I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was not as difficult to managed as I had anticipated.

No. The CTL/UM3D has been extremely helpful.

Continued training and updating similar to what has been provided.

One of the challenges is that not everyone has the same adobe access to work with documents. I had to purchase a personal subscription to better work with documents being sent to me electronically.

The training required for instructors, I think, is best practices on engaging students online, which would include developing lesson plans and skills assessments that are specifically built for distance learning. This was impossible for the Spring, but it should be mandatory for the Fall.

One concrete example would be training materials targeted at encouraging peer interaction in an online setting. Students who do not specifically choose virtual learning often feel isolated and siloed.

The first big thing was access to VPN, though that has been resolved. I personally have a lot of experience with D2L and online teaching so that switch wasn't difficult. It was most important for me to have unlimited access to Zoom so I could host regular advising meetings. I also immediately bought a new laptop since my was aging and I was concerned about what would happen if it stopped working effectively. I’ve had different connectivity issues over the summer, which have each been resolved but it brought home how difficult it is for many of our students to who don’t have laptops/computers/wifi.

I did a lot of research into how Zoom worked (which we're all experts at now, but before 4 months ago i had not used it) and studied best practices for synchronous remote meetings/classes to adapt for my course. Learning more about EMS system during Summer Institute has been helpful, but quite stressful. At some point I had to stop because working on the assignments were taking up all of my research and writing time.

I did the Foundations course in the summer and we had English Dept faculty do workshops in the Spring to get everybody up to speed. There are a lot of different programs to use with eCourseware and figuring out how to use them all (effectively) is a lot of work. We mainly needed assistance initially with becoming fully aware of Zoom and BlueJeans capabilities as well as improvement in skills with e-courseware. Other instructional technology training may be useful in the future.

A GA or TA will be very helpful as well as go through the Summer Institute - Foundation: Online teaching training.

I self-taught myself the necessary Zoom functions (and still keep learning new things). Other than that, there were no issues.

The summer training that has made me more comfortable with all aspects of ecourseware has been tremendously beneficial. Still getting used to Zoom, which is a huge asset for us.