General
SMC has provided a robust Distance Education/Online Learning program since the late 1990’s. It is instruction delivered asynchronously (I.e., not in “real time”) and offers a variety of features that ensure students receive the same level of instruction as their on-ground counterparts. All Distance Education courses are approved by the Curriculum Committee. They also have a different apportionment process than our on-ground and hybrid classes.
Remote Instruction is our response to the COVID-19 crisis. This is a temporary measure to enable on-ground students to continue progressing toward the attainment of course objectives and SLOs using a different instructional modality outside of the physical classroom setting. Students will participate from home or other off campus location of their choosing. Faculty will teach the course either from their home or a classroom that has been equipped with a web cam using Zoom meetings, or through Canvas shells, or a combination of both.
No. At this time, all classes must migrate to remote learning modalities, including hands-on lab and activity classes. In cases for which this is not possible, the department chair must consult with Academic Affairs.
Faculty should be as creative as possible and work together to find ways to enable our students to progress in their education to the maximum extent possible. The wealth of information, images, videos available to us via Internet, simulations, practice at home – all are viable tools to help in this challenging time. Both asynchronous and synchronous methods are acceptable, but if synchronous meetings are planned, they must occur at the days/times originally schedule for each section so that student scheduling conflicts do not arise. Benefits to asynchronous methods include the ability to make up missed class time. The total amount of instructional time for each section should remain the same in the remote modality as it would have been if in-person meetings had continued.
This is no longer possible. Perhaps students could take a video of their work and send it to you?
For student projects that require studio time for various stages of a project’s development, alternative methods will need to be devised. At this time we are not conducting any on-ground classes.