[Speaker 1] Welcome the purpose of this video is to give faculty at the Bloomberg School a brief overview of contingency policies and procedures for when campus is closed, as well as a few words of experience regarding pivoting a class session from face to face to online delivery. I'm Celine Greene, senior instructional technologist with the Center for Teaching and Learning, and I'm joined by Doctor Ryan Kennedy, associate professor in health behavior in society. Interruptions happen in our day-to-day. We have threats to public safety in the forms of pandemics, blizzards, and other unforeseen events. We have infrastructure and other logistical failures from digital to physical, and sometimes these interruptions mean that we have to temporarily shut down our Baltimore or a satellite campus. This could easily lead to confusion and stress, especially for our students. Thankfully, while the potential anxiety caused by surprise interruptions can't be avoided entirely, there is a way to reduce the impact of campus closure has on our learning. To lessen the anxieties and avoid further disruption, faculty and staff can be prepared to keep teaching and allow students their fundamental right to keep learning. The school's campus closure policy, which will be shared momentarily, has been written in the best interest of our entire community: faculty, students and staff alike. Abiding by the policy, faculty and staff play a large role in the school's preparedness for potential interruptions. This all begins with having a plan, including setting and communicating clear expectations of what to do and where to connect when you can't get to campus. Furthermore, when the campus is actually closed, it is the faculty's continued communications, instruction, ability to be flexible, and awareness and implementation of accessibility best practices that makes the learning happen; makes it really continue. The Bloomberg School policy for instruction upon campus closure is as follows: effective December 2021, the default operating status for when the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health JHSPH Campus is closed is that on site courses will be moved to virtual instruction at the regularly same scheduled time. It is the faculty team's responsibility to manage that virtual session, including its set up and sharing its link. Virtual class sessions and fully online courses should continue as originally scheduled: synchronous, including any LiveTalks, and asynchronous. Despite the campus closures, if faculty cannot accommodate the default operating status, it is the faculty's discretion as to whether and how to modify these defaults for their class sessions. On site courses including blended and hybrid ones with on campus sessions are all expected to be moved to virtual instruction at their regularly scheduled time. This is the default and is what students will come to expect unless there is a clear communication from the faculty stating otherwise. When pivoting to virtual online session, it is the faculty team's responsibility to manage the entire session, including its setup and sharing its link, plus making it accessible. Virtual blended and fully online courses should continue as originally scheduled when campus is closed. However, once again faculty have the right to deviate from this should the need arise for online course sessions who have scheduled LiveTalks despite campus closure. These are supported as usual by multimedia. Faculty will be notified if there's any change to this. Additionally, if faculty must cancel a LiveTalk due to power or other issues, they should let CTL help and their instructional designer know as soon as possible. If faculty cannot accommodate the default operating status to pivot online or continue with the LiveTalk, for instance, illness, family care responsibilities, power outages, or other things that arise on those same days, it is the faculty's discretion as to whether and how to modify these defaults for their class sessions. When it comes to planning for interruptions, faculty are encouraged to prioritize communication with their students. Knowing what to share before, during, and after a pivot due to an unforeseen event, as well as prioritize a Plan B, so to speak, of the learning experience considering the technologies and resources available as well as their potential integration into the learning activities. In the syllabus, perhaps the earliest communication with students, faculty should specify what they expect for and of the students when campus is closed. Where should students look for announcements: email, course site, both? Where will the link for a synchronous online session appear? What are the students' responsibilities if they can't attend? How and when should they notify faculty? Faculty should adhere to that syllabus agreement if possible. Make the announcement. If students are expected to join online, share that meeting link. If faculty must deviate from the plan, communicate the change and be very clear as to what's now expected of students and after any session pivoted to online faculty should share the recordings and transcript in the online library or alternate online space as indicated in that syllabus statement. Faculty should already know the technology and other resources available to them. Their account type is important. Is it a dlicense zoom account that allows for meetings longer than 40 minutes? Can a meeting be recorded straight to the cloud? If it is a large class, will students have staggered synchronous sessions? Faculty are expected to know how to set up a meeting, share its join link, and manage it, including starting live transcriptions and the recording. Options other than synchronous experiences, or perhaps extending them, include sharing prerecorded lectures (in panopto, zoom, voice thread, or even lectures imported from another courseplus class). Site resources can be shared through coursePlus, including files distributed through Microsoft OneDrive. Whatever is decided faculty should respect the students time and purposefully choose activities that will be spent actively learning what is best done synchronously, and what can instead be shifted to an asynchronous activity. When the announcement is made that campus is closed, it's time to take action; time to follow your plan. Create that synchronous class meeting if that's what's happening. Announce the change in delivery format from face to face to online. Facilitate your instruction according to your plan and follow up with communications and resources so that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed and no one is left behind. Campus is closed. The classroom is unavailable. We're moving the class meeting space. If you've opted for a synchronous online session, it's time to set up the new Gathering spot: the zoom meeting. You need to make sure to share its join link following the plan you laid out in the syllabus. Make sure you set up your activities, including zoom polls and breakout rooms if you're using them. Continue to follow your plan. Announce the change in format. Remind students what you expect of them, including what they should do if they can't join. They too could have family care, power or other interruptions. Build in flexibility for them. Share the meeting link and make sure to share accessible media and other files in advance of a live session. If possible, start your synchronous session a bit earlier than the scheduled class time. This gives students a chance to test their connections as well as their audio and video setup. It also allows the water cooler type chit chat that builds community. Don't forget to start recording and turn on live transcription when the class actually starts. Make sure to monitor all in meeting communications from raised hands and chat to even if video is encouraged. Glancing at the students facial expressions be comfortable using technology tools such as zoom polls and breakout rooms. Plus any other third-party accessible online tools you might think of incorporating. When your class meeting time is done, if you've held a synchronous session, make certain to share the accessible recording, including transcripts or captions from the course site. Continue the conversation on the discussion forum and optional second live session or during scheduled office hours. And don't forget to continue to monitor all communications. Now we're going to change gear a bit, and hear some words of experience when it comes to pivoting a face to face class session to an online zoom session. [Speaker 2] Thanks, Celine. This is Ryan Kennedy. I mean like that's Kermit but I, I'm Ryan and I'm talking and Kermit and I have a few things in common. One thing that we maybe have a tendency to have a little panic rise when our plans change. I'm going to talk about some of the things that we can do ahead of time to reduce the the worry or anxiety that might come from this required shift. My first piece of advice is don't panic. We've done this before. We've all been managing zoom sessions now for many, many months. The reminders to click record and turn on live transcriptions? Those are really important and sometimes I forget and so I use post it notes at the bottom of my monitor and after I've clicked record and turned on the live transcription, I just take them off. Third I try, like Celine suggested, to log in early and make sure that everything is set up for my lecture. That reduces a little bit of my worry. The slides if I'm sharing videos, for example, if I've organized some of those polls in zoom and breakout rooms, whatever strategy I have for the class that day, I can get those set up early and also coming in that water cooler talk. It's a great time to engage some of the students, maybe understand where they're at with respect to the last set of lectures. What you might want to pivot in terms of content for that day. It's also helpful to identify some students and maybe even give them a heads up that you might be calling on them later in the lecture. So some general points about lecturing and zoom. Zoom is not a classroom, it's different and in some ways it has some strengths and we can always play to those strengths. Like using it to show movies. You might not be showing Jaws, but you get the idea. It's a great platform to also do some of those polls where you can set up to just really understand where they're at in terms of the last set of learnings, gauging opinions, maybe even how you want the the class could weigh in on what to spend time that day doing. You could poll them and and then pivot from there. The platform, of course when you're delivering a lecture online, if there is the recommendation that we look and think really hard about what or how to break up that content into smaller chunks, so you might in a classroom lecture from 90 minutes straight, and that is not advisable in this format. CTL recommends 10 or 12 minute chunks. It could be less, of course, but ahead of time when you you know that you're going to need to pivot, look at what you're gonna do, what you plan to deliver that day and see where we you might find a natural break and then think about using that time in between so for some of that knowledge integration. So, lecturing online, like I said, it's it's... You can have similar content, but the delivery is going to be different. One of the things I noticed that's really different of course, is the challenge in making sure you understand if the class is with you. You know you don't get all the same cues as the classroom. I really rely on those furrowed brows that I can see in the front row when I'm lecturing in person. A second challenge I find, or just how it's different, is that sometimes I might have a 90 minute or a 60 minute lecture that I would give in class. And if I'm not careful online, I can plow through that in 30 minutes because you're not necessarily having the same sort of natural breaks with students asking questions or conversations naturally evolving, so we can sort of address both those challenges by being really thoughtful and purposeful about what and how we design some of those breaks between the chunks of lecture. Breakout rooms are, again, fantastic in this format. You can have a breakout room that I think can be a lot more functional than sending people to different corners of classroom. You can have those set up ahead of time, or zoom has the function to just randomly assign people to the rooms as well. And again, in the context of trying to make it natural or try and keep the lecture delivery online as similar as you might want to have experienced it in person, you can think about how to encourage some of the discussions with students in class. I mentioned earlier that sometimes I'll let a student know that I might be calling on them, or I might actually in the chat during a lecture, privately message your students say I'm going to ask you about your last assignment, will you share your findings and things like that? And again. You can do some. You can integrate some knowledge about the students and their experiences and what they've been doing for you in terms of assignments to keep that conversation going. So what can you do ahead of time to keep the panic it down and keep the focus on teaching? Develop discussion questions that you can have ready for the start of the lecture. Those are questions that you can ask people to unmute and participate in, or you could rely on discussions in the chat, of course. In zoom I love the polls that we like we've talked about. Having the breakout rooms ready to go sometimes I have a slide with students names and which breakout rooms I want them to go to, and then I just have to set up a certain number of rooms. And then you can be a little bit a little bit more purposeful. Who is going where? And finally, if you are working and delivering a class with the assistance of a teaching assistant or some teaching assistants, be sure ahead of time before the class starts to have a conversation about their comfort with some of these technologies and what and how they might contribute or help pivoting online. They might be a really important strategy with respect to keeping the conversations going in a discussion with class, you might ask them to weigh in after you ask a discussion question just to sort of seed the conversation as well. But finally when you're pivoting, remember to be patient. Be patient with yourself, be patient with the students and your teaching team, and remember you've got this. So know the policy and what and how you're going to navigate that communicate appropriately with your students. What the plan is going to be. Prepare for your session thinking through what and how the delivery might shift if it's delivered online. And be flexible and be kind and don't panic! [Speaker 1] Just breathe. Thanks everybody.