Contingency Teaching After Superstorm Sandy

One of the challenges that many faculty faced after Superstorm Sandy hit was how to make up for lost class time. Judy Fenster, an Associate Professor and Chair in the School of Social Work, was looking for ways to make up for lost seat time using asynchronous learning tools.

Professor Fenster partnered with us at the Faculty Center for Professional Excellence (FCPE) to provide specialized workshops for the faculty she supervises. The workshops showed faculty how to easily record a video lecture to YouTube or add narration to a PowerPoint and then combine this recorded content with interactive Moodle discussions to create effective lessons.

We led 90-minute workshops on the Garden City, Manhattan and Hauppauge campuses and instructed nearly 80 faculty from the School of Social Work. Faculty had the opportunity to try out these new ways of developing course content that don’t require much additional technical demand. They also explored best practices (especially around privacy) in lecture-recording and PowerPoint narration. The general feedback from the faculty was surprise at how easy it was to incorporate these tools with their teaching. Many faculty also said they would use these strategies in the event of a disruption to their normal teaching schedule.

I will use the information gained mostly to create and post video lectures and narrated PPTs on Moodle, which I will probably do 2-3 times per semester.

Being able to do so is of great value to me and my students, especially in the case of a class canceled due to inclement weather, and also to enhance my in-class lectures.

– Spring 2013 Workshop Participant

If you have a group that is interested in this or another workshop to support your teaching and learning, we would love to partner up with you! Please contact us so we can discuss how to best meet your goals.

Mitchell Kase
Media Lab Manager
Faculty Center for Professional Excellence

 

Thomas Jennings
Media Technologist
Faculty Center for Professional Excellence

This piece is from the Spring 2013 Issue No. 18 of the FCPE Newsletter.