Prioritize a set of syllabus changes that will let you do what you're already doing in your F2F course with minimal change.

• Do you already use Google Docs to write?
• Are you in several conference calls a week via Zoom?
• Are most of your classes structured around PowerPoint?
• What do you use at home to organize communication, to-dos, etc.?

If you're technology-averse or don't like to troubleshoot in front of people, make it 1 or 2.

How long did it take you to get really comfortable in a face-to-face environment? Online teaching and F2F teaching require different sorts of interactions, even if you're limiting the amount of change.

Students may be in a different time zone, have a young child at home, or have other family schedules to work around

More importantly, we will be testing the limits of our video-conferencing infrastructure. Class will go more smoothly, and you'll get more out of shortr live synchronous video conferences, if you are making use of simpler, low-end text-based interactions and asynchronous teaching when possible.

Ask yourself

• What content must absolutely show up?
• What content is optional and can therefore be cut?
• What history-thinking skills or content must be part of the course?
• What activities support learning of that content or those history-thinking skills?

A survey about student access will give you information as well as communicate to the students that you’re thinking about their learning. I’ve created a survey in the form of a Canvas quiz that you can import and use without needing to build anything from scratch:

• In Canvas, look for the “Commons” link in the left-hand nav bar
• Search for "History Online Learning Environment Survey COVID-19”
• Press the blue “Import” button
• Choose the courses you want to survey and finalize the import.
• Go to the Quizzes section of each Canvas course and look for the "History Online Learning Environment Survey" quiz. You can customize it from here and set deadlines.

You'll need more, and more detailed, instructions as you communicate about your syllabus in an online environment. Two Canvas tools can help diminish the amount of email you get in an online teaching environment. Consider choosing one or the other depending on how you already use Canvas:

• Canvas Pages. Canvas Pages lets you structure information in linked, bullet-point form. Include links to the day's resources and provide clarifications in a single location. If you have your syllabus in a Word file and don't use Canvas assignments already, this might work well for you.
  • Start with a 1-minute video on how to use Canvas Pages for organizing course material.
  • Then choose whatever you need from the detailed guide to Canvas Pages
• Canvas Calendar combined with ungraded Assignments. The Canvas Calendar puts all of the things you've entered in the "Assignments" section of Canvas in one place, with quick pop-ups that provide easy access to assignment details. If you already put your assignments into Canvas, this might work well for you.
  • View a 2-minute video on ungraded assignments in the Canvas Calendar.

Kaltura is an IU-supported platform that lets you distribute video easily. The best way to use it to distribute lectures is in combination with a PPT slide deck. 

• Start with this 3 minute video that walks you through how to start Kaltura alongside your existing PPT and then get a link for the resulting video.
• Look at CITL's resources on Kaltura

Advantages of Kaltura:

• Kaltura will limit the video quality to adjust to your students' internet connection speed. Using Kaltura instead of Canvas as a place to store video will help students as they deal with changing infrastructure.
• Kaltura does not require two-way internet communication, where a single-person meeting in Zoom does. Using Kaltura instead of Zoom will help ease the load for instructors who need Zoom-based live discussion.
• Kaltura will provide automatic closed-captioning.
• You can upload video to Kaltura from your smartphone via an app, which can let you give tours of museums, archives, etc., if you had any field trips planned.

Two tools for student interaction can help foster discussion.

• Canvas Discussion Forums for a more traditional back-and-forth conversation from the student perspective.
• Google Docs annotation for a primary-source based discussion.
  • Start with a video on how to create and share Google Docs using IU's Google Suite.
  • Create a new Google Doc.
  • Paste your primary source text into the Google Doc.
  • Direct students to look for the "Comment" word bubble in the upper right hand corner to add a new comment on the text that interests them or reply to a comment another student has made.

Zoom conference call software is your best bet for live conversation, but it will be the teaching resource that is the most strained as we test online-education infrastructure on a nationwide basis.

Start with a short video on how to schedule a Zoom meeting, mute participants to keep background noise low, and record a Zoom meeting.

Pro-tip: Mouse over the Zoom meeting window and look for

• the microphone icon. Clicking this will mute your microphone
• the green square-with-up-arrow icon. Clicking this will give you screen-sharing options
• the "More..." icon. Clicking this will give you access to a "Record this meeting" option. Choose "Record to the cloud" to automatically send the recording to Kaltura.

• Consider simplifying. There are good recommendations from Rebecca Barrett-Fox's "Please do a bad job of putting your courses online"
• CITL has collected a set of regularly asked questions with good answers at https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/teaching-strategies/continue-teaching/index.html

Zoom office hours weekly on Wednesday and Thursday from 11-noon starting April 1 and ending May 7. Email Kalani for a link.