Almost 12 years ago, now, I had to spend 18 weeks in my bed with very limited interpersonal and online interaction. I’m not here AT ALL to argue the benefits or deficits of bedrest (the mileage I got out of my extreme rescue cerclage may vary from yours, and in the end we got lucky that solid medical science and a lot of privilege got us a good outcome), but instead am here to share what it turns out is ALL ENTIRELY idiosyncratic to me about spending that amount of time in my house.

— you’re going to get to know yourself really, really, really well. Learn to love what you learn, even if it doesn’t feel lovable at first. Appreciate you. You’re doing this!

— your family may act in ways that are very different from “usual.” Be gentle. Everyone will process this whole experience differently.

— be prepared to experience sudden and unexpected severe revulsion to a room, a color, a piece of furniture in your house that you previously loved — now or at some random point in the future. Same goes for food items.

— even if you keep a routine going, be prepared for day/night reversals, non-24, and other super odd things. Know if this is something you can roll with or if it’s going to bother your mental or physical health. I roll with it, but I’m lucky, and not everybody can. Earplugs and sleep masks can help a little, if you’re able to do that.

— we’re about to overwhelm our already-fragile mental health infrastructure, but be persistent about reaching out if needed or finding an advocate to do so for you.

— if you are able, move around your space, get outside, keep moving. If you do nothing else, do squats EVERY DAY. It’s really easy to melt into the furniture, but later, your lower back will HATE you for it. McKenzie worked for me really well for PT in the aftermath.

— compression socks. consider wearing compression socks!

— this is obvious, but balance what you eat, and eat a little less. Keep an eye on your body’s solid waste output to know if you’re eating the right things and moving around enough.

— indulge your interests. I watched 8 seasons of Murder, She Wrote TWICE (seasons 9+ weren’t available on DVD yet at the time, and streaming wasn’t really a thing yet). I re-read EVERY Agatha Christie book, in alphabetical order by title (this is NOT a way people typically do this). I read every Nero Wolfe book on my shelf (not a complete collection at the time, but close). Waste of time???? Well, in 2014 when J.C. Bernthal issued the CFP for the first of what was to become a series of Agatha Christie (then expanding into Golden Age) scholarly conferences, edited volumes, journal issues, etc., I was READY. I have a fruitful and rewarding research agenda applying information theories to detective fiction. But even if it hadn’t, I enjoyed it immensely, so it was worth it to ME.

–use all the senses that you have. If you can, listen to sounds, smell smells. I never knew I could spend several hours watching the tops of pine and oak trees wave in the breeze, but it turns out, I CAN.

— as long as we have an infrastructure, enjoy it. looking back, if we’d had restaurant delivery via smartphone app, and ninety million streaming services, oh my! But see above — I might have frittered away my time rather than focusing on long-term projects of reading & watching, and deprived myself of an opportunity later (which also might have been just fine as an outcome — not everything has to be about production!)

— related: for those of us with resources to do so, the ability to make donations online now is awesome — rather than the exciting but later-unfortunate experience of buying a whole bunch of stuff online that you don’t need, make online donations, as you are able, to help your community.

Specifically for those with folks for whom you are caring (not just children…):

— having gone through this with our older child (he was 4 during my 18 week hiatus), I also fully subscribe to the model of “i threw him some fish sticks and by the end of the day we were all alive. success.” Did you spend all day bingeing Phineas and Ferb? Playing Uno with 4 different “themed” decks shuffled together? Taking a nap together? Super. Plenty. Did they feel loved? Perfect.

— my last ones come from the time when the kiddos were earthside, and relate to working from home “with” family: I wrote a peer-reviewed journal article, with a lit review and data and data analysis and everything, that was published in a very highly ranked journal in my field, on my phone, while nursing a baby (I also read Anna Karenina on my phone during this same time period). At another time, I worked from home for an entire year while our on-campus building was closed, while my child and an age-mate were co-babysat inside my home with all the noise that comes from vigorous play between toddlers (did I mention privilege?!?). Many of us are working “with” family right now; it’s not easy, but it’s doable, even without additional support (I’ve done that, too). Be gentle with yourself.

— and finally… oh, heck, I have no “finally.” Idiosyncratic. Privileged. But maybe useful. And be mindful of that non-24 or day/night reversal thing! It’s already happening to me again!

(I’ve been teaching online since 1997: big classes, required classes, hard classes, and the students generally think I’m pretty good despite that. My dissertation and the first 10 years of my research agenda were about online teaching & online learning community. Here are some idiosyncratic but based-in-research-and-praxis tips from me, personally, if you’re trying to ramp up quickly and/or unexpectedly.)

• Ground rules for doing this in a hurry
• Ramping up an LMS site quickly
• Synchronous sessions
• Asynchronous sessions
• Community building
• Other resources

Ground rules for doing this in a hurry:

1. If someone has offered to help you, take them up on it.
2. Don’t fret about the details now; get going and punch problems later.
3. You are the expert in your content, that’s why it’s your class: do what’s best for you and your students to get through the content, the objectives, and the semester/term!

Ramping up an LMS site quickly:

Triage (first tier):

1. Post the syllabus & make the syllabus the “home” or “landing” page for the course.
2. Set up a discussion thread/board called “faculty office” or similar; “subscribe” to it.
3. Post an announcement that you are here and, if using synchronous delivery, include the link to the site (Zoom room, Collaborate room, etc.) you’ll be using for the synchronous class sessions.
4. Make sure you find the “send a message to all students” option (in Canvas, this is in the Canvas Inbox).
5. Make sure the site is available to students (in Canvas, this is “publishing” it).

Now you can start the second-tier stuff:

1. Setting up the gradebook with assignment deadlines & grade values.
2. Adding other focused discussion boards (Q&A for assignments, café for informal conversation, topical discussions).

And tertiary items come next:

1. Adding your own profile picture.
2. Adding in rubrics for graded items.
3. …and so forth, as needs arise.

Synchronous sessions:

1. Make everything as lightweight and low-bandwidth as you can: people will be attending by phone. No images in the slides unless mission-critical!
2. Don’t use video unless absolutely necessary and dictated by the learning objectives/outputs; if video is necessary, consider a way to move it asynchronously into your LMS by posting recordings there.
3. Set ground rules: Everybody mute your mic unless you are talking! No video unless you have to! If you want the mic, raise your hands! It’s okay to participate in the chat during lecture, but only if it’s relevant (questions, links/citations to sources of fact, real-life examples).
4. Make sure you CAN and DO watch the chat while you are talking so you can incorporate that into what you are saying. This takes practice but has a huge payoff in making the classroom a warm and inclusive space.
5. Breaks! an online class is not like a f2f class — it’s harder to pay attention and breaks are good.
6. Lots of pauses for questions and feedback: ask all students to enter a “!” or hit the Thumbs Up icon or some other cheerful acknowledgement of presence and understanding. It’s vital that this is an affirmative option “Give me a Bang ! if you are good for me to move on” rather than a negative option “Any questions? No? Well, seeing none, I’ll move on.” If you see a lot, you’re good to continue (tell those few who are not feeling confident that they can ask on the discussion board in the LMS or email you, don’t leave them hanging, but don’t hold up the whole class if everyone else has indicated they are good to go) ; if you only see a few, you need to re-explain!
7. Use virtual field trips where students go off by themselves to to a guided activity someplace else online (for example, students go off to explore how disambiguation works in Wikipedia, or how name control works in IMDB), then come back and discuss what they found/encountered.
8. If you’re using Zoom: ignore Zoom’s little lack-of-attention clocks — they go off even if the student is just in another application taking notes on your lecture/class
9. Allow alternatives such as asynchronous discussions in the LMS…

Asynchronous discussions:

1. This is an opportunity to have richly collaborative learning without the onus of group outputs and shared grades!
2. Groups are great for this, as long as no one person’s mark depends on anyone else’s performance. Bigger groups can work very well (I’ve gone as big as 17 with success).
3. Do not use “discussion prompts” where every student is responding to the same questions(s) and are then expected to “discuss.” Instead, consider alternative such as…

• Giving them a wicked problem and asking them to share techniques for solving it
• Having them contribute and discuss things related to a larger output they are working on (share and discuss sources for a paper, creating a shared bibliography; share thesis statements and constructively improve their clarity and purpose)

Community building:

1. In that first class, unless you have a HUGE number of students, let everyone “introduce themselves” by video/audio/text (just this once, and depending on their bandwidth — and yes, this is contradictory to advice I gave above to “never use video” — which is another key point: maintain a VERY high tolerance for ambiguity!) — I like name, pronouns, and where they’re joining from (I explicitly tell them to share location only if they are comfortable doing so). Even if your students already know each other, this gives them a chance also to test the software/system :-).
2. Stress is high. Allow a little bit of chit-chat and then enforce a bit of structure as that will likely add comfort.
3. Group work in class would be good, if your class is structured that way. Zoom, for example, supports breakout rooms — not well, but it does. The chance to talk in smaller groups oriented around a specific task will help form community also.
4. Add an asynchronous component via Canvas discussions, if that works for your class; that way people who struggle with the pace and/or technology of the synchronous class can still be a part of the team, but they can’t be lone voices there either, so if you add asynchronous options, make sure they have someone to respond whether it’s you or other students.
5. After the first class, use structured icebreakers for community building — at the beginning or in the middle of class — but be sure they are accessible/equitable (e.g., “what is something you recently read/watched/listened to?” instead of “what book are you reading right now?”; “what is a great place you have been or a place you’d really like to go?” instead of “where did you go on your last vacation?”)

Other resources:

Vanessa Dennen: “What to expect as colleges and universities move classes online amid coronavirus fears: 4 questions answered” https://theconversation.com/what-to-expect-as-colleges-and-universities-move-classes-online-amid-coronavirus-fears-4-questions-answered-133334

Rebecca Barrett-Fox: “Please do a bad job of putting your courses online” https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/