Dear Faculty,

Thanks so much for all your extraordinary efforts as we move courses to remote delivery.  We know you are inundated with emails and it is easy to lose track of information, so we are collecting information for you in this document with the hope that it will help cut through the clutter and reduce searches through emails.  In addition, we will be archiving this content as a pdf in the Faculty & Staff section of the Contingency Planning and Preparedness webpage. 

New Paltz Knowledge Base

The New Paltz Knowledge Base is your one-stop location for almost everything you need for online and remote instruction.  The Campus Contingency Guide, the first item listed in the Knowledge Base, will lead you to most of the things you will need to work remotely.  These include:

• General Guidance on how to use OneDrive and how to move documents from the F drive to OneDrive
• Instructions for Remote Communication, most importantly on how to use WebEx and Bb Collaborate Ultra
• A Quick Start Guide to Building Online Lessons.  PLEASE NOTE: The quick start guide offers options for entry level, intermediate, and advanced users.  We strongly urge you to follow those skill-level guidelines.  The quick start guide covers:
• Structuring your course
• Creating lectures
• Adding content
• Adding assignments
• Adding assessments

Training Options

There are still opportunities for training to effectively use some of the tools available to you for delivering your course remotely.  You may already have availed yourself of some of these options.  Some sessions are live.  Many are recorded and archived for later access.

• New Paltz Training Options:  Watch for emails from Kate Bohan and Rich McElrath regarding OIT training opportunities or visit the OIT Events Calendar and sign up for scheduled sessions by clicking on the session of interest and following the online instructions.
• Open SUNY Training Options: 
• Open SUNY is offering live, drop-in web meetings for Instructional Design Support for Emergency Remote Teaching: https://zoom.us/j/160815050. 
• Open SUNY is also offering a Remote Teaching Clinic designed to help you temporarily deliver your face-to-face instructional materials at a distance. Check the clinic website for sessions. 

Peer-to-Peer Resources

Please continue the outstanding formal and informal peer mentoring.  We suggest, if you have not done so already, that you coordinate within your department and possibly with other disciplines that may have similar pedagogy practices.  You might schedule some WebEx meetings over the next days and weeks to support one another, or you might identify online learning leaders who can answer questions and trouble shoot problems.  If you can answer questions within your own department or within departmental collaborations, that will often given you helpful insights specific to your pedagogical needs and it will also free OIT staff to focus on general training needs and more challenging technology issues. 

Resource Archive

The facstaf distribution list has resulted in some terrific sharing.  We plan to archive some of those resources and make the archive available to faculty.  Many higher education groups, general and disciplinary, as well as individual faculty around the globe, are gathering and archiving resources to assist faculty and students during this exigent time.  You may find it valuable to identify the groups with resources most appropriate for your courses and follow any FB groups, websites or shared Google-docs that best inform your work.

Shala Mills