CU Boulder educators made remarkable pivots in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, moving to a remote or hybrid environment and creatively teaching in new ways. Below, we've highlighted some teaching practices that faculty, instructors, graduate teaching assistants (TAs), and graduate part-time instructors (GPTIs) found effective while teaching in the remote and online environment. 

Are you implementing a new and helpful teaching practice in your remote and online courses, or know a colleague who is? Let us know! We'd love to share your ideas with our campus community of faculty, instructors, and graduate students. 

Suzanne Magnanini

Collaborations help hands-on projects move online in wake of remote teaching

Oct. 28, 2020

During a non-remote semester, Magnanini's students engage with materials from CU Libraries' Special Collections and the CU Art Museum. When CU courses abruptly went remote in spring 2020, Italian professor Suzanne Magnanini didn’t skip a beat. As students left campus unsure of how they would complete their course projects without...

Leilani Arthurs

Facilitating field work in a remote geology course

July 31, 2020

For Leilani Arthurs, assistant professor of geological sciences, facilitating her students’ ability to conduct field work in an online environment was a real challenge, but one she was determined to meet. Through use of multiple video and photographic devices, as well as free PTGui software, Arthurs was able to take...

Lau Malaver

Engaging students inclusively through reflection-action-reflection activities

July 10, 2020

Laura “Lau” Malaver, Doctoral Student, Ethnic Studies Over the course of Lau’s teaching career at CU, which spans an MA in Spanish Literature and now a doctoral degree in Ethnic Studies, they have taught a range of courses including Contemporary African American Social Movements, Introduction to Critical Sports Studies, Introduction...

Jocelyn Armes

Using Perusall to engage students directly in text-based course discussions

July 6, 2020

Jocelyn Armes, PhD Student, Music Education, School of Music During the spring semester of 2020, Jocelyn Armes taught Introduction to Student Teaching in the College of Music. An innovative approach that worked both in the in-person class as well as when the campus moved to remote teaching mid-semester was her...

Stephen Sommer

Collaborative course design fosters an inclusive learning environment for students

July 2, 2020

Stephen Sommer, PhD Candidate, Learning Sciences / Human Development, School of Education and Institute of Cognitive Science During Maymester, 2020, Stephen Sommer taught Adolescent Development & Educational Psychology (EDUC 4112/PSYC 4114), a cross-listed course between the School of Education and the Department of Psychology. At the outset of the course,...

Edu Montes Romero

Using diarios for student reflection and formative feedback

July 1, 2020

Eduardo Montes Romero, MA Student, Spanish and Portuguese During the spring semester of 2020, Edu Montes Romero (Spanish and Portuguese) taught SPAN 1150: First Year Intensive Spanish. After teaching the course during previous semesters, Edu was worried that he was not getting enough feedback from his students not only on...

Domes to Home screenshot

Extending the Fiske Planetarium experience beyond Boulder in a remote setting with "Dome to Home"

June 17, 2020

The Fiske Planetarium typically hosts 17,000 K-12 students per year through field trips and 6,000 CU students through course visits. With the closure of campus in mid-March, the Fiske staff pivoted quickly to offer virtual experiences online. Fortunately, the software that projects the images in the planetarium could be used...

Rai Farrelly

Using Flipgrid video introductions to create online community in classrooms

June 11, 2020

Rai Farrelly designed a new approach to creating community online for her Maymester course.

Josh Grochow

Mastery*-based course design allows for flexibility in remote settings

June 11, 2020

Josh Grochow, Ryan Layer, and Lijun Chen re-designed their Algorithms course, CSCI 3104, to a mastery-based format and found a relatively seamless transition to remote learning in Spring 2020.

Harrison Stalvey

Shifting from computational to conceptual assessment questions in MATH 1300

June 4, 2020

Harrison Stalvey designed a new approach to writing exam questions for his Calculus 1 exams during the move to remote learning in Spring 2020 to avoid using a proctoring service.