Develop Your Instructional Materials

Your instructional materials include:

• Lecture Videos
• PowerPoint Slides
• Reading articles and Text
• Practice Worksheets
• Handouts

and any other documents and content files that equip your students and help them learn the information, concepts, processes, terminology, and applications in your course.

These materials should be uploaded or linked in the Canvas course and made available to your students within a weekly module.  

• How to Upload your Lecture Videos to Canvas via Kaltura Media.
• Upload a File, Document, or Lecture Slides into Canvas .
• How to Create a File Link in a Canvas Page .

Teaching a remote course provides a couple of avenues for instruction. If you choose to continue lecturing at your regular scheduled day and time (synchronously), you can invite students to attend virtually via Zoom, the campus-supported video conferencing tool. Or if you choose to pre-record your lectures at your own time, you can upload the lecture videos to Canvas/Kaltura for viewing (asynchronously). There are considerations for both methods, and thoughtful design practices for how to foster your teaching presence and cultivate a meaningful learning experience. (See drawers below)

When lecturing in a physical classroom, you have the opportunity to build in natural check-in points with your class or incorporate pauses to process, reflect, and discuss/practice. Using the same model for remote asynchronous lectures, organize your lecture into smaller teaching points, concepts, and units of information. Identify these “chunks”  to record shorter, more focused videos that build in natural breaking points for students to self-check, discuss, or engage in a practice activity. Chunking your lecture into smaller, more digestible learning concepts will also help you organize your lecture, as well as help your students better retain the information. 

For example, in HILD 20R, Professor Herbst delivers weekly lecture content through smaller, topical micro-lectures, supplemented by notes and self-check activities on Canvas. In the course's week on "Religious Change in Afro-Eurasia and MesoAmerica," Professor Herbst presents the content through the following videos, listing the title and length of each video for student view:

• Introduction: The Rise of Universal Religions [1:34]
• Christianity and Empire [6:26]
• Spread of Christianity [7:10]
• Transformation of Empire [8:50]
• Persian Empire [4:31]
• Persia, Rome, and the Silk Roads [5:12]
• South Asia [5:37]
• Changes in Post-Han China [7:57]
• Religion and Society in Post-Han China [6:50]
• MesoAmerica: Overview [3:47]
• MesoAmerica: The Classical Era [4:30]

Keeping videos short and focused will help your students better grasp the concepts, navigate directly to a particular concept video for further learning, and also help them self-regulate and pick up where they have left off in the course.

After recording your lecture videos, organize the order in which your students watch the videos by embedding each video directly onto a Canvas Page.

See How to Embed a Video (Canvas)

If real-time synchronous lectures are necessary to facilitate interaction, demonstrate specific processes, and develop skills that can only be done in real-time, the strategies below will help you prepare, organize, and focus on delivering and facilitating an effective synchronous lecture.

If you wish to record your Synchronous Lecture videos and make them available for students who are unable to attend at the scheduled time due to special circumstances, technology requirements, or other conditions, add a note to your Syllabus indicating the lectures will be available for later viewing.

At the start of your Lecture, also be sure to announce that you will be recording and include a note on your slides indicating the lecture is being recorded, will be captioned, and made available on Canvas.

SCHEDULE YOUR SYNCHRONOUS MEETINGS IN ADVANCE

Use the ZOOM LTI Tool in Canvas to schedule your lectures. This will appear on the student's course calendar and notify them of an upcoming meeting. Students will be able to join the meeting from the same ZOOM LTI link in Canvas.

See Schedule Synchronous Meetings.

Tips for Synchronous Virtual Lectures:

• Pre-set your meeting to mute participant’s microphones upon entry. This helps to avoid background noise and allow your students to focus on your lesson.
• Close down any background apps or programs that you are not sharing for lecture to avoid any distraction or accidental sharing.
• Create and communicate a consistent structure to your lecture so that students know what to expect, what to pay close attention to or take notes on, how to engage, and when/where they can ask questions.
• Discuss online etiquette and expectations of the students in your first virtual class and periodically revisit the topics.
• When lecturing, look at the camera to create eye contact with your students. This helps to create a more personal connection while teaching over video. 
• Take a second to check chat, non-verbal cues, or your student’s video (if on camera) to check-in with your students and get feedback
• Use descriptive language to describe images on the screen or processes you are demonstrating so that all students can follow along.
• Embrace the pause. Take a moment after the end of your comments and allow for students to engage before continuing on. 

Modified from: Teachers Educating on Zoom.

For help with setting up a meeting on Zoom, see the EdTech Zoom Guides.