A GUIDE during the COVID-19 Situation: for Instructors and Administrators

E-textbooks and idea-sharing websites abound for teachers wanting material and ideas for online classes. LOUIS, the Louisiana Library Network for academic libraries, has spearheaded the statewide collection of "open" textbooks--those which are licensed for use through Creative Commons rather than being restricted by traditional copyright. CC licensure registers a content creator's work but allows it to be more widely available and often with no cost attached.

Affordable Learning LOUISiana

For lower-level resources, try the Community College Consortium for Open Education al Resources.

Or create your own resources and upload them to the OER Commons. It's not exactly peer-reviewed, but it is cataloged.

For a list of only electronic books, choose the limiter "Online Resources" in the "Location" section on the left of the screen.

The term "literacy" is no longer limited to being able to read words on a page. "Digital Information Literacy," the November 2019 Tech Toolbox from ECE, discusses some online and digital uses of the term, which now signifies "the ability to understand or comprehend" something--not only written language but computers, finances, culture, media, and information itself. 

"Students need a lot of practice, and it needs to be real-world practice, not in the fake laboratory of the made-up websites by educators trying to teach website evaluation. It also helps just to have students think, which requires going beyond textbook reading and PowerPoint lecture notes." Jamie Gregory, from the Nov. 6, 2019 blog of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Remote online cheating still a problem? Read this guide, with tech suggestions, from TESTS.

Ten good ideas for creating and maintaining a productive online classroom from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Online cheating is still a problem, plus not working from home and other coronavirus dilemmas, by ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah.

Connect yourself and online students to library materials and resources--use the library.nsula.edu site, especially the LibGuides pages, and consult with a librarian for help and ideas.

The Office of Electronic and Continuing Education (ECE) offers workshops, webinars, and individual training in educational technology, listed each month in Messenger. Take a look at the November 2019 Tech Toolbox, "Digital Information Literacy," and at October's "Being Human in Your Online Courses."

???  "Will the Internet replace the university?" a blogpost from 2009, still pertinent. Consider how NSULA provides these collegiate opportunities:

Classroom-based education. Certainly important.

1. Extracurricular learning. This includes everything from “participating in actual academic research” to “serving on the school newspaper” [and running in the Inferno]
2. Meeting different kinds of [real, not virtual] people. Not only do students get exposed to professors, and an academic way of thinking about problems, but they also meet other students, hopefully from a wide variety of backgrounds.
3. Establishing independence. For many people, going to college is the first time one lives away from home, and begins to establish an identity separate from one’s family.
4. Belonging to a community. From the university itself to numerous smaller subcultures within, college provides an opportunity to belong [with its advantages and, alas, disadvantages] .