College has previously over-relied upon a face-to-face or a tech-light blended approach to teaching.  Our staff and students are largely inexperienced in designing, delivering and participating in fully online activities.

Moodle has been used primarily as a repository for resources.  This has resulted in a lack of active learning activities, which may be partly offset by classroom-based interactivity.  The same approach is not appropriate in fully online teaching & learning.

The success of the Lecture Recording project shows that by looking at a problem, such as the accessibility of lectures for a particular group of students, through a ‘digital lens’ and asking “How can technology help solve this problem?” we can improve the learning experience for all students.

Persistent labelling of students as ‘Digital Natives’; there is no such thing and the term is both divisive and outdated.  Broad generalisations about ‘digital skills and wills’ only make it more difficult for students to succeed as we move to a fully online teaching and learning approach.

The move to fully online teaching & learning has resulted in additional pressures, not only on internet bandwidth, but upon College-supported web services (e.g., MS Teams) and unsupported freeware (e.g., Zoom).

Identify what must your students achieve in the next few weeks.

• What should your students do to succeed?
• What do your students need to succeed?
• What can you do in support of your students?

Teaching online is very different from what students are used to in face-to-face or lightly blended teaching. 

Scaffolding, in the form of clear and accessible communication is crucial.

• Be explicit in your instructions to students.  Tell them what is required of them, both in the move to remote teaching & learning, and for every activity that is undertaken online.
• Provide clear guidance on what you are going to do, the tools you intend to use, what you expect from your students, and what they can expect from you.
• Encourage the more able to support those who need to further develop their digital skills.
• Use a tried and trusted online teaching approach, such as Gilly Salmon’s Five Stage Model.

Where possible, use locally-available and largely trusted College services.

• Moodle, Turnitin and RePlay remain key to the next few weeks.
• Staff and students already know how to access and use these services.
• There is campus-wide expertise in using these services, in addition to dedicated support.
• Try to maintain usual seminar/workshop times.

Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, what its possibilities are. 

You need to use the services and approaches that are most appropriate to your students.

• Find out if your students have the digital skills, a safe space, hardware, software and bandwidth (actual and virtual) to engage with the activities you require them to complete.
• Learn about and consider each online teaching tool/service available to you and your students.
• Consider how each of your face-to-face teaching and learning activities can be best replicated online.
• Identify the best tool for each of your online teaching and learning activities.
• Consider the benefits and challenges offered by synchronous and asynchronous teaching & learning activities.
• Avoid over-reliance on MS Teams and synchronous teaching; use a blend of asynchronous video and discussion fora and augment this with short live sessions on MS Teams

Adaptation can refer to both taking advantage of new technologies and adapting existing activities so that they work better online.

• An example of adapting teaching & learning is to adopt a new technology, such as the well-supported albeit nascent MS Teams service, to replace classroom-based seminars; thereby adapting the environment in which the seminar takes place.
• An example of adapting an activity is recording lectures using RePlay/Panopto to replace face-to-face teaching, and requiring students to engage with the content it a time of their choosing rather than at the scheduled time.

1. RePlay/Panopto can be used to pre-record lectures.  Like all RePlay content, pre-recorded lectures are streamed via Moodle.  This maintains IP rights while providing learners with ease-of-access.
2. RePlay/Panopto can be used to record lectures live, while also recording them for review and revision.
3. Alternatively, PowerPoint slides can be enhanced with voiceover and then uploaded to RePlay.
4. Some colleagues already use screen capture technology, such as Camtasia, and such content should also be uploaded to RePlay.

1. RePlay/Panopto can be used to record lectures live or pre-record them.  Discussion points and quizzes can be added to the recordings to provide interactivity.
2. TurningPoint polls can be used to test knowledge, understanding, application and synthesis of material in both real-time and self-paced modes.

1. For in-depth discussions, use the rich features of Moodle Forums.
2. For off-the-cuff conversations, it is possible to use Moodle Chat.
3. We have accelerated the rollout of the MS Teams service in support of online, collaborative sessions.

1. For synchronous conversations, add a Moodle Chat tool to your course. This is a lightweight and therefore simple text-only communication tool in Moodle.
2. Moodle Chats can be scheduled for specific and recurring times.
3. For asynchronous conversations, Moodle messaging is already well used.
4. MS Teams can be used for one-to-one meetings.

1. Moodle has a powerful quiz tool which currently provides over 400 modules with over 2500 online tests.
2. TurningPoint Mobile can be used to deliver tests to logged-in learners.

1. RePlay/Panopto supports the uploading of student presentations.  This is achieved through the use of Assignment folders which provide protected access to recordings. 
2. Audio-enhanced Powerpoint presentations can be uploaded for assessment in the same way

These are established practices at Royal Holloway and this blog post descibes the activity.