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Teaching in All Modalities

Transitioning to In-Person Teaching

Supporting Learning When Students Can’t Make It To Class

Whether for travel, quarantine, or illness, students may need to be absent from in-person learning. This resource provides strategies on how to provide continuity during absences. 

Transition to In-Person Teaching

In preparation for the transition to more in-person teaching, this resource encourages you to reflect back on your pandemic teaching experiences and identify what you plan to carry forward.

Teaching in Flexible Learning Spaces

Flexible learning spaces encourage adaptable pedagogies and approaches to teaching and learning. While these spaces may vary in nature, this resource offers some best practices that can be applied regardless of space.

Tips for Teaching in a Masked Environment

Teaching while you and your students are masked can require creative solutions. To help address these challenges, we’ve compiled a series of tips as well as resources from peer institutions. 

From Online to Face-to-Face–Keeping What Works

Strategies for translating online teaching practices that promote student engagement into the face-to-face classroom, and suggested Columbia-supported tools to engage all of your students as you return to in-person teaching and learning.

Designing Assignments for Learning

The rapid shift to remote teaching and learning meant that many instructors reimagined their assessment practices. This resource distills the elements of assignment design that are important to carry forward as we continue to seek better ways of assessing learning and build on our innovative assignment designs.

Five Tips for Engaged Lecturing

Designing a class session is about planning experiences that maximize student learning. The following five tips emphasize the importance of keeping the focus on the students’ experience and what they should be doing during a lecture.

Learning Through Discussion

Key considerations in class discussions and strategies for how instructors can prepare and engage in effective classroom discussions.

Reflecting On Your Experiences with Remote Teaching: Making Meaning of Pandemic Teaching

Whether you are seeking to recover the joy of teaching after an online pivot during the pandemic, be a better online teacher, be more responsive to student needs, prevent teaching burnout, or plan ahead to teach an in-person, hybrid, or fully online course, it can be important to hit pause.

Teaching Large Courses Effectively and Efficiently

How do you maximize student learning, uphold academic integrity, and manage grading loads in a large course? The four strategies in this resource address these questions and highlight the importance of purposeful course design in which instructors can effectively support student learning.

Tips for Recording Classes in All Learning Spaces

This resource highlights potential benefits and considerations for recording classes. 

For additional resources, see Resources and Guides section 

Hybrid/HyFlex Teaching Strategies

Five Tips for Hybrid/HyFlex Teaching with All Learners in Mind

Five tips for instructors who are teaching hybrid/HyFlex courses where the majority of students will be participating in face-to-face (synchronous) class sessions while a few students will be joining remotely.

Hybrid/HyFlex Teaching & Learning

What is HyFlex? How does it work? What are some strategies for getting started? This guide helps instructors answer these questions by providing an overview and practical strategies for setting up HyFlex activities.

Supporting Hybrid/HyFlex Courses: A Resource for Course and Teaching Assistants

This resource provides an overview of HyFlex support approaches and resources that is meant to supplement training provided in your departments and schools.

Community Building in the Classroom

This research-informed guide provides strategies for building community in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.

Online Teaching Strategies

Accessibility in Teaching and Learning

“Getting started” strategies for making learning resources, tools, experiences, and opportunities accessible to all learners. 

Active Learning for Your Online Classroom: Five Strategies Using Zoom

Simple strategies that combine active learning principles with online tools to promote student access and engagement with content, facilitate sharing of ideas, and encourage reflection on learning.

Adapting Your Face-to-Face Course to a Fully Online Course: A Guide

Suggestions for adapting the design of a face-to-face course by focusing on online capabilities, the intentional integration of technology, and emphasizing learner-centered and inclusive practices.

Asynchronous Learning Across Time Zones

Tips for setting up an online course that gives students and instructors the flexibility to engage with course material, activities, and each other from anywhere and at any time.

Collaborative Learning

Introduces the benefits of collaborative learning, highlights some strategies for effective collaborative learning, and overviews some of the Columbia-supported tools to facilitate collaborative learning.

Graduate Student TAs: Adapting Your Teaching

Resources that graduate student instructors can draw on to stay connected to students and maintain learning in classes in which they are acting as Teaching Assistants. 

Inclusive Teaching and Learning Online

Strategies for inclusive teaching online structured around the five principles of inclusive teaching as outlined in the Guide for Inclusive Teaching at Columbia.

Maximizing Student Learning

This resource provides strategies to be a successful online student, including tools to help implement these strategies.

Planning for Online Lab Sessions

Suggestions for considering the role of lab sessions in your students’ learning, along with specific tactics and resources you can employ to help provide meaningful online lab sessions. 

Seven Strategies for Success in Six-Week Immersive Courses

 This resource distills the seven most impactful strategies to employ when designing an immersive course.

Working with TAs Online

Teaching Assistants can be invaluable partners for faculty and other course instructors. This page offers recommendations and considerations for faculty who are working with TAs to run courses online.

Teaching with Technology

Enhance your Course Discussion Boards for Learning: Three Strategies Using Ed Discussion

Three learner-centered strategies using Ed Discussion to enhance the ways students make use of the discussion board to learn in your course.

Creating Online Exams

An overview of CourseWorks tools, options, and settings that can help implement exams efficiently and fairly and make the exam experience positive for both instructors and students.

Video Production Best Practices

Advice for video set up, recording, editing and publishing, including technical considerations for creating active and engaging classroom experiences using video.

Creating Assignments and Grading Online with Gradescope

This page guides instructors through creating assignments and grading online with Gradescope, a tool designed to streamline and standardize the grading of paper-based, digital, and coding assignments.

Virtual Office Hours

An overview of Zoom and CourseWorks Conferences (BigBlueButton) capabilities for online office hours.

Grading at Columbia: Tips and Strategies using CourseWorks (Canvas) and Gradescope

This resource is structured by common grading needs and provides “how to” details using CourseWorks (Canvas) and Gradescope.

Tools for Teaching Online

Teaching with Zoom

Guidelines for establishing a Zoom account, scheduling class sessions, hosting a class, taking attendance, and additional tools in Zoom. See also Security and Privacy in Zoom.

Teaching with Panopto

Guidelines on how to use Panopto to securely host a variety of media to share with students, including uploading and recording video. This CourseWorks-integrated tool supports in-video quizzes, video editing, screen captures, and more.

Teaching with CourseWorks

How to set up discussions, take attendance, create and grade assignments, and create online exams and quizzes using CourseWorks, Columbia’s online learning management system.

Help and Workshops 

Hybrid & Online Teaching Institute: Adapt Your Course to a Flexible Format

A new online offering that guides instructors through adapting their courses from face-to-face to online or hybrid formats.

Supporting Hybrid & Online Learning and Teaching

A self-paced course designed to help Columbia graduate student instructors in support roles develop effective teaching practices in online and hybrid courses.

Get Help

Get remote one-on-one support from CTL staff.