This update is provided for archival purposes only.
Public Health guidance and University of Waterloo operations may have changed. For the most up-to-date information, please visit our COVID-19 frequently asked questions.
We know that the changes we have put in place for the end of the Winter Term 2020 because of COVID-19 may be difficult for some. We want you to have the best learning experience at Waterloo during these times of unprecedented change. We also want to make sure that you can continue to make progress towards earning your degree.
To help you with this we are making two important changes for courses that award numeric grades.
Course instructors can elect to use CR or NCR in place of numeric grades for Winter Term 2020.
Students will be able to ask to convert numeric grades to CR or NCR for a specific period after the end of Winter Term.
We have extended the date any changes to Spring course offerings due to the RO to Monday, March 30, 2020
As we move into the Spring Term and many of you adapt to new ways of delivering courses, I want to give some guidance and information to instructors based on my 21 years spent supporting the delivery of courses to distant learners. In two decades, the technologies that support these approaches continue to change quickly – and there are terrific experts on campus to support you.
Update for instructors in the Faculty of Mathematics
The license below allows our students to download MATLAB to their personal laptops and then use it until June 30 without connecting to the internet (and in particular, without connecting to our campus VPN). This will make the use of MATLAB easier for the students, which in turn makes it more feasible for W’20 instructors to assign a project involving MATLAB programming.
I know that all of you have been working extremely hard over the last several days to shift your focus – whether this was to new ways of teaching and learning, or to ways in which you could change your research program. The president and I are extremely grateful for your efforts.
We have made the difficult decision to continue with an alternative delivery system for Spring Term. This means that we are not going to deliver in-person course activity. All courses and exams, including graduate research milestones, will take place online.
I believe we need to do this to create some certainty during this uncertain time. We care about you and we want to make sure that we can continue to deliver a quality University of Waterloo academic experience during these extraordinary times.
I am sharing some important details about the new term with you now, but we plan to give you more comprehensive information on Spring Term by the end of next week.
