Teaching and Learning Online 

• Download the latest edition of  "Delivering High-Quality Online Instruction in Response to COVID-19:  Faculty Playbook".  This playbook is a collaboration between the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Every Learner Everywhere Network with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is designed to serve as a concise guide in addressing faculty needs for online course design, teaching, and continuous improvement. 
• Download the Chronicle of Higher Education's free collection of advice guides and opinion pieces on online learning. You'll get the insight and analysis needed to make the adjustment to teaching a full roster of courses online.
• Download "Try This Instead of That" Recommendations when transitioning to teaching remotely (California State University's 1 page quick reference) 

FREE online mini-courses: Learn Teaching Online Basics

Here are two courses developed by higher ed for higher ed funded by federal grants. You can download the course files or take the course "in the cloud". 

1. Designing and Teaching Online course has six (6) easy-to-review modules to cover the basics created by Tyler Junior College.
2. Introduction to Distance Education course has five (5) easy-to-review modules created by the Kenai Peninsula College and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Includes FLASH videos so Internet Explorer browser works and Chrome browser might have problems.

Explore MERLOT's collection of FREE resources about online and hybrid course development  and online degree program development.

MERLOT Virtual Labs Portal   MERLOT has create a collection of free and open virtual labs across a variety of STEM disciplines that can be very effective in supporting online instruction for laboratory courses. 

Virtual Labs Teaching ePortfolios   The Virtual Labs portal also provides a collection of teaching ePortfolios by faculty implementing virtual labs and research on the effectiveness of using virtual labs. 

MERLOT non-STEM Collection of Simulations    MERLOT also has collections of simulations that can support laboratory-like experiences in non-STEM disciplines:

Arts | Business | Education | Humanities | Social Sciences | Workforce Development

MERLOT is your free and open library of free and open course content across all academic disciplines. In addition to its over 90,000 materials, it also simultaneously searches over 70 other free and open libraries as well as a dynamic, education-aligned searching of the web.

Affordable Learning Solutions from MERLOT & SkillsCommons provides a FREE and open library of training materials, virtual labs, and general education materials that you can give your students to help them learn. 

SkillsCommons is your free and open library of free and open workforce development and training resources funded by the U.S. Department of Labor. It is a national repository of workforce OER that supported over 700 community colleges creating enhancements and innovations in their workforce curriculum that is now OER available to you.

MERLOT and SkillsCommons has openly published the "how, what, and why" of the design, delivery, and assessment of education by individuals and institutions.  Open Educational Practices enables educators to learn the "know how" of the amazingly complex processes of education.

Open Educational Practices have been captured in ePortfolios, multimedia case studies and more. Explore your colleagues' lessons learned for putting innovations into practice on the following topics:

• Adopting OERs to make college more affordable
• Redesigning courses to improve student learning in academic courses
• Redesigning programs and courses to improve career and technical education outcomes
• Adopting virtual labs to innovate STEM education
• Applying quality assurance methods to improve online and hybrid instruction
• Supporting institutions migrating to online instruction

Your students need to be prepared to learn online. You can provide them self-assessments about their readiness to learn online and easy-to-use tutorials to learn the skills they need to be successful in online learning

1. Self Assessments on Readiness for Online Learning: Explore a collection of these self-assessment organized within MERLOT and choose ones that are right for your students.
2. Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills includes assessment of self-regulatory learning skills that are essential for online learning.  Learn more about DAACS...
3. Tutorial for Online Learning: The California Community College's Online Education Initiative created eleven (11) modules and 4 interactive tools to help students learn skills and plan for being a successful online student.
4. Supporting Students Learning in COVID19 Environments: Emerson Collective has created is comprehensive collection of resources to help you develop ways to support students learning online.  Emerson Collective is a social change organization that uses a broad range of tools including philanthropy, impact investing, and policy solutions to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

MERLOT and SkillsCommons are free and open online libraries for everyone to use, including students! 

Students can find and share online learning resources that work for them. Over 50,000 students from around the world are MERLOT members (it’s free to join) and have used it to support their own online learning. Students can create their own personal collections of learning resources and easily share them with you and their fellow students. Providing your students an assignment to explore MERLOT and SkillsCommons and share the online resources they find most valuable helps them learn (and develop ICT literacy skills) and reduces faculty workload in finding the “good stuff” on the web.

• Have students become MERLOT members for FREE so they can participate in the worldwide community of online learning throughout their lives.
• Explore MERLOT’s tools to build and share personal “bookmark collections”.
• Explore SkillsCommons collection of free online learning materials to prepare for jobs in a variety of industry sectors.
• Reuse/revise a Class-Assignment.docxfor your students at the start of your transition to online learning.  Use the pandemic as a topic and have your student create opportunities to contribute to the course as it moves online. 
• Students can create and publish their own learning ePortfolios with MERLOT Content Builder. Use video tutorials  so  they can learn to use the tool and let them explore an example of a student's learning ePortfolio that  has already been created and published on the web.

When you adopt any of these activities, you would be practicing “Open pedagogy -the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it" (ref).