AAUSC

This is such a great use of this forum, thanks Carl!

Penn State told us *yesterday* to be prepared to deliver classes online starting on Monday with a potential return date to in-class instruction of April 4th. We were told to hold synchronous class periods, using Zoom on Canvas. This of course has many issues, not the least of which being the fact that PSU seems to be taking for granted that students will have unfettered access. BUT they have said to "be flexible" (?)

We have come up with a plan for FR 1-2-3:  class will be a combo of Voicethread presentations that we are taking turns creating, threaded discussions, Zoom break-outs, and online assessments. Not ideal but manageable. 

Thank you, Carl, for setting up this forum and for the earlier link. (We are on break this week at U.Va. and just got the word yesterday that classes are suspended for the first three days of next week, then resume next Thursday online.) Quite a challenge, but in languages, we're fortunately already comfortable using plenty of online resources in our in-person classes. We have Zoom embedded as a tool in Collab, our LMS. Most of us have used Zoom, but haven't done so for teaching purposes until now.  Lots of training in Zoom features being offered at the last minute as we scramble to adapt our courses and to guide our TAs. I'll post more info from our end as available. I look forward to learning what others are doing and what the biggest obstacles turn out to be.

At the University at Buffalo, SUNY we were told yesterday that we will go to online teaching at the end of our 1-week Spring Break (March 23) for the rest of the semester.  Our Center for Educational Innovation is creating multiple last minute sessions to train faculty to use Panopto (screen capture and video creation) and WebEx starting today and throughout the break week.   We use Blackboard so we will be integrating Panopto videos within Blackboard.  Our problem has been that our language TAs and adjuncts are not considered "faculty" so they did not have permission to use Panopto.  After a week of trying, we finally got notification that our CIO has to approve our request to have our FL instructors get access to Panopto and try to get training during their Spring Break. 

The other issue for us right now is how to push assessments.  Our university uses Respondus 4.0 in conjunction with Blackboard but it only works on PCs.   Most of our instructors, myself included, have Macs.  

All the language chairs and some language coordinators from across campus met this afternoon to work together through this new situation and the question had been posted as to what other coordinators in similar situations are doing.  I would love to hear more. 

I oversee French, Spanish and Italian with a total of 31 TAs and adjuncts, some of whom are excellent, others good with technology and then the ones who cannot be near the word.    We also have 2 instructors of Native American languages who live in tribal reservations with minimal to non-existent internet access.    What are others doing?