Getting Started with Online Teaching

1. Request a Zoom Account

Follow the instructions for setting up a zoom account here. If you have any questions contact IT Help.

2. Check out the Faculty Moodle Guide for guided videos and resources on course building in Moodle.

3. If you have content from a previous course, you can copy it over by following the instructions here.

4. Setting up your course

• Add a course outline to your course. It is university policy that all courses must provide a course outline to students by or before the first day of class. Course outline templates are found in the Course Outline Manager. Log in with your webmail password.
• You can also find a link to the Course Outline Manager from myEC under “My Applications”. This PDF offers instructions about using the Course Outline Manager.
• Organize the first section of your course. In the top section include your course outline, zoom link, and your contact info. You can see an example below.

1. Student enrollment

• Students will be automatically enrolled in your course as soon as they register, but they will not appear in the course’s Participants list until they log into Moodle at courses.ecuad.ca.
• To encourage them to log in, you can email all registered students a few days before the start of your class: find email addresses on myec.ecuad.ca under My Class Information. Feel free to customize this email template for your class and students.

2. Supporting Waitlisted Students

• Waitlisted students have NOT enrolled in the course automatically. You will need to enroll them manually if you want to make the course available to them before the class starts. This short video demonstrates how to manually enroll students in Moodle.

3. Start of Term Message

• It is helpful to contact your full class via email a few days prior to your course start date to let them know when and how to access the course site. This email template is one you can use or adapt for your particular course needs.

• Use the announcements forum or Quickmail block to communicate with students.

• Participate in online discussion forums. You do not need to respond to each student but, instructor comments and contributions encourage students to engage. You can find more resources on student engagement here.

• Hold office hours weekly. You can use the scheduler in Moodle to facilitate office hour bookings and meetings.

• Use Zoom for synchronous class meetings/lectures. You can record meetings to the Zoom cloud and share them with your students.

• Provide feedback to your students. You can use audio, video, or text to provide feedback to your students with the assignment module in Moodle.

• Stay up to date with the Academic Calendar for the mid-term grading deadline.

• Check out the bi-weekly TLC update that goes out to all instructors via e-mail. The update contains announcements about upcoming workshops and events at the TLC as well as links to other teaching and learning resources.

Tips for managing your cohort

Before the course goes live: Check that all the students who are registered in your course (see your class list on MyEC) matches those listed in your ‘Participants” list on Moodle. If students are not listed, they will not be able to access your course.

Managing the Add/Drop period: To make it obvious that students have entered your Moodle course, ask them to make themselves known through an “introductions forum” by a specified time. Specify that this info will be used to gauge their attendance for the add/drop period. An introduction forum is also a good way for students to see who else is in their class and to build a sense of community in the online learning space.

Problems and Troubleshooting

At the top of your Moodle page, provide a “problems and troubleshooting” forum for students to raise issues and problems. Make sure this forum is set up as “forced” so that everyone receives these messages through their email as well. This helps identify common problems and centralizes communication so that you don’t have to respond to each individual query.

If you are new to online teaching or are looking for fresh ideas, the resources below offer some ideas about how to create successful and engaging online learning environments:

The key to teaching online? Rapport. This webinar with online educator-researchers Heidi Skurat Harris and Rebecca Glazier discusses best practices to help you build rapport and improve communication in your online courses.

8 Lessons Learned from Teaching Online This 4-minute video quickly and succinctly outlines some of the key considerations when teaching online

Keeping Students Engaged in a Transition to Online Learning 
This 1-hour webinar, which aired on March 20, 2020, puts the focus on student engagement in the shift to online learning.

Culture Shock: Teaching Online in a Pinch
 This links to a self-paced online module that you can do in about 4 hours to help you determine how to transition an existing course to an online format.

Finally, the book Small Teaching Online (2019) by Flower Darby and James Lang is available as an ebook through Emily Carr’s Library.

There are also several resources on LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) that are free for Emily Carr faculty to access. You will need to log in to LinkedIn Learning through the ECU Library before clicking any of the links below.

Learning to Teach Online

Teaching with Technology

Teaching Technical Skills Through Video


Teaching Online: Synchronous Classes