College of Humanities

College of Humanities

Remote Teaching

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Moodle Help

(Click the title above)

Zoom Help

  • Download the Zoom application
  • Have a working laptop computer to join the session (using a mobile device may limit your ability to participate in certain group activities)
  • Run a test Zoom session to ensure your settings are correct
  • Join the session early to test your settings

About Implementation

The rapid spread of the coronavirus has necessitated educational institutions across the globe to develop urgent and immediate means of mitigating the risk and the wellbeing of staff and students, while ensuring that the teaching and learning programme remains minimally affected. It is for this reason that the College of Humanities is introducing an online teaching and learning plan that will support remote teaching and learning thereby lowering the risk of infection for staff and students. 

The College affirms Moodle as the primary site for the management of College modules, both for physical and remote teaching and learning in the College. Academics are therefore encouraged to:

  1. Communicate with students through Moodle
  2. Upload module teaching and learning content through the site
  3. Record lectures and upload other visual learning materials
  4. Develop and upload assessment tasks

In addition to Moodle, the College has adopted the Zoom video conferencing platform for all live remote teaching and learning endeavours in the College. Zoom is a leading online video conferencing platform, used by many institutions globally. The technology is freely accessible for classes below 100 students. For classes larger than 100, ITS will make available a Zoom professional license that will enable teaching for up to 500 students. Through Zoom, academics will be able to teach remotely, hold meetings, hold group class discussions, do assessments, and record lectures and other teaching and learning sessions.  

The College appreciates that academics may not be familiar with Zoom. It is for this reason that workshops will be made available for all schools across the College. Additionally, staff can access online training through the following link https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us.  

Academics are also encouraged to use other video recording facilities offered by UKZN’s Technology Enhanced Learning (UTEL) department as well as other free online video recording platforms such as Loom. All of these video platforms may be uploaded to the Moodle site once recorded. 

The College appreciates that remote online learning requires students to have data. ITS is engaging with service providers to initiate reverse billing for students. This means that students will be allowed to access both the Moodle and Zoom sites without having to pay for data usage. Data charges will be charged to the University.   

Making the transition

What should academics do?

  • Upload all course outlines, content and assessments on Moodle.
  • Register on the Zoom website using your UKZN email address (https://zoom.us/).
  • Decide on the pedagogic requirements and structure for each of your planned sessions.
  • If your students are greater than 100, alert your Academic Leader for Teaching and Learning so that a Zoom license may be released to you.
  • Communicate with students on your plan of action for the upcoming weeks.

Academics are also encouraged to communicate with students via social media.

College Training Process

The College will move swiftly in preparing academics for remote learning. This will require urgent and immediate training and capacitation for academics to be ready for implementation. The following will be required:

College Representatives

Each school has a number of academics who have been using online teaching and learning platforms for a number of years. These academics, nominated by the schools, constitute the College Task Team and are available to support academics with the transition, working together with Academic Leaders for Teaching and Learning. Academics are encouraged to engage with the representatives on the Task Team in thinking through some of the ideas around online teaching.

Training the staff

Staff training will be completed either physically or remotely at the request of individual academics. Academics who require training, outside the readily available Zoom online support, can alert their Academic Leaders for Teaching and Learning so that a workshop may be arranged. The Academic Leaders for Teaching and Learning will be tasked with coordinating School-wide training to be facilitated by an expert in the College, Dr Elizabeth Plummer.

Familiarization with online platforms

Academics are required to familiarize themselves with the online teaching and learning resources in order to deliver lessons online successfully. An online support portal will be made available through Moodle where academics may access information about the pedagogical considerations for online teaching and learning. Details of this portal will be made available in due course.

Understandably, the transition will be challenging for both staff and students. The College will explore all avenues possible to ease the transition, thereby ensuring that the teaching and learning project is not compromised. 

e-Learning Guidance Map

Planned map that will guide staff in the implementation of the online teaching and learning plan.