Scheduling Class Activities
When scheduling class activities in a remote learning environment, regardless of your teaching mode, the phrase to remember is “structured flexibility.” Structure helps students keep track of when things are due, and establishes routine when regular life is disrupted. Flexibility allows students the space to fit their work in around life events (yes, there are a lot of those right now) and recover from technical problems or other disruptions.
Regular, repeated patterns and routines
Creating a regular, repeated pattern or routine for students interacting with the course material helps students build confidence that they understand how the class works. Routines help students process the work in manageable chunks, and better connect the students to the class through the regular submission/feedback cycle associated with those deadlines. Students spend less time on administrative overhead (when are things due?) and more time on the learning.
In addition, a regular schedule of activities can help you plan your week to stay up on the work associated with the class and manage your workload.
What does this look like in practice? Consider the following patterns:
- Materials for a new unit are always posted on Friday afternoon
- Assignments are always due at 5:00pm on Thursday
- Monday’s class always starts with a reading quiz
- Papers are due every other Friday
Picking deadlines for activities
Deadlines will generate questions. When we’re teaching remotely that typically means emails. Pick a date and time that you’re willing to be available to answer. Monday morning deadlines mean students who use the weekends to study don’t get answers, or you’re online all weekend to respond.
Include the date, hour and time zone that the assignment is due in any materials. Some students will be in different time zones, and there is no scheduled “class start time.” Canvas will adjust the assignment times based on the student’s profile, so make it clear what time zone you will be using. (Watch out for "midnight" and 12:00 - specify 11:59am, or 11:59pm Pacific Time.)
We also recommend using 11:59pm the previous night instead of noon. Here’s some sample language:
- For assignments that you want to grade on Friday, specify "All assignments for a module are due Thursday at 11:59pm Pacific Time."
- For discussion posts that you want students to respond to, specify "Initial posts are due by 11:59pm Pacific Time, Monday; responses are due by 11:59pm Pacific Time, on Thursday. All other assignments (quizzes, response papers, etc.) are due at 11:59pm Pacific Time, on Thursday.
Scheduling Quizzes and Assignments
When scheduling activities that students will have a limited time to complete, keep in mind that a key reason students take online and hybrid courses is schedule flexibility. This may apply to virtual courses as well, especially given the level of disruptions in everyday life right now.
There are two kinds of time limits that might apply.
- The first is when the activity is available. We recommend making an assignment or quiz available for a minimum of 24 hours, and preferably 48 hours. This provides structure (“you have these two days to do the work”) and flexibility (“It’ll take you four hours to do, but you can do it anytime during these two days”).
- For tests, the other time limit is how much elapsed time students will have to complete the test. In Canvas, this time is measured from the moment they start taking the test, and does not stop if they click on another page, or leave the test and come back. Short/tight limits on this are very problematic, but longer limits can help clarify expectations with students.
Be clear about how long you expect the something to take, so students can make arrangements for connectivity, child care, or whatever other needs they have.