Exams will have default settings of one question at a time and randomized multiple-choice answers. Question banks may be generated if multiple versions of the exam are provided.

When Designing your Remote Quiz or Exam

• Mix objective and subjective questions:Subjective questions demand a deeper understanding of the subject being studied making online cheating more difficult.
• Target Higher Level Thinking:Higher order thinking skills including understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. If you assess higher order thinking skills, students cannot find the answers just by googling or looking for the answers within a textbook.
• Make the tests available for a relatively short period of time:In a Canvas Quiz, you canLimit the Timestudents have for the exam. (e.g. one hour). If you have a student requiring special accommodations you can useModerate This Quizfeature to grant students extra attempts, grant extra time for timed quizzes, and manually unlock quiz attempts. When making an exam assignment,Differentiated Due Dates / Timescan allow one or more students to have a different start, due, and/or end times.

Creating a Quiz in Canvas

Canvas quizzes have several features that might increase the integrity of your exam:

• Creating a Canvas Quiz
• Limit what Students Can Reviewand/orWait to Post Gradesuntil after everyone is finished.
• Provide an honor code statement. Based on a combination of the “Non-Disclosure Agreement” from theTesting Center Sitewith an Honor Code agreement commonly used by Associate Provost Jean Kampe generates aTemplate which You might Customizeand include with your exams.
• Shuffle (Randomize) Answers for Multiple-Choice Questions
• Set a Time Limit
• Display Questions One at a Time
• UseCanvas Question Groups:When you create a question group, you can randomize questions from a designated Canvas Question Bank and specify how many questions students receive.
• These links should help:
  • How do I create a question bank in a course?
  • How do I create a quiz with a question group linked to a question bank?
  • How do I reorder questions or question groups in a quiz?
  • How do I import a question bank from one Canvas course to another?
• Utilize Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor

If you wish to explore other alternatives to testing (frequent small quizzes, student video submission, mind maps, etc.) please contact the CTL (ctl@mtu.edu).

iClicker student response technology is used on campus for in-class feedback from students. With face-to-face instruction suspended solutions have been found to either replace i-Clickers or adapt them for online use.

Solutions for iClickers

If you teach with iClickers, here are 3 alternative approaches for comparable online student feedback without extra cost for students:

1. Polling in Zoom
2. Using Quizzes in Huskycast (Panopto)
3. Canvas Surveys

Moving iClickers Online

iClicker is making its online (phone, laptop, or tablet-based)Product Available Free for Courseswhere iClickers have been used.The link includes resources to help, but generally, you need toRequest a “Universal Access Code”to share with your students and enable REEF in your iClicker course.Once yourStudents Register with This Code, you can teach from Zoom in much the same way you would have done in class, with students responding from wherever they are.

Compassion for Yourself and your Students

Remember that your students are experiencing many of the same - or even more - of the uncertainty, fear, and change that we all are.I know that Counseling Services is working to provide detailed resources to you within the next week. Meanwhile, thisArticle from Inside Higher Edmight provide some strategies to help with the emotional and human challenges we are all facing in our teaching.

Adapted from a Facebook post by Amy Young, Ph.D.

Adapted from a Facebook post by Amy Young, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication, Pacific Lutheran University:

1. Be kind to yourself and your students. Everyone is stressed, even if they're playing cool. That includes faculty. And that's okay.
2. You will not recreate your classroom, and you cannot hold yourself to that standard. Moving a class to a distance learning model in a day's time excludes the possibility of excellence. Give yourself a break.
3. Prioritize. What do students really need to know for the next few weeks? These are not normal circ*mstances.
4. Make assignments lower or no stakes if you're using a new platform. Get students used to just using the platform. Then you can do something higher stakes. Do not ask students to do a high stakes exam or assignment on a new platform.
5. Stay in contact with students, and stay transparent. Talk to them about WHY you're prioritizing certain things or asking them to read or do certain things. It improves student buy-in because they know content and delivery are purposeful.
6. Do not read on best practices for distance learning. That's not the situation we're in. We're in triage. Distance learning, when planned, can be really excellent. That's not what this is. Do what you absolutely have to and ditch what you can. Thinking you can manage best practices in a day or a week will lead to feeling like you've failed." We are doing our best to respond as quickly as possible - and know you need answers quickly. Thanks for your patience and hard work in this transition!