Tips for Teaching Remotely

Technology Resources for Working Remotely - This guide provides the CU Boulder campus community with strategies and tools for staying connected to your peers and being productive when away from campus.

Academic Technology Resources for Teaching Continuity - This guide provides instructors and teaching assistants alternative methods and tools to allow continuity of class activities, at a distance, when classroom instruction is disrupted due to an emergency.

Training sessions that are face-to-face or through Zoom about Remote Teaching Using Zoom and Canvas.

Using Zoom to host web conferences with your students

Continuing Ed recommends this headset for recording lectures and Zoom.

How to install VPN (virtual privacy network) to ensure secure connection

If you would like your students to be able to reach you by phone, but prefer not to give out your personal cell number, you can set up a Google Voice Number that will forward to your cell.

Zoom

Remember to schedule your zoom meetings at the same time as your regular class meetings. If you have left the area, remember to select the Colorado time zone.

For students who may not have internet access, please let them know that Comcast is offering internet essentials for free for low income customers for 60 days.

Students may also join a Zoom meeting by phone.

One you schedule your Zoom meeting, send students the link to join the meeting.

Recommend that your students download the zoom app at zoom.us prior to your class time. Although you can usually join a meeting without the app, it may depend on what device you are using.Also suggest they test their audio and video settings etc. ahead of time and get familiar with the interface.

If students don’t have a web cam, they can participate via the chat window.

You can record your Zoom meeting. It will save an mp4 file. You can make this available for students who weren’t able to attend or were having technical issues.

Linked-in tutorials for Zoom are available to you and your students in your portals under CU Resources - Trainings.

Common technical issues:

Zoom often incorrectly automatically selects the wrong audio input/output device, resulting in the user hearing no sound or the sound comes out the wrong device. Solution: open Zoom, go to the settings, and then select the correct/desired audio device like "speakers" or "headphones". You can also set Zoom to "use system default" which then does whatever Mac or Windows is set to, though then its dependent on system settings... Macs are fairly straightforward in System Preferences, Windows can sometimes be a bit tricky depending on the sound "card" in the machine.
If the video/camera does not appear to be working, first make sure any other programs that utilize the camera like Photo Booth, FaceTime, etc. are closed. Restart the computer. You should a little green light near your webcam if the camera is on and working.

“Zoombombing” is a new form of trolling in which a participant uses Zoom’s screensharing feature to interrupt and disrupt meetings and classes.

Here are some tips for guarding against this.

Don’t post Zoom URLs in public spaces. Not twitter, not forums, not open. Share only with meeting attendees.
Use Advanced Settings to ensure that Who can share? Is set to Host Only.
Don’t use a Personal Meeting ID for Zoom meetings. These are easy to find and hack. The default Zoom Meeting IDs are randomized, and difficult to find and hack.
Use Require Meeting Password to be doubly careful. Include the password with the Zoom URL when sending invitations.
Use the Waiting Room feature to control who enters your Zoom.
Use Advanced Settings to disable file transfer.
Lock the meeting after it starts. Look under Participants at the bottom of the Zoom window. You can lock the door here.”

Additionally, here are three sources of guidance and help on this topic:

CU Boulder OIT has tips on Zoom security at this link, under the expandable heading of "Conduct or Record a Lecture with Zoom."
Zoom has a blog post on "How to Keep the Party Crashers from Crashing Your Zoom Event."
The University of Southern California has a concise list of tips on "How to Prevent Zoombombing."

The Learning Design Group (LDG) team of Instructional Designers at Continuing Education have been working on forming a Microsoft Teams group for online instructors. With the rapid transition for many University of Colorado instructors to a remote or online format, we decided to make the group available for instructors who are interested in talking to other instructors, looking for resources to help them during this transition time, have questions, or know of another instructor who would benefit from being part of this group.

Information has been provided by OIT about Microsoft Teams and you can log in through a web browser or download it to your computer. The LDG instructor group is Online Instructor Round Table and you can search for the group in Microsoft Teams or you can email ldg@colorado.edu and ask to be added to the group.

The LDG team has also added information for University of Colorado Boulder instructors who are moving content to a remote or online format on the homepage of the LDG website. We have also added a new page to the LDG website with some basic steps you can take if you are new to the remote or online format.

Microsoft Teams channels help workers engage in day-to-day discussion about work.

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/messaging-collaboration/microsoft-office-365/help/teams

Zoom Conference Calls:

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/conferencing-services/web-conferencing-zoom

Remote instruction guidance:

https://oit.colorado.edu/support/academic-technology-resources-teaching-continuity

Additional university resources:

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/voice-communications/voicemail

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/network-internet-services/vpn

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/messaging-collaboration/microsoft-office-365/help/exchange-online

OIT’s Canvas tutorials:

https://oit.colorado.edu/services/teaching-learning-applications/canvas