Continuity of Instruction | A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

How to keep teaching when you can't meet in person

Keep Teaching at UMD

All courses have an associated site in Canvas, UMCP’s learning management system (LMS). Even if you don’t use Canvas regularly, it can help you in the event of class cancellations, simply by providing a secure, easily-accessible place for your students to access materials and communicate with each other.

Accessing Canvas for the first time ELMS-Canvas Instructor Resources for Online Teaching

Create Your Material

Text documents, Powerpoints, PDFs..
Multimedia – webcam videos, screencasts, etc. Discussion forum prompts

Post Your Material

Post Materials to Canvas
Upload Videos to Panopto

Communicate with Your Students

Use Canvas to send a class-wide email notification on how to access Canvas, what material is there, and where to find it inside the site (Announcements, Files, etc.).

Creating Your Materials

In some cases, posting text-based documents or PowerPoint presentations may suffice to give students some material to cover on their own time. However, you may want to record a narration for your materials to simulate the lecture you would have delivered.

In this event, first consider your comfort level with technologies. Select a technology that you have used before. Real-time web conferencing tools with recording capability (e.g. Zoom) can be used to capture a quick lecture video in a pinch on your own time, on your own device!

Recording Options

(Windows/Mac) Zoom

Zoom is a live webcasting tool that has recording capabilities. Visit our Zoom on Personal Computers guide for more information.

Sign in to Zoom Creating and Managing Zoom Recordings Using an iPad or iPhone with Zoom Zoom Desktop Client Moving to Campus Wide License Uploading to Canvas

Clark School Recording Studios

Arnold E. Seigel Learning Center (SLC) The SLC has six studio classrooms in the JM Patterson Building specifically designed to capture lectures for use by non-traditional and distance based students. Each room features high-quality audio and video equipment for use in capturing lecture materials and the staff has expertise in sharing this material with registered students through ELMS. To reserve time in an SLC studio classroom, email dets-support@umd.edu.

Posting Your Materials

Posting to Canvas

After creating course materials, log in to Canvas, access your course, and upload materials into the “Files” area of the course site. Organize and add new content to modules. Modules allow instructors to organize content to help control the flow of the course. Each module can contain files, discussions, assignments, quizzes, and other learning materials.

Learn more about Canvas Modules

Posting Videos

If you have any supplemental videos, Zoom recordings, or any other video content you can upload these to Canvas using Panopto.

Uploading Zoom (and other) Video to Canvas Video: Upload Zoom Recording to Panopto Upload a video using the Rich Content Editor

Communicating with Your Students

Use Canvas to send a class-wide email notification on how to access Canvas, what material is there, and where to find it inside the site

Learn more about sending a Canvas announcement

Discussion Forums

To promote active learning in an asynchronous environment, you may wish to use the Discussion Forums in Canvas to engage students and invite their participation. Simply post a prompt(s) and invite the students to lend their input, and/or respectfully respond to other student’s posts. Using Discussion Forums, combined with clear instructions (due dates, netiquette expectations, etc.), can pique student’s interest in a topic and make them feel a sense of ownership in the material under discussion.