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Librarian as Teacher

General Online Teaching Best Practices

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  • What do you want students to be able to do after your session? What are the enduring skills they will acquire?
  • What will you need to do as a teacher to get students to this knowledge?
  • Have students reflect and respond to learning outcomes.
  • Provide students with a purpose - where are you going with this? Why is this session important to the course?
  • Include the SLO in the presentation 
  • Incorporate Gen Ed Requirements or look to the course syllabus to tie in learning outcomes

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  • Think about ways to communicate with those in the "room"
  • Try to create a sense of community by talking to students as they enter the room
  • Do a poll everywhere and ask them to send in their favorite breakfast food or another fun fact.
  • Be respectful to not put students on the spot - they may not be in a condition to be on video
  • Think about access issues - maybe they can't share their video or audio
  • Log in early and type an intro in chat or on a whiteboard with contact information
  • Could use whiteboard to sign in - be creative - draw a book 
  •  Acclimating students to the learning environment - what would be the hardest part of the topic

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  • What is essential to your face-to-face classroom? Chairs? Whiteboard? Projector?
  • What is essential to your online classroom? Whiteboard? Screensharing?
  • Make sure the learning environment isn't distracting - mute audio and video of anyone not talking
  • Let students know right from the start which tools you're going to use and how you will use them. What are the expectations for each?

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  • Can you create a task right at the beginning that challenges students?
  • Is all of the information you share and activities you create directly related to the knowledge you want students to attain?
  • Provide examples - talk through examples and how to find solutions
  • Is there a way to provide some flipped learning? Short videos or tutorials to view beforehand? *Remember to use conversational language, not stilted or formal. 
  • Provide students with space to try things - give them a specific prompt and ask them to take 5 to 10 minutes to look for things or try things. Use chat in combination with other tools.

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  • How will you know that students have learned the skill you sought to teach?
  • Use Zoom Polls - you can set it up ahead of time and get anonymous answers - these can be added to meetings that you have scheduled so that they are ready when you launch the meeting as host.

Best Practices for Teaching Online - Synchronous

  1. Zoom is the preferred online teaching tool.

  2. Create Zoom sessions where participants log in as muted and where a password is required.

  3. Be sure to acclimate students to the Zoom space as you begin your session. Ask them to remain muted unless they need to ask a question.

  4. As long as your bandwidth allows, you should keep your camera on so that students can see your face during the session.

  5. Clear learning outcomes should be developed for each session.

  6. If it would be beneficial to the session, the provision of short (no longer than 3 minute) videos could be provided for students to watch prior to sessions for background information. These could include videos on how to search a particular database or a tour of the library resources/homepage.

  7. Lecture portions of sessions should not total more than 15 minutes.

  8. Interactivity such as polls, time to search, or other activity should be incorporated into the session.

  9. Project Outcome survey should be distributed at the end of each session.

Best Practices for Teaching Online - Asynchronous

  1. Provide your picture or a short video of yourself so that students can connect your face to your instructional materials.

  2. Clear learning outcomes should be developed for each session.

  3. Provision of short (no longer than 3 minute) videos should be provided for students to watch prior to sessions for background information. These could include videos on how to search a particular database or a tour of the library resources/homepage.

  4. Learning activity should be included. Either a quiz on the video or an interactive course element such as LibWizard tutorial, Google Form, Canvas Module or online worksheet.

  5. Link to Project Outcome survey should be provided at the end of each session.