NMU faculty from both the NMU-AAUP and the NMUFA have stepped up to transition face-to-face courses to provisional distance educational experiences for NMU students. However, according to Matt Smock, the Director of Instructional Design & Technology for the Center for Teaching and Learning, most faculty had a running start before the novel coronavirus shutdown face-to-face classes at NMU. “About 315 instructors are (Distance Qualified,) meaning that they have completed at least the minimum preparation requirements for online teaching. About 80 of those instructors have completed at least Program 1 of the Online Teaching Fellows,” said Smock. He added that over 400 instructors (that includes all people assigned as primary instructor on a course, not just NMU-AAUP faculty) were using EduCat this semester prior to last week.   

While there are no required standards in place, Smock recommends at least posting assignments and lecture slides on EduCat as a minimum standard for these provisional distance ed courses. “I think the most important thing is that courses remain rigorous and interactive. Posting assignments and PowerPoint slides would be a way to accomplish this,” said Smock. He added that Zoom could be a good choice to enable students to interact with each other and the for the instructor to use the lectures they had already planned. In some cases, however, Smock says faculty might want to seek alternate solutions, such as posting recorded lectures and having online discussion forums, or having interactions asynchronously via VoiceThread to better fit the needs of their particular students while still providing a good level of interactivity.  

In addition to Smock’s dedicated staff, faculty members have taken it upon themselves to assist with this transition. Within a few hours of the announcement last week to move content from face-to-face courses online, History Instructor Kathryn Johnson created and shared a document for the History Department to support the online transition. “It contained step-by-step directions for tools most relevant to support the History discipline. I also created a system to pair our eight undergraduate teaching assistants with faculty who need additional assistance,” said Johnson. In addition to helping her fellow faculty members in history, Johnson held a workshop for tutorial assistants last Saturday in conjunction with the CTL. “We are amazingly fortunate to have the infrastructure to help our students transition to online learning on little notice,” said Johnson. 

Associate Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science, Amy Barnsley was also quick to help her colleagues. “I had 6 people from my department attend. I showed them how to use document cameras with Zoom and how to record their synchronous class meetings, upload the recordings and post them to EduCat,” said Barnsley. Stacy Boyer-Davis from the College of Business and Lisa Flood, the Teaching and Learning Scholar for the CTL, have both offered to reach out to faculty who need some extra help as well.