In Support of Semester-Long Migration to Online Instruction
Date/Time sent: 03/18/2020 4:50 pmDear UH West O‘ahu Instructors,
Thank you for your resilience in the midst of a challenging situation! As you know, President Lassner announced early this afternoon that all ten UH campuses would be moving instruction online for the remainder of the semester. The good news is that our campus is prepared to respond to this task better than any other in the UH System, due to the vast amount of experience that our instructors and students already possess in the realm of distance learning. More than half of our classes were already being delivered through distance modalities this semester and only 12% of UH West O‘ahu students had been enrolled solely in face-to-face classes. Of course, this does not mean that the transition will be easy.
Please know that we have an array of resources and support structures in place to assist you with the conversion of your course format. Some of you have limited experience teaching online, so please know that there are an assortment of options for delivering your course content. For example, it is perfectly acceptable (and probably advisable) for you to deliver course content asynchronously. Even those of you who are seasoned online instructors might have anxiety about converting your courses online mid-semester. As former UH faculty members who have taught online courses before, we truly appreciate the work involved in these types of course conversions.
As a starting point, we ask you all to complete a Remote Teaching Preparedness Survey so we can identify those instructors most acutely in need of immediate technological assistance and resources. We have also developed the following UH West Oʻahu Syllabus Addendum Template (follow link and click on “make a copy” button), which we ask you to use so that our students receive clear and consistent messaging. The Office of Distance Learning’s UH West Oʻahu Faculty/Staff COVID-19 Response Page has a variety of resources available for you to draw from, including a Google form requesting assistance with the video recording and online posting of your live lectures (for those of you who simply don’t know how to begin recording a lecture on your own). The UH System’s Teaching During an Emergency Checklist for Faculty (Google Sheet; log in with your Google@UH credentials) contains resources that will help you develop a viable plan to communicate with and instruct your students during an emergency. The ODL has even developed a UH West Oʻahu Distance Learning Student Resources webpage that you can share with your students. External tools that you might find useful include the ACUE Online Teaching Toolkit and the Student Remote Learning Toolkit.
Finally, please understand that we do not expect your modified courses to be optimal, let alone perfect. Now is not the time to cling to lofty expectations! Instead, this is a moment when we need to help our students (and one another) navigate treacherous waters safely. We appreciate that the mid-semester conversion will include a transition period before instructors and students become comfortable with new and evolving course modalities, practices, assignments, and software tools. Our office wants you to exercise as much flexibility as possible in allowing you to modify your course delivery as you deem appropriate. Let us do our best to reduce our students’ stress levels rather than enflame them. Many thanks to each and every one of you for your dedication to our fulfilling our campus mission!
With sincere appreciation,
Jeffrey Moniz, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Alan Rosenfeld, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs