Continuity of Instruction
Updates to Resources (Jan. 7, 2025)
The tools and strategies described here can minimize the effects of times when instructors cannot meet with their students during regularly scheduled class times.
- Instructors can use Blackboard to make instructional content available to students at any time, for any type of course delivery – face-to-face, blended, and distance learning/online sections.
- Every course at UofL has a Blackboard course shell that is automatically populated with all enrolled students for that course.
- It is strongly recommended that instructors use Blackboard if they need to temporarily suspend face-to-face classes, or when circumstances force closure of a building, etc.
- If the university administration announces a cancellation of classes and closed offices (holidays or severe weather events), instructors may not require virtual interaction from students.
- It is a long-standing requirement that a course syllabus must be developed by each instructional faculty and uploaded to Blackboard at the beginning of classes. At the start of the course, recommend that students download the syllabus.
- Let students know of your plans for continuing instruction and communication in the event of disaster, extended illness/isolation, or significant interruption.
- Remind students regularly about the importance of keeping backup electronic copies of their assignments.
- Since online courses are at a distance, the expectation is they will continue as planned.
- Note: Instructors teaching online courses should delay assignments that are due when the university is closed.
Resources
Available ways to address communication with students.
Blackboard Announcements
Announcement is a tool available in every Blackboard course. Announcements are typically one of the first areas you see when accessing your course. This can be used to notify students of information about the course you would like them to see as soon as they access your course.
Creating Announcements Help Guide and Video
Blackboard Send Email Function
The Send Email tool in a course is a send-only tool. You can send messages from your course to course members' external email accounts without having to launch your external email program. You can send emails to individual users or to groups of users. At UofL, the students enrolled in courses on Blackboard have their email automatically added to those courses.
IMPORTANT: Blackboard Learn keeps no record of sent or received emails. When you receive or send an email, the email will appear in the Inbox of your external email client. Keep a copy of important messages in case you need them at a later date.
Office 365
All enrolled students have free access to Microsoft’s Office365 suite of software online and downloadable on up to five devices. Outlook (for your university email), Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneDrive (50GB of storage) Teams (including the Chat feature), and more.
Make your syllabus available digitally. At the start of the course recommend that Students download the syllabus.
All syllabi should be loaded into courses in Blackboard. Syllabi can be posted to Blackboard in many formats and the instructions for proper posting are listed below.
Decide how you will distribute documents and readings during a disruption. Become familiar with the process of making PDFs from hard copies. Familiarize yourself with how to use E-Reserves services offered by the University Libraries.
University Libraries e-Reserves
Instructors teaching classes that are classified as online courses or distance education can request Electronic Reserves. We encourage instructors to read the E-Reserve Policy before starting your request.
How to Create PDF Files From Paper Copies
If you have paper copies of articles and other documents and are unable to find an electronic copy of those documents, you can create a PDF of those documents by using a scanner or Multi-function Copy machine with a “scan to email” function. Check with your Department for more information.
Designate a centralized place to collect student submissions.
Blackboard Assignments/Plagiarism
Assess students in ways where they can apply the course concepts and demonstrate their knowledge in tangible ways.
With assignments, you can create coursework, and manage the grades and feedback for each student separately. You can include an assignment description, point value, and file attachments. You can create assignments in several courses areas, such as in a content area or folder. You can also distribute assignments to course groups.
Assignments
Prepare a backup working copy of your gradebook to ensure continuity of grading and reporting to students and administrators if your primary online gradebook is not available for an extended period of time.
Think about how you would continue class discussion in the event of a disruption. There are several tools that Blackboard provides that can assist you with discussions in the event of any interruption of instruction.
Microsoft Teams
MS Teams is integrated in Blackboard, and can be accessed from Blackboard without needing to log in separately, streamlining your experience. Students and instructors can use Teams to ask questions, post announcements or polls, use a virtual whiteboard, share resources and participate in threaded discussions – either synchronously or asynchronously.
Best Practice: Set the session to last for as long as your semester lasts instead of setting recurring sessions. This will allow you to use the same link the whole semester.
Blackboard Discussion Board
The Discussion Board can host many discussion forums (topics). Each topic or forum is a self-contained threaded list of postings and replies to a given question or situation by students or groups of students within a class. With the discussion board tool, course members can replicate the robust discussions that take place in the traditional classroom.
There are two tools available for facilitating a lecture when classroom instruction is not possible.
Panopto
Panopto allows you to create, edit and import video or lecture capture for your courses.
Microsoft Teams
MS Teams can be used for a live, virtual lecture or be used to record and share the lecture in Blackboard. MS Teams is integrated in Blackboard, and can be accessed from Blackboard without needing to log in separately, streamlining your experience. Course materials, announcements and other resources can also be easily shared to your students, enhancing the learning experience.
Think about how your methods for evaluating student learning could be moved to a digital space.
Assessments
You can create and edit online tests and quizzes using Blackboard’s assessment tools or other software. These assessments can be used for evaluating learning (grading). Tests and surveys are used to measure student knowledge, gauge progress, and gather information from students. You can create tests and surveys and then deploy them in a course area. You assign points to test questions for grading evaluation, but survey questions are not scored.
If you wish to create a test/survey off-line we have another tool available for Windows operating systems called Respondus.
Assignments
Assess students in ways where they can apply the course concepts and demonstrate their knowledge in tangible ways.
With assignments, you can create coursework, and manage the grades and feedback for each student separately. You can include an assignment description, point value, and file attachments. You can create assignments in several courses areas, such as in a content area or folder. You can also distribute assignments to course groups.
Grade Center
Prepare a backup working copy of your gradebook to ensure continuity of grading and reporting to students and administrators if your primary online gradebook is not available for an extended period of time.
All medical students are urged to sign up for the UofL mobile phone emergency information system, RAVE, which provides real-time text communications about any emergencies or long-term catastrophes.
In the event that the course/clerkship is no longer able to meet face-to-face, students should immediately logon to the RedMed course website, where the course director or his or her designee will provide instructions for adjustments to the meeting schedule, delivery of instruction, assignments, or examinations and deadlines. Students are asked to check the RedMed site regularly throughout the interruption of instruction for updates. The course director will also use email to communicate regularly with students.
In the event that students as a whole do not have access to the internet, alternative approaches to communicating with students will be arranged. However, should this occur, students should, depending upon their individual circumstances, make every effort to stay current with course/clerkship assignments/readings.
In the event that a student is unable to attend class for an extended period of time, he or she should contact the course/clerkship director to discuss alternative means of fulfilling requirements.