Early Bird

Get Ready for summer classes

When COVID-19 hit, MSU Denver was prepared.

By Jeff Loats, Alex McDaniel and Matt Griswold

April 27, 2020

The Center for Teaching, Learning and Design’s Ready website offers a variety of resources to help instructors transition to remote learning. Those resources, developed by the Instructional Design Group, have been viewed more than 12,000 times; training videos have been watched for over 600 hours; faculty have received over 300 hours of one-on-one support; and well over 300 support requests have been answered.

Now, the Instructional Design Group is offering a new set of resources to support faculty preparing for online summer courses.

Get Ready for summer

Rather than quickly transforming in-person courses to remote learning, summer courses will be online from the start. As remote teaching of in-person courses is different from designing and facilitating effective online courses, the CTLD is offering tailored resources.

Live trainings and workshops

Through May 29, the CTLD is offering extensive support to faculty in creating robust and engaging online courses. Live virtual trainings will cover evidence-based design practices, examples and practice opportunities across 17 topics. Supplementary workshops offer a more hands-on session, focusing on specific tools, techniques and use cases. Each day, there is a morning topic, with the associated training and workshops, and then likewise an afternoon topic.

Instructors can engage with any session and don’t need to attend in any specific order. Those interested should register by following the instructions at the top of the Live Training and Workshop Sessions page. Each session is first-come, first-served, and spots are limited.

Topics include:

1. Accessibility
2. Aligning Assessments, Learning Objectives and Course Materials
3. Assessments
4. Best Practices for Multimedia
5. Building Student Community and Participation
6. Creating Effective Discussions
7. Creating Effective Rubrics
8. Creating Engaging Lectures
9. Creating Project-Based Courses
10. Customizing a Borrowed Course
11. Effective Scaffolding and Chunking
12. Grading in Online Courses
13. Group Work and Collaboration in Online Courses
14. Instructor Presence and Communication in Your Online Course
15. Proctoring in an Online Course
16. Providing Feedback
17. Setting Up an Online Course

Self-help tutorials

The CTLD also offers virtual support hours and nearly 100 self-help tutorials. The tutorials cover a variety of topics such as how to set up group work and collaboration; recording, delivering and uploading lecture videos to Blackboard; and ensuring that content is accessible.

Visit CTLD’s Ready Self-Help Tutorials to learn more.

Virtual support hours and support tickets

Instructors can ask pressing technical questions on the Immediate Support page. In the 10- to 15-minute sessions, instructors can work with the support team on specific questions or concerns. Instructors can also submit requests to the team.

These resources will meet instructors wherever they are and help them create effective, efficient, impactful courses. Please explore these resources and get in touch if you have questions.