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Please email coronavirus@uwaterloo.ca.
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This message was originally sent to instructors in the Faculty of Engineering by Daniel Davison, associate dean (undergraduate studies).
The university's first ever fully online/remote term starts in just a few days, on May 11! Thank you for all of your work in getting ready for this historical moment. I'm actually looking forward to teaching my course remotely. Here are some reminders, updates, and tips:
(a) Start-of-term communication with students: The Registrar's Office will be telling students today or tomorrow that they can expect to hear from their instructors at the start of term about how their courses will operate in S2020. Students will be expecting this guidance either through the course LEARN page (for those using LEARN) or by email from the instructor (for those not using LEARN).
Tips for those not using LEARN:
(b) Be sympathetic and accommodate students who have technology challenges: Some students have poor internet connections. Some do not have webcams. A surprisingly large fraction do not have access to a printer or scanner. I've been in enough online meetings over the last two months to know that things can and do go wrong regularly with "live" events. Products like zoom and WebEx are not perfect: I've been in meetings where a participant's video feed dies, where someone can't get audio going, where audio quality suddenly worsens for everyone, where people clicked on the meeting invitation URL and were directed to two separate meetings(!), where real-time polling suddenly didn't work, ... These problems and limitations are typically not the fault of the user.
(c) As always, the course outline must be available to students in the first week of term. The course outline should include details about deliverables (when and how should students submit things?), grading, acceptable rules for group work, etc. See the course outline requirements. Be sure your course outline is fully updated to reflect the online nature of the term. I ended up rewriting mine entirely.
(d) The attached memo from the AVPA, AVPGSA, and Registrar addresses ongoing questions about scheduling, both during the term and during the final assessment period. I think this memo is consistent with everything I have shared in the past. Specifically, the main points of the memo are the following:
(d) Handling of verification of illness forms and the self-declaration form: The university still hasn't decided what protocols and processes will be used in S2020. Stay tuned.
(e) Tip of the day (David Wang): If you are planning to use any synchronous activities in your course, have an assistant (e.g., a TA) with you, especially during the first few sessions, to help with technical problems, to monitor chat lines, etc. This way you can focus on the content of session and on the students.
(f) Final word: If you are feeling overwhelmed, remember the #1 tip from experienced online instructors: keep it simple! Don't worry about making everything super flashy or perfect. Use the simplest technology that meets your needs. Be accommodating and sympathetic with students, and they will do the same for you.
Please email coronavirus@uwaterloo.ca.
The University of Waterloo acknowledges that much of our work takes place on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Our main campus is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. Our active work toward reconciliation takes place across our campuses through research, learning, teaching, and community building, and is co-ordinated within the Office of Indigenous Relations.