A Checklist for Teaching Remotely
Basic Steps
The first two toggle items immediately below contain the basic steps for teaching remotely. Follow these steps to get started.
Basic: Set Up Your Canvas Course
Create Your Course
- To create your Canvas course site, go to courses.uchicago.edu and click on the Create Your Course Site Now button.
- When you receive confirmation that your Canvas site has been created, you can click on the link to go to your Canvas site.
Create Your Syllabus
- Go to Syllabus in the course navigation menu and enter your syllabus. See: How do I edit the Syllabus description in a course?
Upload and Organize Your Files
- Add your course files to your course site.
- Consider organizing your files into Modules to deliver them to your students. See: Organizing Your Canvas Course Site | How do I add a module?
- You can upload files in bulk, then add them to Modules. See: How do I bulk upload files to a course?
Communicate with Students
- Go to Announcements in your course navigation menu to create an Announcement that will go out to all students in your course. See: How do I add an announcement in a course?
Assess and Grade Student Work
- Add Assignments to your course that you can collect online. See: How do I create an online assignment?
- Assess student submissions using Canvas’ built-in SpeedGrader tool. See: How do I use SpeedGrader?
Basic: Hold Your Course Synchronously with Zoom
You can use Zoom to hold your course synchronously.* More information on Zoom will be forthcoming.
*Zoom accounts for Spring 2020 instructors will be provisioned before the start of the quarter.
Advanced Steps
The two toggle items below offer more advanced steps that you may wish to employ to enhance your remote teaching. For more in-depth information on pedagogy, see also our Effective Practices for Teaching Remotely.
Advanced: Create Engagement in an Online Course
Asynchronous Engagement
- Create a Canvas Discussion and allow students to comment on your discussion prompt. See: How do I create a discussion as an instructor?
- Create group assignments in Canvas to foster collaboration among your students. See: How do I assign an assignment to a course group?
- Enable Peer Review on Canvas Assignments to allow students to assess one another’s work. See: How do I create a peer review assignment?
- Students can work collaboratively in a Google Doc with Canvas Collaborations. See: How do I create a Google Docs collaboration as an instructor?
- You can also create Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. outside Canvas Collaborations using the UChicago Google Suite for collaborative work. See: Teaching Tools
Synchronous Engagement
- Use Canvas Conferences to hold virtual office hours quickly and easily. See: How do I create a conference in a course?
- Use Canvas Chat to converse synchronously with students. See: How do I use Chat as an instructor?
Advanced: Record Asynchronous Content with Panopto
Get Started with Panopto
- Create your Panopto account by logging into uchicago.hosted.panopto.com with your CNetID and password.
- Download and install the Panopto recorder app. Windows | Mac
- Make sure you are in a quiet place and wearing headphones.
Record Yourself
- In Panopto, choose Create → Record a New Session and open the Panopto recorder app when prompted.
- Choose the correct folder to record in from the drop-down menu at the top.
- Choose the camera and microphone. For a basic “talking head” video, this will be your webcam and either the computer microphone or an attached external microphone.
- If you wish to include a PowerPoint presentation or capture your screen, select the appropriate option under Secondary Sources.
- Click the red Record button to begin recording. Click it again to stop the recording.
- See further: Use Panopto to Record a Video
Put Your Panopto Video in Canvas
- You can embed your Panopto video in a content page, assignment prompt, etc. using the Rich Content Editor, and/or link to your video in a Module using the External Tool function. See: Manage Your Panopto Video Content and Add It to Canvas