Hi all,
This is not the greatest platform for sharing, I know, but more than happy to hear your ideas on a good and accessible discussion-style platform (a Facebook Group might suffice?).
Anyhow, I’ll copy Angela’s and Karen’s email responses in this post and any further tips, etc., you might have can be added as comments for the moment.
** From Angela Jones at Murdoch:
Hi All,
My enabling program is already fully online, so we’re in the process of helping our blended program get there. While many people across the the uni sector are pushing to use software like zoom and collaborate, I am urging unit coordinators to keep it simple as they move large amounts of students into the space, then have an iterative approach to bringing in technology depending on how long we’re going to be there. Also bringing in tech that requires a certain bandwidth or hardware can create equity issues for our low ses students. So my advice for everyone who is moving from FTF into this space is breathe and keep it simple whilst moving into, and helping students acculturate to, the space.
I have been designing and delivering in online enabling spaces for about 15 years so if anyone needs any advice, just shoot me an email. Happy to help my fellow enabling educators!
Cheers
Ange
** From Karen McCrae at NAVITAS
Hello Evonne (and everyone!),
A very timely reconnection to have with this group.
At Navitas we are trying to support teachers as much as we can with online teaching. Over the past years we have been providing online teaching training, but now suddenly everyone needs to have these skills.
We have recently curated a number of articles that we had published on our learning and teaching website, and you can access that here: https://learningandteaching-navitas.com/
We have also created a online community on our Moodle space for teachers to access how-to resources and ideas. Of course however, the main issue now is information overload… there’s only so much you can learn in a limited amount of time.
We’re providing online training to, first of all, ‘practice what we preach’ but also to reach as many teachers across our colleges worldwide (with a focus on Australasia) as possible.
Our lessons have not been paused, but they are moving online. Students are being supported by each college’s student services departments at this point, but like us supporting teachers over the next few weeks, students will also need to be supported…
It would be great to hear about your strategies, so that we also support each other as we support teachers. I’m happy to share more ideas if needed by anyone in this network and beyond.
Kind regards,
Karen McRae, SFHEA
onlineenabling 
Thanks Angela and Karen. Great advice and thanks for sharing the link to your resources, Karen.
At UON in general we’ve been advised to create ‘Study from Home’ options for students.
The enabling program I convene is fully online, so I (and my colleagues teaching into the online program) have been providing ad hoc support to our colleagues teaching on-campus courses (we also have a fab central T&L unit, who service the entire university, but are super responsive).
Most of the on-campus staff have opted to provide tutorials and additional support ‘drop-in’ sessions via Collaborate Ultra as this is an embedded tool in our LMS (Blackboard) and many of us have experience with it. Lectures are being dealt with in a variety of ways (some are re-using recordings from 2019, some are recording new lectures via personal capture, others are lucky because they teach across modes and so are copying course content from their online course to their on-campus BB site and modifying accordingly).
Like Ange said, we’re not advising that courses be fully online in the sense that they take into account all of the ‘best practice’ (I hate that phrase) online learning pedagogies: that would be near impossible given time constraints, etc.
I’ve also been doing my best to encourage staff to ‘have a go’ (for instance in Collaborate) and to make their Collaborate rooms available for students to mess about in, before the actual tutorial times, with the strong message that you can’t break anything. I also shared support resources, etc. that we’ve developed over the years to help our online students navigate the tech.
Interesting times navigating all of this while also trying to be socially responsible and socially distance myself (working from home today).
Cheers,
Evonne
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