Tech tips on working from home

Working online can pose new and different challenges compared to working on campus. Explore the resources below to navigate working in an online environment. 

Information Security

  • If you take University records – paper or electronic – home from your office, take only the minimum amount of information required to carry out your job duties. Never leave this information in your car or unattended while in transit.
  • When working with restricted and highly restricted University records, it is especially important to follow IST’s information security guidance. Only use a University-managed laptop with an encrypted hard drive, a University workstation accessed via VPN and remote desktop, or the online Office 365 apps with the required security safeguards.
  • At no time should University records containing personal information or other types of restricted or highly restricted information be saved to a home computer.
  • Always use a work email account, rather than a personal email account (e.g., Gmail) for work-related email. Before sending an email, verify that the email will go to the correct recipients – and that the email contains the correct attachments to be sent to those recipients – particularly for email containing personal information.
  • Always store the final versions of documents and other University records in a University system – SharePoint or a University file server, for example. Any copies remaining on a personal home computer are then transitory records which should be deleted when no longer needed.

Secure Paper Shredding at Home

  • Any faculty or staff planning to dispose of University records from home must shred the records, while meeting the following conditions:
    • The records must be transitory. Any non-transitory records must stay in the faculty or staff member's possession until the end of the retention period, as documented in the University records retention schedules. Contact the University Records Manager for further information or assistance.
    • The paper shredder should be a cross-cut shredder that shreds at security level P-3 or P-4 of the internationally-recognized DIN 66399 standard (Office machines – Destruction of data carriers).
      • Do not simply believe the documentation that came with the shredder that it shreds at level P-3 or P-4; confirm this by measuring the dimensions of several representative particles/shreds produced by the shredder
      • Measure the length X width in millimetres of several representative paper particles/shreds
      • If the length X width is 320 mm2 or less, then the security level is P-3
      • If the length X width is 160 mm2 or less and the width of the particles is no more than 6 mm, then the security level is P-4

Support for Teaching Remotely

The following resources are collected from Centre for Extended Learning (CEL), Centre for Teaching Excellence, Information Systems and Technology (IST), Instructional Technologies and Media Services (ITMS), the Library, Accessibility Services, and others. These organizations can support faculty members in designing and teaching online courses.

Support Options 

Please feel welcome to mix and match from any of the following resources and services below when preparing to teach remotely:

A Self-Guided Path

Group Learning

  • Join or watch one of the events, webinars or workshops offered by the University of Waterloo
  • Self-enroll into the Remote Teaching Community of instructors, available on LEARN

Connect with Experts

Strategies for Remote Teaching

Recent UWaterloo instructor and student surveys (PDF 105 kb) have highlighted what is working well and what measures could improve online and remote courses.

Remote Teaching: Tools and Technology

When choosing educational tools and technology, make sure that you, as the course instructor, and your students are familiar with it and take into consideration the intended use of the tool. Supported tools come with the benefit of security and privacy assessments and support from University groups.