Transforming Activities to Remote Teaching
Transforming face-to-face class activities to remote teaching could be challenging because of the absence of direct social interactions, but with technologies, we can mitigate the physical distance.
We are compiling a list of activities that are commonly adopted in classroom teaching, and provide technological solutions that can help you move to a remoting teaching environment. If you couldn’t find the activities that you use in your class below and would like to transform those to suit remote teaching, please contact us. We will get back to you with more information and share the solutions with the community.
Live small group discussions
If you have a relatively large size class and still want to keep the vibe of small group discussions while teaching remotely, you can create Breakout Rooms in Zoom.
- Scheduling a Zoom meeting,
- Creating Breakout Rooms during a meeting.
For general Zoom information, please visit Keep Teaching website.
You may share Keep Learning website with your students to learn how to attend a Zoom meeting.
Individual presentation
Live individual presentation
During a live Zoom session, students can share their screens to present.
For instructor:
Run a Zoom session as you usually do. For general Zoom information, please visit Keep Teaching website.
For students:
Share Your Screen with the entire class during a live Zoom session.
Recording individual presentation
For instructor:
If you will be the only one reviewing all students’ presentations, you can create an assignment for students to submit their recorded videos.
If you would like all presentations available to the entire class, you can create a discussion for students to post the URLs of their recorded presentations.
For students:
VidGrid is a free academic video service available to students as well. You can use VidGrid to record a presentation and then submit it through Canvas. Below are the instructions:
- Accessing your VidGrid Account
- Recording a video
- Submitting recorded presentation to Canvas Assignments (starts at 01:10), or post to Canvas Discussions
Group Presentation
Live group presentation
During a live Zoom session, to present a group presentation, one of the group members will share his/her screen, and navigate through the PowerPoint slides or other contents, the rest of the team members can take turns to talk.
For instructor:
Run a Zoom session as you usually do. For general Zoom information, please visit the Keep Teaching website.
For students:
Zoom is a free online meeting service available to students too. To make a successful live group presentation, here are the recommendations:
- Working with your group members on the group presentation via Zoom or other channels that your group members have agreed upon;
- Deciding who will be the one navigating through the PowerPoint slides or contents during a Zoom session by sharing his/her screen. The rest of the group will take turns to present;
- Rehearsing at least once as a group to go through the presentation in a student-hosted Zoom session;
- Attending the live Zoom session scheduled by the instructor;
- Presenting as the group has rehearsed (step 3).
Recording a group presentation
For the instructor:
- If you will be the only one reviewing all groups’ presentations, you need to:
- Create groups in Canvas;
- Create a group assignment in Canvas for students to submit their recorded videos. Make sure Website URL is selected in the assignment settings (screen capture is shown below).
- If you would like all presentations available to the entire class, you can create a discussion for students to post the URLs of their recorded group presentations.
For the students:
Option 1
Zoom is a free online meeting service available to students too. To record a group presentation successfully, here are the recommendations:
- Working with your group members on the group presentation via Zoom or other channels that your group members agree upon;
- Deciding who will be the one navigating through the PowerPoint slides or contents during a Zoom session by sharing his/her screen. The rest of the group will take turns to present;
- Rehearsing at least once as a group to go through the presentation in a student-hosted Zoom session;
- Recording the group presentation and saving it to the meeting host’s computer;
- Uploading to the meeting host’s VidGrid account, and then sharing with your group members. For general information regarding Vidgrid, please visit the UNL Academic Video website.
- Submitting recorded presentation to Canvas Assignments (starts at 01:10), or post to Canvas Discussions as a group.
Option 2
If each group member is responsible for creating a video clip, and then combine everyone’s before sending it to the instructor for review, VidGrid is the recommended tool. But students can choose whichever works best for the group. Below is the instruction to complete the aforementioned task by using VidGrid.
- Follow the instructions to access your VidGrid account;
- If this is your first time using VidGrid, you may need to install the VidGrid recorder before you use VidGrid to record a video;
- Group members share the video with a designated group leader, who’s going to combine all videos;
- The group leader combines all videos, and then share the final video with the rest of the group members;
- Depending on the instructor's requirement, the group may submit their video URL individually or as a group.