Working from home

The Academic Skills Centre has collated this selection of resources to support you in your teaching during the current situation. We will add and update this page as things change. See ASC home page for resources for your students.

Stay at home - save lives - Latest UoD COVID-19 information and guidance

University of Dundee Resources

• Information and support for staff during the coronavirus outbreak
• Information and support for academic study, assessment, and examination during the coronavirus outbreak
• Disability Service Guide for inclusive online learning

Using MS Teams

At the University of Dundee, Teams is available to you through your University Office 365 account and is a great way to work and communicate with peers or colleagues. If you're not familiar with it see below for some guidance!

• Create an online meeting in Microsoft Teams (UoD IT)
• See UoD Yammer MS Teams interest group (this has now been extended to cover Office 365). See the section Remote Working section on Information and support for staff during the coronavirus outbreak for the most recent information
• Using MS Teams: Get started with Microsoft Teams for remote learning
• How to start a call from Chat in Teams
• This is a useful, easy to follow quick start guide from the University of Liverpool

The Desktop App can be better than using the Web App. It can be more effective for meetings because it goes through fewer connections so it will be less likely to drop connection but if using it on your phone it might be more difficult due to the size of the screen. Download the App

If you use other email accounts or even other Office 365 accounts (i.e. a student account and a staff account), your laptop or tablet will look for a dominant account for Teams. This may not be your UoD one. So, make sure that your University email account is the primary one set up with other apps like Skype, Outlook Client etc. Also make sure that you are not logged into other email accounts on your device.

• Try a test call before your meeting.
• Check your laptop battery is charged, or connected to the mains supply.
• If you have an issue using your PC/laptop try meeting via a phone call.
• Keep a note-book and pen to hand for notes that come up in conversation.

External Resources from the community

SHED

Rosemarie McIlwhan, Assistant Professor of Learning and Teaching, Learning and Teaching Academy shared this toolkit through SHED. Supporting Student Learning Online: Rapid Response Toolkit and Further support ‘The resources are all OER so if they’re useful to you please feel free to use, reuse, remix etc. It’s still under development so further resources are being added on a regular basis (suggestions for these are more than welcome).’

Another resource from our SHED colleagues is a post from one of their members summarising their PhD research into online engagement of learners in HE: When the VLE becomes your campus: some thoughts on engaging learners online

More coming from the SHED community soon...

Jisc

Jisc provide coronavirus help and information for members around planning for coronavirus (COVID-19) and for ensuring continuity of learning during enforced absence The Jisc online course, Planning for Covid19, is fully booked but recordings will be available after 17 March 2020. Read their Check your tech as part of your coronavirus planning blog post

Herriot Watt

Herriot's LTA offers quick guides and a series of videos by Sheila MacNeill to help your transition to online learning and teaching.