Remote teaching and working

The following guidance is provided to aid staff and students in delivering and accessing learning and teaching materials when off campus. All of the following Technology-Enhanced Learning systems: Blackboard, Blackboard Collaborate, Turnitin and Panopto/Aston Replay are available off-campus from any internet connection and do NOT require any special access requirements. 

Maintaining continuity of teaching and learning

If you need to deliver away from the campus, the University advice is to:

• Consider the student learning experience and aim to adopt the best possible approach for the circumstances.
• As far as is possible, work with systems with which you are comfortable and familiar and that your students are familiar.
• Remember that the key aim is to ensure that students are supported and have the opportunity to meet specified learning outcomes for the module and programme. 
• Simple approaches are often the most effective.

It is worthwhile undertaking a skills audit in your programme teams to ensure that support for using new online tools is available locally.  

For lectures, the University advice is to:

• Republish existing Panopto recordings from the previous year where available. Please refer to the University’s Policy on reusing existing Panopto recordings.
• Increase use of the announcements tool to provide information to your students. 
• Record materials instead of classroom-based lectures. You are encouraged to record small bite-sized chunks that will not only be easier for your students to consume but also easier for you to create. We would suggest that you use Panopto for this purpose. 
• Recording on your own computer.
• Quick tips on creating good content.
• Uploading content you have made using other tools to Panopto.
• Consider use of third-party materials such as linked YouTube videos.

For interactive sessions such as group work, the University advice is to use Blackboard Collaborate to support virtual classrooms. Collaborate has a number of features:.

• Voice chat
• Webcam
• Share a PowerPoint
• Polling
• Breakout rooms for group work

There are currently two versions of Collaborate in use at Aston:

• If you have not used Collaborate before you should use Collaborate Ultra, the newest version. Whilst not as feature-rich it is far easier for first-time users and works more consistently across multiple browsers and devices. It also does not require any specific additional software to be used on a desktop/laptop computer.
   
• More experienced users of Collaborate maybe familiar with, and regularly making use of Collaborate Classic. 
  Whilst we would encourage you to use the system you are most comfortable with, we would also suggest that if you are attempting to use Collaborate with students who have never used either tool, our advice would be to use Ultra..

1.  Help and Support Overview
2. Guidance for Moderators and Presenters
3. Check your computer works with Ultra
4. The Tool Overview 

• Increase the use of discussion boards as a way of promoting continued, two-way communication with your students and peer-to-peer interaction. 
• Using discussion boards in Blackboard.

Requesting TEL Support during the period of Campus closure. In the event of a closed campus, all support requests should be emailed to telsupport@aston.ac.uk.

When making a support request please always include as much information as possible, such as:

• Any related module code
• The system you are having problems with
• Dates and times of any problems
• Screenshots where appropriate. When making screenshots if you can include as much of the screen as possible (including the URL for web-based systems), it will often help us diagnose the problem.

They will make every effort to deal with your query as soon as possible, but peak periods may result in a longer resolution time, particularly when there are significant numbers of off-campus users.