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Remote Instruction Support for Faculty

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Please fill out the Ask ITS Contact form or call the IT Service Desk in New York at 212-998-3333 to submit questions or feedback.

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Activities and Tasks

NYU Classes and NYU Blackboard (for those schools who have not yet transitioned) are the principal tools to use for remotely delivering course-related content. We encourage you to use the functionality that is familiar to both you and your students to ease in the submission of work.

NYU Stream can be used to share recorded lessons and presentations, and NYU E-mail and NYU Groups can also be a great way to keep your students informed. Consultations and additional support are always available if you wish to try something new; please view the following guide to help you achieve your pedagogical goals.

Activities and Tasks

Activating your NYU Classes or Blackboard Course Site

NYU Classes is available to the entire NYU Community, and for those who have already transitioned to NYU Classes, if you have not already done so, take this time to set up and publish your course site to make them available to your students as a resource. If you are still using Blackboard to coordinate and communicate resources with your students, and have not yet activated a course site, you will need to contact the IT Service Desk to inquire about activating a new site, or consider setting up a course site in NYU Classes.

Recording lectures for student viewing

Need to record a lecture and make it available to students? Simply recording your lecture via your webcam through NYU Stream can be an effective method of enabling your students to view the lecture outside of class time and prepare for a discussion session, whether in person or asynchronously online. Lectures can be grouped together in playlists created in NYU Stream and posted to NYU Classes (or Blackboard).

If you need your slides presented along with your lecture, consider downloading free software such as Jing (5 minute maximum) for screencasts or Quicktime X (Mac OS) and Sound Recorder (Windows) for audio recordings. Once captured, nearly any audio or video content can then be uploaded and shared through NYU Stream via embed code in NYU Classes or Blackboard.

Need help, or don't want to download anything new? Make an appointment at the Digital Studio where software is available and staff can help get you started.

Additional Support Documentation

Leading asynchronous discussions online

Need to extend the discussion beyond class hours? Using the Blackboard Discussion Board (NYU Classes Forums) will help you keep the conversation going when physically getting together could be a challenge. If you want to bring the discussion closer to your e-mail inbox, consider using NYU Groups. You will need to create a separate group to communicate with your students, but the ease at which the conversation can continue could be well worth the effort.

Additional Support Documentation:

Providing handouts and other materials

Want to provide access to your students to an article or want them review the presentation slides? Uploading resources into NYU Classes, Blackboard, or NYU Docs/Drive could provide the easy solution to share that PDF or Word document with your students. Don't forget to let them know the resource is there and available for them to download or view. See below for information on how to distribute announcements or updates to your students as well to keep them informed.

Additional Support Documentation

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Distributing group updates

Keep your students informed through group announcements to let them know when additional classes are going to be held, or when assignments are due. NYU Classes and Blackboard have built-in announcement features that send e-mails out to your students, but NYU Groups could be a great way to share a common inbox for those important communications.

Additional Support Documentation

Holding virtual office hours

Are your students asking for additional office hours? Consider using one of the built-in group chatting features in NYU Classes (or Blackboard) to have synchronous conversations with your students. Consider setting up private chat rooms for study groups or 1:1s, or allow a more open forum for everyone to view and participate in the discussion. Group chatting (text only) through Google is possible as well for 1:1s or small groups to continue the conversations outside of NYU Classes or Blackboard. NYU Chat conversations are not stored and we recommend you configure iChat, Adium, or Pidgin to connect to NYU Chat if you need to save conversations locally.

Additional Support Documentation

Online papers submissions and collection

Want to make it easier for your students to submit a paper online? Consider using the online submission abilities of the assignment tools in NYU Classes (or Blackboard). Assignments can be available with instructions for your students, due dates to ensure they are submitted on time, and batch downloading for easy reading and grading. Worried about plagiarism? Originality reporting options exist in both NYU Classes and Blackboard through TurnItIn's plagiarism detection as well.

Additional Support Documentation

Online problems sets and quizzes

Want to give a make-up quiz online or problem set for your class? NYU Classes and Blackboard allow you to give online tests and quizzes to your students, either at a specific time or on their own schedule, and with the exception of essay questions, quizzes can be self-graded as well. It is important to follow the Best Practices and Recommendations for Creating/Taking Blackboard Tests, including a practice run for you and your students if you have never done this before. If you wish to give a survey to your students, consider using the NYU Survey Service, powered by Qualtrics, and supported through the Data Services Studio.

Additional Support Documentation

Additional Help & Information

If you can't find the information you need, search the Ask ITS knowledgebase, submit your question via the Ask ITS Contact Form, or call the IT Service Desk at 212-998-3333, open 24x7x365 (click here for contact information at NYU's global sites).

Page last reviewed: January 29, 2013