• Inclusive social media
• Accessibility hub: COVID-19 response
• Accessible education training for instructional staff
  • E-learning section
• Accessible digital content training guidebook
• Accessible campus teaching tips
• Learning portal AODA resources
• How to develop digital materials with accessibility
• Make your presentations and documents accessible
• Remote teaching and captions at McMaster
• Review student’s accommodations who have registered with student accessibility services and implement their individual requests

Chart adopted from: Morga, Michelle. (2022) Accessibility in Higher Education: Considerations and Strategies During COVID-19 / EDUCAUSE Online Course

Adopted from Accessibility in Higher Education: Considerations and Strategies During COVID-19 (YouTube video)

• Copyright office
• Fair dealing

An in-classroom learning component with an assigned physical classroom (some time may be in a classroom space).

In-Person

• Consider backup options for any planned in-person activities if increased public health restrictions are imposed.
• Recommended to plan lectures virtually or online while offering in-person activities that foster student engagement.
• Cohorts: instructors could choose among random assignment of in-class attendance, student sign-up for in-class attendance, or rotating schedules of in-class attendance which can be aligned with mosaic sectioning.
• Consider the modes of blended learning.

Hybrid Options

• Students unable to attend in-person lectures/activities must either be supplemented with a synchronous broadcast during the class time or separately recorded instruction.
• Synchronous broadcasting technology requirements should be considered:
  • Provided classroom technology directory
  • Ensure capture of non-lecture components (discussions, activities) and captioning of the recordings
  • Enable virtual student’s participation

Recommended Technologies

• Assistive technologies
• Recommended technologies for blended learning
• Campus classroom technologies

Campus Classroom Technologies

• Responsible for the design, installation, and ongoing support of audio-visual equipment in all Registrar-controlled classrooms.

Blended learning is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with some elements of student control over time, place, path, or place.

• Flipped Classroom
  • Students learn the main course content online at home, while in class, the teacher puts more of a focus on applying the newly acquired knowledge through activities.
• Flex
  • Students spend most of their time learning online. However, teachers are also on-site to work with students, lead small-group work, and provide help as needed.
• HyFlex
  • An approach to teaching that combines both face-to-face and online learning. Students are offered the flexibility of switching between attending their lectures online or in-person whenever they wish to do so. Each lesson/lab/activity is offered in person, as well as being offered synchronously and asynchronously online.
• Enriched
  • This learning model allows students to complete the majority of their course work outside of the classroom, but students still have to go in-person for required face-to-face learning time with the teacher.
• Rotation
  • Rotational learning is a model where students in an in-person class rotate between multiple different learning activities, where at least one station is online.
  • Station Rotation
    • Students in a classroom rotate between stations on the same schedule, prompted by their teacher or a timer.
  • Lab Rotation
    • This rotation model is similar to station rotation, however, during the online portion of the rotations, the students go to a computer lab to complete their activity.
  • Individual Rotation
    • Each student’s daily schedule is set ahead of time, allowing each student to participate in the rotation stations that suit their learning style and needs.

Considerations

• Synchronous components: facilitate student-student and student-instructor interaction and build course community
• Asynchronous components: course activities that benefit from students taking time to carefully consider and analyze content and engage in constructive exchanges

Choosing The Right Blend

• Backwards course design: Start by articulating exactly what you want students to do, know, or feel by the end of the course. Then work backwards to select the content and activities that will support them with assessments that are a direct measure of their achievement.
• Choose between modes of communication based on the purpose of the information;
• Content-related: asking and answering content-related questions, sharing of information, expressing an idea or thought.
• Planning-related: plan work, allocate tasks, coordinate joint efforts, review drafts, negotiate and resolve conflicts.
• Socially-related: express companionship, emotional support, or advise, provide support when problems arise, talking about things other than class work.

Choose between modes of delivery through the tool finder

Learning that is designed for the online environment that may include synchronous and/or asynchronous components.

Synchronous Learning
Synchronous (Virtual) learning is any activity that happens live in real-time, in an online environment. The virtual sessions are often delivered using conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Instructors lead a live teaching component (e.g., lecture, tutorial, or lab) using the conferencing tool with questions and discussions in a very similar way to the in-person classroom experience. Use synchronous activities to facilitate student-student and student-instructor interaction and build course community.

Asynchronous Learning
Asynchronous learning is all the other activities in a course that students can complete online, in a self-paced manner, on their own time. Learning occurs in a completely asynchronous, self-paced manner with instructors guiding students through the learning. Use asynchronous learning for course activities that benefit from students taking time to carefully consider and analyze content and engage in constructive exchanges.

Considerations

• Online Design
  • Universal design for learning (UDL)
  • User experience design for learning (UXDL)
  • McMaster brand guidelines
  • Copyright office
• Ensuring Student Access to Materials
  • MacVideo
  • Echo360
    • Image & text instructions
    • Video instructions
  • University library licenses and e-reserves
• Assessments
  • Alternate assessments
  • Tests and exams in Avenue To Learn (PDF)
• Online Student Feedback
  • Learning object repository
  • Collecting student feedback at the end of the term (PDF)
  • Collecting feedback through Microsoft Forms and Avenue To Learn