Snapshot: Remote Teaching and Learning Support
Remote Work
On March 17, 2020, I packed up my workspace and went home to work remotely for the University of California-Los Angeles since the campus closed during winter quarter and everything went online on March 10th. The week between March 10th and the 17th was full of technology training on-campus activities meeting face-to-face with instructors in collaborative triage with various departmental support staff. Two days later, the Mayor of Los Angeles issued the Safer at Home emergency ordinance for the City. I really haven’t had a chance to reflect on all this because there’s always something more important pending. Basically, it feels like warp speed with winter quarter blending into spring quarter and now it’s midterms.
As an instructional designer (ID) for the campus, my workload doubled with assisting all instructors and teaching assistants with their transition to remote instruction during finals week of Winter quarter and preparation for Spring remote in addition to my regularly assigned online course design projects. This entailed providing multiple training opportunities and drop-in consultation on a weekly basis to faculty on how to use Zoom, the learning management system (LMS), and proctor or redesign assessment so that they didn’t require proctoring. I enjoy helping faculty but also feel like this extra burden is part of my civic duty as an educator in times of crisis. I’m grateful to be working now.
Since the UCLA decision to continue teaching remotely through Spring and Summer quarters, my ID cohort continues to plan and provide various workshops on best practices for teaching remotely, including accessibility, and how to be safe and interactive with the web conferencing tool (Zoom). Basically, faculty are learning how to teach remotely as they progress through the course. The previous model of one or two-week intensive preparation to teach online has become an ongoing endeavor for remote teaching—-Training and support have never stopped.
Additionally, our cohort is co-designing new hybrid and fully online courses for future offerings. There are only 5 IDs in our cohort, so we’re stretched thin. There are other IDs and instructional technologists at UCLA within the various departments and academic units that are also addressing the university’s remote teaching and learning needs. I’m sure every department is stretched thin right now, as each academic unit is also giving their own professional development workshops and drop-in consultations.
Faculty and teaching assistants (TAs) have been very thankful for the design, pedagogy, and technology support. It has been a real pleasure to work closely with faculty and graduate student TAs on their weekly instructional tasks and prep for assessments. In particular, I’ve been impressed with elder faculty with less technical skills in their resilience during this crisis and determination in learning new technology. It’s motivating and somehow charming. My background breaking down tasks into discrete units in ID, in addition to my background teaching beginning language development, has aided my ability to make things understandable at the basic level.
Useful Blog Post for Remote Teaching
In closing, I want to share some of my past blog posts on best practices for distance education. I wish you success in your efforts and hope you find some motivation and charm in your daily interactions, as well! Here’s a list of informative posts on online teaching and learning:
Tips for Using Web Conferencing Tools for Remote Teaching;
5 Pitfalls of Online Teaching;
Copyright Issues for Online Courses;
Accessibility Policy for Postsecondary Distance Education – This covers the basics in course design and format that you need to know;
Time-saving Tips for Teaching Online: Part I (Check out Part II, too); and
Online Course Design for Active Learning with the Universal Design for Learning Framework.
Sandra Annette Rogers, Ph.D
Teacherrogers 
I think that it’s so great that your school provides online learning support for the teachers! At my school, we haven’t had that. We were kind of put on the spot to figure out how to teach remotely when quarantine began. As a young teacher, I felt like I was in good shape because I recently graduated college and have a pretty good grasp on instructional technology. Some of my coworkers who have been out of college for a few decades definitely struggled more than me. I can relate to being stretched thin because I found myself helping those coworkers frequently, while trying to complete my own work. I really appreciate all the information, advice, and tools that you share in your blog. I plan to share your blog with my department and supervisor. I think my coworkers will really benefit from your work. I know that I feel more confident about the upcoming school year, after I read a few of your blogs. Once again, thank you for everything!
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To the reader who left a long comment and questions: Thank you for reading and responding to my post. I’ve updated it to make clear that training for remote teaching and learning at our institution did not stop after the first week of transition to remote. The entire campus is providing numerous and varied professional development opportunities at great speed and with increasing quality to the best of our ability. We recognize the difference between remote teaching and online courses and are trying to bridge the gaps as we move forward.
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