This weekend brought the first snowflakes to the region.

Driving home in central Massachusetts this past Sunday afternoon I ran into snow showers on Route 146 in Uxbridge. Nothing major but just enough to be a reminder of last winter’s snow days. And what was on my schedule for Monday? A Nercomp workshop, Continutity of Learning: Using Technology to Mitigate Learning Disruptions.

There are many things you can do to stormproof your courses and ensure that students continue learning even if mother nature does not cooperate. The possible solutions range from finding Just In Time (JIT) learning activities using Open Educational Resources (OER) to mimic regular classroom activities for a specific day to having a course design that students can complete any class either online or face-to-face (a hybrid/flexible course model).

Later this term we will offer some workshops where we’ll discuss various ways to mitigate learning disruptions due to snow closures.

Fun fact: University of Southern California has a program in place to help faculty plan for closures due to earthquakes – and we thought last winter’s closures for snow were bad. Puts things in perspective.