The early months of 2015 saw record-breaking snowfall in the Boston area, causing wide-spread school closings. What do you do when you need to cancel class or the university is closed for inclement weather or a flu outbreak? How do you ensure that your students don’t fall behind?

In this first post in our Instructional Continuity series, we’ll explore some ideas and strategies faculty have used for communicating with students and replicating classroom discussions during school closures.

Synchronous Communication
Class has been cancelled but you and your students are still available to meet, albeit remotely. The solution? How about a conference call? You can use a free conference call number (such as freeconferencecall.com) to connect with all of your students at once.

I scheduled a conference call during which we talked in real-time about some of the course content; I explained several concepts, and gave the students opportunities to discuss them.  It wasn’t perfect, of course, but students later told me they were glad there were ways for us to keep in touch during all those snow cancellations.

Donna Halper
Business Management and Communication

Looking to step up the technology a bit? Try scheduling an online meeting via Skype for Business (Lync). Skype for Business allows you to create an online meeting where you may communicate with your students, present information, or share your screen.

• Set up a Skype for Business Meeting in Outlook
• Join a Skype for Business Meeting

Please note that in the case of widespread power outages students may have limited internet and/or phone access. If this is the case you may want to try some asynchronous options.

Asynchronous Communication
Instead of meeting in real time, you may choose to hold your conversations asynchronously. Unlike a synchronous tool, asynchronous activities take place when it is convenient for each person. Some ideas for asynchronous communication include email and online discussions.

Email is a great way to keep in touch with your students. You may send emails to all of your students, groups of students, or individual students.

Some students could not come in [because of the weather], but class was never cancelled. For students who could not make the commute I gave alternate assignments via email.
Lynette Cassel
Expressive Therapies GSAS

Use the Send Email tool in myLesley to send messages to your students without ever leaving the course.

Looking to have a more in-depth conversation? The myLesley Discussion Board allows you to replace or enhance classroom discussions in a digital format. Discussions can serve as an online meeting place, a place for collaboration, or a way to demonstrate the understanding or application of course material.

I assigned students a reading response in the course discussion board.  They were responsible for exploring a movement therapy concept in the theme of movement observation.  After completing the readings I had them move through these themes on their own, look for visual images that reflected their experience and post these images into the discussion board.  They had to post these images with a description of their body experience and how that shaped their understanding of the concept.  They then had to respond to at least 2 other peer comments.
Valerie Blanc
Expressive Therapies GSAS

Looking for more ideas? Visit Planning for Instructional Continuity for guidelines on creating an emergency plan for your course. And stay tuned for next week’s Instructional Continuity blog post.