March 26, 2020
A message from Linda Adler-Kassner, Faculty Director, Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning (CITRAL)
*****
Dear Colleagues,
We’re nearly there! The Instructional Support Team wants to thank everyone for your kind words and amazing effort over the last few weeks. Spring quarter will be like nothing we’ve ever experienced -- but we will get it done, together! Here are updates for Thursday, March 26
**
Reminder! GauchoSpace will be unavailable until 2pm today for a planned update.
NEW RESOURCE! "Preparing to Teach Online is a new, comprehensive training site for instructors and TAs now available on GauchoSpace! The site has ideas, resources, links to UCSB-supported technologies, and opportunities to interact with each other and with us. You also have a chance to experience the training as a game, where you will complete quests to earn a certificate of completion in Preparing to Teach Online. Note: You won’t be able to access the site until GauchoSpace is back online (by 2pm).
Your students want to hear from you! If you haven’t done so yet, take a minute to send a welcome to students via the Peachmail interface on your GauchoSpace site. You can adapt this template if you have course details. Otherwise, you can let students know that a longer message is coming soon. One possibility would be to point them to the KeepLearning site in the meantime.
The Keep Learning site! https://keeplearning.id.ucsb.edu/ is a comprehensive site to provide student assistance with remote learning: access, strategies, time management, access to resources, and more. The site has been compiled by representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Education (Transfer and ONDAS Centers, Undergraduate Mentoring, CITRAL, and more) and Student Affairs (CLAS, EOP, and more.)
Remote teaching preparedness template survey! The Instructional Support Team has created a remote teaching preparedness survey template that you can use or adapt for your courses. The survey will be linked in the top bar of GauchoSpace when it comes online later today.
As always, the Instructional Continuity site should be your “home base” - just as GauchoSpace and the KeepLearning site should be for your students. We continue to build new resources and add information on a regular basis.
The IS team will be back with you Friday or Monday with updates. In the meantime, take some time over the weekend to rest, recharge, and remind ourselves: We’ve got this!
Best,
The Instructional Support Team