The OWI’s October professional development (PD) session discussed converting face-to-face courses for hybrid and online courses. The lively conversations in both meetings led to some interesting ideas around hybrid and online course set up. 

Two main ideas came out of PD: consistency and use of modules.

Consistency: We know that students want the same due dates each week. They also want a reliable way to interact with the class. Some suggestions to make the class more consistent are: 

The UWP OWI team has started a podcast to discuss "online writing instruction at UC Davis and beyond"! 

The first episode (embedded here) is just kind of a test (which is why we called it episode "0"), and it's just us reacting to stuff we're seeing in the hybrid course design workshops we're running this quarter. Still, it was a good conversation, so maybe other UWP instructors will find it useful.

In this video, I walk through one method for combining pages and modules in Canvas to improve course navigation. It's designed especially for remote or fully-online instruction. Hopefully, this will help you develop your own approach to laying out your course in ways that encourages student success. 

This is a short video about how I have tried to humanize my landing page in Canvas, and a little about why. This video is designed to complement the "Canvas Landing Page Walk-Through" video because it explains why I have designed the page as I have.

This is a walk-through of my Canvas landing page that uses the "syllabus" feature. This video might be useful for teachers thinking about how to design their landing pages, particularly if they're using the syllabus tool. 

In their research on the common traits of best online and face-to-face classes, Rebecca Glazier and Heidi Skurat Harris found that clarity is a vital component of effective online teaching. Here are some strategies to enhance the clarity of our courses:

The following guidelines cover important aspects for making our courses accessible. “Accessibility” means making our courses usable and welcoming welcoming to all our students. These guidelines are best practices that apply to online, hybrid, and onsite courses.