Morbid Anatomy Educator Handbook

For Online (Synchronous) Teaching Procedures

Welcome to the Morbid Anatomy educator team! This manual is intended to clarify the roles and responsibilities of Morbid Anatomy and individual educators, as well as provide resources and best practices to use while teaching within our system.

Morbid Anatomy is an educational platform for subjects surrounding death and mysticism, the metaphysical and the divine, where our intention is to turn fear into wonder. Over the past 18 years we have been building a dedicated audience of enthusiastic students looking for academically rigorous classes about subjects that are often left out of the educational cannon. We select educators based on the rigor of their research, the interest in their subjects, and their teaching abilities.

Table of Contents:

Roles & Responsibilities

Communication

Setting Up Your Online Class

Payment

Roles & Responsibilities

Morbid Anatomy is responsible for promoting your class in advance through a listing on its “Upcoming Classes” webpage, as well as featuring your class in at least one newsletter and one post on its Instagram platform. Morbid Anatomy reserves the right to update all descriptive text on its website and social media platforms as they wish to better promote the class. Morbid Anatomy may invite you to collaborate with them on a social media post, in which case the cover image and text used will need to be approved by Morbid Anatomy in advance.

Morbid Anatomy will also create an educator payment spreadsheet where it will add new students with their contact information and track income to determine educator payment. Spreadsheets will be shared with educators one month in advance and will be updated weekly throughout the end of the class schedule. Morbid Anatomy will field general inquiries about your class that come to the hello@morbidanatomy.org email account, and may reach out to you with questions.

Educators are responsible for direct communication with their students before classes. This includes reaching out to individual students when they sign up with a welcome message, sending any materials lists, and distributing the zoom link for online classes, as well as a follow up email after class sessions that includes the recording of the class. We also ask that educators distribute information about their class to their own network and social media platforms to encourage sign ups.

Your direct point of contact at Morbid Anatomy is education@morbidanatomy.org for any questions related to your class.

Please provide Morbid Anatomy with a short bio and headshot to add to its Instructors page on the website. Include any topics you regularly teach and any special skills that might be beneficial to your students.

Communication

Your point of contact for class-related questions will be education@morbidanatomy.org, however please copy hello@morbidanatomy.org with any urgent questions or issues on the day of your class meeting.

Class Rosters:

At least one month in advance of your class, you will receive a link to your class roster from Education@MorbidAnatomy.org. Class rosters are tracked in Google Sheets, and you will only be able to view the sheet via a Gmail email account.

Your class roster spreadsheet will have a tab for each new class you teach as they are added. Within those tabs, rosters for each class include student names, emails, and ticket level.

Class rosters will be updated weekly every Wednesday before the class begins, so our educators can check the living docs as the need arises.

Student Welcome Emails:

One week before the first class, educators should send all students a Welcome Email.

Educators are responsible for sending out a Welcome Email to all of their students. Click here for instructions and an easy to follow template. It is very important that you send this welcome email to each student individually. You must cc education@morbidanatomy.org on this welcome email so we can forward it to last minute student sign ups.

**DO NOT send a group email as they tend to go into spam. Email each student individually and ask them to confirm receipt and add you to their address book. Subsequent emails can be sent to the whole group; best practices is to bcc for privacy.

Day-Of Communications:

On the day/evening of your class, Morbid Anatomy will watch the enrollment of your class carefully. Often, you will have last minute sign-ups. As long as you cc’d us on your Welcome Email we can forward it to these students (we will cc you so you know there has been a new signup. You may also track new sign ups on your class roster google sheet (discussed above).

In the case that any student enrolls after day 1 of the class, you will receive an email alerting you that you have a new student. It is up to you to email the student sending them the zoom link and past class recordings so they can get caught up.

Video Recording 24 hours after your class:

Educators are required to record your classes and send Morbid Anatomy the class recording via WeTransfer (see instructions below). Once we receive your class video we upload it to the Morbid Anatomy Vimeo page (protected so it cannot be downloaded or embedded) and send you the Vimeo link ASAP so you can share it with your students. IMPORTANT: share this vimeo video link to your students within 24 - 36 hours after your class. Remember, some students only watch the video recordings and this will enable them to stay up-to-date with your class.

Video Recording

Once you have ended your class, a recording from Zoom will automatically download to your device. Within 24 hours of your event, please use this free service, WeTransfer, linked here, to send your class recording to education@morbidanatomy.org for upload to the Morbid Anatomy Vimeo account. You may bypass this step by storing and sharing videos with students yourself if you prefer, but please make sure to disable downloads and embedding so that content can’t be reproduced, embedded, shared or sold.

IMPORTANT - TECH NOTE: If, for any reason, a video does not record, please record the class session on your own and send it to your students. Class sessions without a corresponding video will be refunded to students.

Personal Mailing List

Feel free to add the emails of class participants to your own mailing list! Students often ask about other class offerings or events with their instructors. This way, you can keep them informed of future engagements and news.

Setting Up Your Online Class

The following guidelines are aimed at helping you organize your online (synchronous) zoom classroom. Morbid Anatomy classes are taught using Zoom. Presently, we do not offer educators a zoom account, they will need to purchase your own. Here’s a link to purchase a month to month or yearly “Pro” account.

Remember, we are here to help! If you’ve read through this carefully and still have questions or need a refresher on how to teach using Zoom, or are new to using Zoom, please email us at least 1 week prior to your class starting so we can help: Education@MorbidAnatomy.org

Presentation Format

Please have your slide presentation saved in one of the following formats and become familiar with presenting it on Zoom:

● PowerPoint (or the equivalent Google Slides)

● Keynote

● Acrobat Reader

● PDF in Preview

Zoom Set-Up For Instructors

To create a Zoom meeting, please follow these steps in order:

● Log into Zoom and select “schedule meeting”

● Enter the title of your event in the “topic” field

● Select the date, time, and timezone of your event from the drop-down. Most events will take place on Eastern Time (US and Canada)

● For multi-week classes, you may select “recurring meeting” to schedule all meetings ahead of time

● Do not select “registration required”

● For the security option, select PASSCODE

● For the video option, we recommend selecting OFF to give attendees control over their cameras. Once class begins and your video is turned on, students will follow your lead.

● For the audio option, select BOTH

● Please make sure to record, either manually or by enabling automatic recording when setting up your meeting. By enabling automatic recording you will ensure the class was recorded. You can always trim the clip getting rid of empty space at the beginning.

(This is very important, I put a sticky note on my screen to remind myself. Many of our students elect to watch the class at their leisure and purchase it knowing they will receive the recording (more on that below). If you forget to record, you’ll have to separately record your lecture and forward that on to your students.)

Inviting participants

Upon completion of set-up, Zoom will generate a meeting invitation with a web link, passcode, and dial-in numbers for mobile participants. Please copy this message in its entirety and email it to your student roster list between 24 to 48 hours before your first class begins. For this first email, known as the “Welcome Email (template linked here)” DO NOT send a group email as they tend to go into spam. Email each student individually and ask them to confirm receipt and add you to their address book. Subsequent emails can be sent to the whole group; please bcc for privacy.

Conducting your meeting

If you need a refresher on conducting your class over zoom, or are new to teaching over zoom, no worries - we are here to help! Please reach out and request a zoom tutorial at least a week prior to your class. Email us so we can set up this one-on-one meeting at Education@MorbidAnatomy.org

Have a great class!

Ending your meeting

When you are ready to end your meeting, click once on END MEETING. You will be prompted to select END MEETING FOR ALL or LEAVE MEETING. It is imperative that you select END MEETING FOR ALL, as the latter option allows the meeting to continue in your absence.

Video Recording

Students who miss a class meeting or wish to revisit lessons can access a recording of your class via a private link. Once you’ve ended your class, a recording will automatically download to your device. Within 24 hours of your event, please use this free service, WeTransfer, linked here, to send your class recording to education@morbidanatomy.org for upload to the Morbid Anatomy Vimeo account. You may bypass this step by storing and sharing videos with students yourself if you prefer, but please make sure to disable downloads and embedding so that content can’t be reproduced, embedded, shared or sold.

Payment

Payment to educators is 60% of the net ticket sales through the Morbid Anatomy platform (n.b. net ticket sales includes an automatic -4% fee for 3rd party processing fees). For example, if ticket sales for your class total $500, Morbid Anatomy deducts a 4% credit card fee bringing the subtotal to $480, which is then split 60/40 with $288 going to the educator, and $192 going to Morbid Anatomy.

New US-based educators will be asked to create a contractor profile through the Morbid Anatomy QuickBooks so that payment can be processed via direct-deposited to their bank account. Profile information includes a completed W9 and banking information. International instructors who do not have a USA bank account will be paid via PayPal. Educators are 1099 contractors, and no taxes will be withheld from their payments.

For all courses, educators will receive two payments - half on the Monday after your first class and the remaining half the Monday after your final session. You will receive a confirmation email on those days letting you know to look for the deposit so you can alert us to any issues.

Educators do not need to invoice Morbid Anatomy to trigger payment processing, but do alert us to any changes to your bank account information as they occur.