Online Teaching – Keep Teaching Duke Kunshan

With challenges of having online exams in mind, we wanted to share some ideas including: substituting a paper or project for a final exam; developing open-book, open-note exams; avoiding highly time-constrained exams; and creating an option for students to base their course grade on work completed up to the final exam.

If an exam is required, we recommend the following:

Design it as an open-book, open-note exam. To account for internet speed and bandwidth issues, we suggest adding additional time to the estimated time required for completion (e.g., for an exam expected to take 1 hour, provide 2 hours for completion). Remind students explicitly that the time allotted includes the time to upload the completed exam.

Include explicit directions that explain your expectations clearly. Provide written guidelines about what is and is not allowed during the examination (collaborating with peers, citing sources, using notes or exams from previous classes, accessing information or searching the internet, etc.).
Exams should be available asynchronously just as with the classes. In particular, it may be difficult for all students to take the final exam during a given exam time, due to issues with time zones, complications with home lives, etc. The window of time the exam is available should provide for flexibility on these dimensions.
Exams need not be scheduled for a specific time, but can be “floating” so that students can select when to download, complete and upload the exam. Specifically, the exam tool within Sakai allows you to set the window of time that the exam is available for students. You may then independently set a time limit for the exam—i.e., the amount of time the student has to complete the exam once they have downloaded it. For example, students might be given a 48-hour interval during which they may select the best 3-hour window to take the exam.
Students should be reminded of the Duke Kunshan Community Standard when the exam is provided. (This can be enabled in Sakai Tests & Quizzes and Assignments to require acknowledgment of the honor code before beginning the exam.)
Please also see the recommendations for assessments on the Keep Teaching website: https://lile.duke.edu/keepteachingdku/strategies/assessments/

Adopted and modified based on the recommendation from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University.

We have identified several areas that we want to concentrate the attention on of all Session 4 faculty:

First, notify advisors of any students who you have not heard from or who have not participated in the online course by early in the 2ndweek of S4.

Second, require students to use their video cameras unless their internet bandwidth is poor. This strategy is crucial to enhance participation. Give students advance notice of this requirement. Invite them to contact you directly if they have any concerns. Explain to them that they can set a Virtual Background so that they are the only person visible if there are other people in the background.

Third, the most consistent finding we have from Session 3 is this: Students and faculty want more ways to engage and connect with each other and to build an active and engaged online learning community. We also have found that the improvements we’ve made to the VPN and other technologies have enabled most students to have improved access to the tools needed for synchronous instruction. Therefore, for Session 4:

• Each faculty member must offer 2 hours of live, synchronous class meetings each week, as well as at least 2 hours of live “office hours” availability for your students. You have two assigned class meeting times per week which you can use, or you can move them –but ONLY if moving them doesn’t create conflicts for any of your students. And remember: students are most responsive when faculty set a tone for online discussions with discussion guidelines.

• Going further, now that we know better how the technology is working, we want you to make as much use of the synchronous capabilities as is consistent with treating students equitably. (Attendance still cannot be required nor can course grades depend on attending live sessions.) Class meetings, peer-to-peer discussion, and faculty-student interactions are the crucial components of keeping everyone engaged, motivated and connected. See below for two webinars on how to make these activities work well.

• Equally important, we strongly recommend that you encourage group work, assignments or discussions where possible, both formal and graded and informal and ungraded. Being asked to work in teams can reduce feelings of isolation. Remind students to set explicit deadlines for their group work, and be clear with each other where and how group communications will happen. This way everyone in the group stays aware of progress and minimizes discontent. Be sure to link the group work to course assignments and outcomes. If you want to explore ways to do this that fit your particular course, contact CTL.

• We understand that many of you teach courses with a large amount of content, and may find the more limited synchronous meeting times challenging. There are high quality sources of content available from several sources that can be assigned to students before your course meetings. For example, Coursera is now available to everyone at DKU. If you need help finding materials, please post in the Sakai Forums. Often, your professional society will have curated online materials. Use brief mini-lectures (~15 minutes) that focus on key points rather than extended lectures. And use online polls to collect information about the number of hours students are devoting to course preparation and provide recommendations so they can gauge their effort.