SCC Faculty Knowledge BaseAcademicOnline ServicesGetting StartedMoving to Remote Instruction: Day One Strategies

Moving to Remote Instruction: Day One Strategies

When switching a face-to-face class to remote instruction, communication is key, and that starts from the first day. If you are moving a face-to-face class to remote instruction, keep your students informed how it will proceed from the start. Here are some tips and examples:

Email

Send out a Day 1 email as soon as you know you will be moving your instruction online. This email should be friendly and reassuring. Keep in mind that your students will be likely even more nervous than you about how to proceed. You might start an email like this:

Hi students!

As you may have heard, our class will no longer be meeting face-to-face, but it is not canceled! Instead, we will be using Moodle as our classroom. please go there for all future notifications, updates, assignments and grades. I have already activated our class in Moodle and have posted your assignments there for this week.

To find our class, log in to mySCC and click the Moodle at the top of the mySCC home page. You should then see our class name listed as ________________ when you filter courses on your Moodle course dashboard by classes "in-progress."

After you click on our class, you'll see I've already posted ____________, _____________, and ____________ for you to view. Be sure and start with _____________.

Moodle

In Moodle, create an introductory section with important course information. In this section we suggest that on the first day you have posted, at minimum:

  • Your syllabus
  • A "getting started" page that explains how the course will proceed in Moodle. This can be a living document that changes as the course develops, but be sure to notify students as you update it!
  • Set up a forum specifically for students to talk together and ask each other questions. There will likely be many at first, so encourage them to help each other!
  • A message in your announcements forum welcoming students to the class. Keep in mind that announcements in this forum are forwarded by Moodle to student email accounts, so if you've already explained a lot to students in an email you don't need to go back over all that information. Instead, just welcome them, encourage them to look around the class and tell them what they should do first (especially if you've posted an assignment). This could start something like:

Welcome to ____________________ in Moodle everyone!

You've found our new classroom. I hope you like it. Be sure to look around and get comfortable. Click on Links. Try things out. At the same time, be sure to review the information I've posted already, including your course syllabus, a "Getting Started" page and your first assignment. If you haven't already done so, take the "Moodle 101 Tutorial" you'll see in the Academic Support Links box on the right side of the class. This tutorial will help anyone who is new to Moodle get used to how this all works.

If you have any questions, send me a Moodle message or send me an email at ___________________. You can also get technical support from [Educational Technology Specialist contact info] or [mySCC/email specialist contact info].

I know this is new to everyone, so lets all do our best to help each other! To help with that, I've set up a "Class Questions" forum for you to ask for help from other students. I'll also be checking in there from time to time to see if anyone is really getting stuck.