Digital teaching
This page is a hub for resources and guides on moving your course partially or fully online. Here, we also offer you essential principles to guide your decisions.
Last updated: March 20, 2023, 11:07 a.m.
Teaching online
Deciding on what’s needed in your course should be guided by your course objectives and what you can reasonably expect of your students and yourself. The following are supports to help you with the different tasks necessary to move your entire course or a portion of your course online.
Get started
- Getting started with your online course (video)
- Synchronous and asynchronous learning
- Course design principles for live and online teaching
- Textbooks and other course materials
- Adapting labs and STEM courses to the online environment
- Moving your course meetings online
- Create online lessons and tutorials using the Lightboard Studio
Quickstart guides to technology-supported teaching
The following Online and Remote Teaching and Learning Quickstart Guides contain condensed portions of the CTL's Digital Teaching website.
We have organised the content so that the guides can be used together as rapid primers to help get you started. We strongly encourage using these guides in conjunction with the CTL's Digital teaching website. You can delve more deeply into the content at your own pace and according to your needs as you become more comfortable with the information presented. Begin with the Basic resource guide for introductory information then move on to the Enhanced, Improved, and Engaged guides for more high level support to help improve the planning and delivery of online and remote teaching and learning. The guides include links to complete resources available on the CTL's Digital teaching website.
New tool: Lightboard Studio
Get started creating content using Concordia's new lightboards!
Tool highlights
New studios equipped with a lightboard technology, recording equipment on the SGW and Loyola campuses are ready for use. Faculty and TAs are invited to create tutorials for students using a writeable LED glass surface. It's a great alternative to whiteboards and chalkboards and the work is recorded so it can be added to Moodle allowing students to follow and review course content at their own pace.
Essential principles
It is important that four core principles are respected: adopt Moodle, be accessible, protect privacy and be aware of your intellectual property.
It is essential that all students are able to access their course content in one place consistently. This will minimize confusion for your students. Whatever resources you wish to make available to your students, upload them to Moodle so that your students will easily and securely know where to find them. Moodle also offers many ways for you to maintain connection with your students. We encourage you to consider building in ways for students to engage with you, each other and with course content.
You must add captioning to your videos
It is imperative that we do not exclude any of our students from learning online. If you choose to make videos using other software, we recommend uploading them to Yuja, which will automatically create captions and a transcript for your videos.
Asynchronous Learning
While many students have home internet and a reliable computer, some do not. We encourage you to poll your students to help you decide how to organize your teaching. Creating asynchronous learning opportunities, including a wide range of engagement activities, will minimize their data usage and allow the most flexibility for them while maintaining your teaching presence.
We have worked carefully through privacy issues in creating the supported workflows. If you are recording a live session, please advise your students that they are being recorded and that their image and voice will be recorded unless they take precautions. If they do not wish to have their image or voice recorded, they should be advised to turn their camera off and not speak. Make yourself available for any follow up questions, notably for students who choose not to be recorded. Please see the Concordia University Educational Technology Guidelines for Faculty and Students for full details.
Uploading your videos to Yuja also has the added benefit of allowing you to securely share your videos. Students cannot download the video into a useable video format which protects your IP. Students also do not need any additional software or need to log in elsewhere because it is built into Moodle. Please see the Concordia University Educational Technology Guidelines for Faculty and Students for full details.
Quick tips
You must activate your Zoom enhanced licence before using Zoom for the first time.
Please refer to Running a Live Zoom Session or instructions on setting up a Zoom account for Instructors and TAs.
In some cases faculty have reported delays of several hours when uploading the MP4 video file to YuJa. This includes smaller video files as well as larger files. The Zoom Help Center website indicates that screen sharing recording will require about 20MB of storage an hour while video recording will use an estimated 200MB of storage an hour. These sizes will vary depending on the resolution and types of video or screen sharing content.
If you continue to experience delays when uploading the MP4 video files to YuJa, please email help@concordia.ca. IITS will contact users to help investigate possible delays related to file management and uploading.
Here are some important steps to take when running your virtual classes in Zoom to help prevent Zoom bombing which happens when outsiders enter your class and disrupt it with unwanted behaviours and actions.
1. Always schedule your virtual class meetings in Moodle by using the steps we have outlined in the video and user guide. Do not share your classroom scheduled Zoom meeting links outside of Moodle on social media, keep the links secure at all times.
2. When scheduling your meetings always check to make sure you do not use your Personal Meeting ID. If you use your Personal Meeting ID anyone who has previously used it to access a course meeting or any other meeting will still have access to the ID and can therefore use it to enter other course meetings you have scheduled using that same Personal Meeting ID. If you see this option when scheduling your course meetings in Moodle, make sure it is deselected.
3. We recommend disabling Screen share by participants. Only the host (faculty/TA) can share screen. This is already disabled by default but check your own settings to make sure. See Customising Your Zoom Settings for details.
4. Lock your class after it has started. Tell your students that no one will be allowed to enter after the first few minutes. This will help keep outsiders out! Be sure to remind your students not to be late so they don't get locked out. Consider a 5 or 10 minute grace period at the start of class. Here's how to do it.
Once your class meeting has started select Manage Particpants. This will open the Partipants window.
Select More from the bottom of the Participants window. Then select Lock Meeting.
Select OK to confirm that no new attendees can join the meeting once locked.
5. When scheduling your Zoom classroom meetings be sure to disable these two settings as shown below, Join before host and Waiting room. This will help prevent visitors from entering before you get into your virtual class meeting. These are also turned off by default in the global settings but it is important to check to make sure these are both disabled when you schedule a course meeting in Moodle. See Customising Your Zoom Settings for details on how to access your personal settings in Zoom.
6. You can remove participants that are disrupting the class meeting from the session.
Select Manage Participants to open the participants window.
Select More next to the participants name and then select Remove.
Please see Customising Your Zoom Settings to learn more about how to secure your virtual course meetings.