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The City College campus has resources that can be used in the event of a campus closing to continue instruction and learning. Remember that a course instructor who has reason to move a class from in-person to online instruction must receive permission from his or her chair, and chairs should coordinate these requests with deans. 

Course instructors should take some time now to decide which of the following technologies best fit the needs of your class, and test everyone’s ability to log on and use the system. Keep track of students who have no way of connecting from home or another safe space, bearing in mind that most of these work with smartphones as well as with computers. 

Below, you’ll find some of the tools we have for you to use along with instructional links on how to use them. Specific resources for students are located near the end of this document.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous?

There are two options for instructors to facilitate class sessions remotely:

Synchronous: instructors and students gather at the same time and interact in “real-time” with a very short or “near-real-time” exchange between instructors and students.

Asynchronous: instructors prepare course materials for students in advance of students’ access. Students may access the course materials at a time of their choosing and will interact with each over a longer period of time.

Instructors may choose to engage their students synchronously or asynchronously depending on the course content or material that needs to be taught. There are many advantages and disadvantages to asynchronous and synchronous teaching options.

Advantages of Synchronous Teaching

Immediate personal engagement between students and instructors, which may create greater feelings of community and lessen feelings of isolation

More responsive exchanges between students and instructors, which may prevent miscommunication or misunderstanding

Disadvantages of Synchronous Teaching

More challenging to schedule shared times for all students and instructors

Some students may face technical challenges or difficulties if they do not have fast or powerful Wi-Fi networks accessible

Advantages of Asynchronous Teaching

Higher levels of temporal flexibility, which may simultaneously make the learning experiences more accessible to different students and also make an archive of past materials accessible. 

Increased cognitive engagement since students will have more time to engage with and explore the course material.

Disadvantages of Asynchronous Teaching

Students may feel less personally exchanged and less satisfied without the social interaction between their peers and instructors.

Course material may be misunderstood or have the potential to be misconstrued without real-time interaction.

Blackboard

Our learning management system, Blackboard, has a feature known as Collaborate Ultra. It is a powerful web conferencing tool that enables instructors and students alike to have “in class” experiences (Synchronous) from anywhere with a computer and internet connection. With Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, you can share live video from your web camera, PowerPoint presentations, use a whiteboard, and even record your online session for future reference.

You can access Collaborate Ultra from any course on Blackboard, and it does not require a license or accessory in order to function – if you teach a course or are an enrolled student, you are ready to use Blackboard Collaborate Ultra!

This is the Link for the Blackboard User Guides for information on how to use many of Blackboard’s features:

For specific information on how to use the Collaborate Ultra tool, follow this link

Again, it is important that you test this feature before you actually need to use it. Set up a trial with your students so that they become familiar with the use of Collaborate as well. Additionally, we have found that this product works best with the Firefox or Chrome browsers, so please let your students know. Students can also use the Blackboard app on their tablets or phones (IOS and Android).

Blackboard Assignments and Tests

There are two modules available in Blackboard for online submission of work: Assignments and Tests & Quizzes. Assignments are the easiest option to implement (see instructions here: ). Students submitting a Blackboard assignment either create their own document or write answers using a web form and it submit the assignment within the Blackboard site.

You can use the Blackboard Grade Book functionality to grade these assignments and send comments on them directly to the students. SafeAssign and Turnitin are options that you can use to check for plagiarism.

Tests and Quizzes are a separate functionality and allow for some limited automation of grading if you are using multiple choice/true-false/simple calculation formats. When writing a test or quiz on Blackboard, you first write the questions and then you add the questions to the test you are developing. Make sure to check the point totals for the questions and to test the test yourself prior to going live to verify that it is working.

A decent guide to running a test through Blackboard is available here:

Tips to avoid cheating:

1. Set up a timer to limit exam time
2. Turn on “Auto-submit”