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President, provost provide update on fall term
"Late last night, we received new instructions from the Ontario Government’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Chief Medical Officer of Health that outline their direction to us for the fall term," says a memo from President Vivek Goel and Vice-President, Academic & Provost James Rush that was circulated to the campus community yesterday afternoon. "In particular, the government now requires that universities must implement a mandatory proof of vaccination program by September 7 and that we can relax some physical distancing measures in instructional spaces such as classrooms and labs."
"Out of an abundance of caution, we will maintain the approach we outlined in July. We will continue with our overall plan to deliver a mix of online and in-person courses for the fall while we look for ways to expand in person experiences such as in labs, libraries, and other learning spaces. Physical distancing measures in all other situations will remain in place in line with the province’s Step 3 regulations."
"We have planned for a fall term that creates an expanded in-person experience for all, while putting measures in place to protect and promote safety. These include:
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Mandatory proof of vaccination policy
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New wastewater testing in some residences
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Health Services COVID-19 Vaccination and testing centre
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Many instructional spaces limited to 50 per cent capacity, with some exemptions
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Physical health and safety protocols including masking and enhanced cleaning
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Updated signs and visual aids
"We are very encouraged that more than 20,000 people have already submitted their proof of vaccination or requested an accommodation. Of those, more than 97 per cent have provided proof of being fully vaccinated and a significant portion of the remainder have told us they have already had one dose. If you have not yet submitted your information –please do so as soon as possible."
"The trends in vaccination rates are positive, but we must remain vigilant as the fourth wave of the pandemic unfolds. We will continue to work with our local public health team to make sure our plans continue to protect your physical and mental health, while ensuring that we can expand in-person experiences for everyone."
"We will share more information on the details of our health and safety approaches to the fall term on the COVID-19 information website in the coming days."
Connecting with students earlier and more meaningfully to support their fall term success
A message from the Student Success Office (SSO) and the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE).
Students find their instructors to be incredibly valuable to their overall experience at Waterloo. In the classroom instructors have an opportunity to create community and engage students. Now more than ever, connecting with our students intentionally and meaningfully is vital to student success, persistence, and retention – especially in their first year.
With this in mind, the Student Success Office, in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching Excellence and the Centre for Extending Learning, developed and implemented “Early Engagement Quick Tips (EEQT)”. These are short, timely, actionable tips that instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) can proactively integrate into their courses. These actions can help to:
- create an interactive and supportive learning environment,
- foster positive student-instructor/TA relationships, and
- cultivate student sense of belonging in the classroom.
During the first two weeks of classes, instructors can expect to see tips for setting clear expectations for students early on and fostering a positive classroom climate. By mid-term, instructors will be encouraged to not only reach out to students facing academic difficulties, but also to acknowledge students who are thriving or showing improvement. This helps us to cultivate a more supportive institutional culture, one that proactively supports all students – a key component of early engagement work.
The EEQT have been made available to instructors and TAs since the start of the pandemic, and our faculty members have shared some positive comments about them:
- “Thank you so much for sending out those tips on building online community with our students. I’ve used several of them, and it is making the teaching experience more personal (and hence more rewarding for me) and the students seem to be responding well. For example, I sent out personal emails to them asking how they are doing and most of them responded, often with really sweet notes.” – Faculty of Arts member.
- “I don’t know if you’ve always done these tip send outs, but I have to say that this spring it has been so helpful. It feels like there is a teaching coach with me, reminding me along the way. Just wanted to share that I’ve been really appreciating.” – School of Architecture member.
- “The tips are very useful now, with new ideas to consider and implement and the tips are excellent reminders to do things I thought about doing but didn’t actually do. It will all be extremely useful again when I go from a project based grad course this term to 2 large undergrad “lecture based” classes in the fall (yikes).”– Faculty of Engineering member.
This fall term, instructors will have an opportunity to come together with other like-minded scholars to discuss and provide feedback on the EEQT. Keep an eye out for your invitation to feedback sessions in early September.
Computer scientists create new search systems to limit COVID-19 misinformation
Researchers have created a new system that increases the correctness and reliability of health-related searches by 80 per cent to help people make better decisions about topics like COVID-19.
Search engines are the most common tools the public uses to look for facts about COVID-19 and its effect on their health. A proliferation of misinformation can have real consequences, so a team at the University of Waterloo has created a way to make these searches more reliable.
“With so much new information coming out all the time, it can be challenging for people to know what’s true and what isn’t,” said Ronak Pradeep, a PhD student in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at Waterloo and lead author of a study about the program. “But the consequences of misinformation can be pretty bad, like people going out and buying medicines or using home remedies that can hurt them.”
Even the big search engines that host billions of searches every day can’t keep up, he said, since there has been so much scientific data and research on COVID-19 in such a short time.
“Most of the systems are trained on well-curated data, so they don’t always know how to differentiate between an article promoting drinking bleach to prevent COVID-19 as opposed to real health information,” Pradeep said. “Our goal is to help people see the right articles and get the right information so they can make better decisions in general with things like COVID.”
Pradeep says the project aims to refine search programs to promote the best health information for users. He and his research team have leveraged their two-stage neural reranking architecture called mono-duo-T5 for search which they augmented with Vera, a label prediction system trained to discern correct from dubious and incorrect information. The system links with a search protocol that relies on data from the World Health Organization and verified information as the basis for ranking, promoting and sometimes even excluding online articles.
A recent paper with results from preliminary testing of the system, “Vera: prediction techniques for reducing harmful misinformation in consumer health search,” with co-authors Pradeep, Xueguang Ma, Rodrigo Nogueira and Jimmy Lin, was recently published in SIGIR ’21: Proceedings of the 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval.
Thursday's notes
UW Fitness, which is part of the Centre for Community, Clinical and Applied Research Excellence (CCCARE), will once again offer livestream exercise classes to UWaterloo staff and faculty this fall. Thanks to the Staff Excellence Fund, we are able to offer these programs at a 50 per cent subsidy for Waterloo staff. "Participants can register for our popular Express Home Workout, Bootcamp or Express Core programs with lunch hour and after work sessions available," says a note from UW Fitness. These 6-week sessions start the week of September 13 and November 1. Registration is now open. For more information and how to register, check out the CCCARE website.
Concept will be hosting its first event of the fall term on September 21 called The University of Waterloo Innovation Ecosystem.
The University of Waterloo is home to a community of centres dedicated to supporting students in the development of innovative mindsets and entrepreneurial ideas," the event background information states. "During this event, you will be provided with an innovation roadmap that will detail how and when to engage with campus resources. If you want to build skills in innovative thinking or explore entrepreneurship, attending this event is the first step in your journey."
"This will be both a webinar and interactive event where attendees will get to learn about various resources available to them on campus, ask questions, and meet new people," a note from Concept says. "The goal is to increase student support while clearly explaining the different innovation centers available at the University of Waterloo."
On top of the opportunities for discussion and interaction, students who sign up and attend the entire event will have the chance to win a pair of free Apple AirPods. Register today.
With the news that WUSA is looking to reallocate the space currently used for the Clubs Library in the Student Life Centre, which contains, among other things, the long-running Waterloo Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming Club (WatSFiC)'s extensive collection of science fiction and fantasy books, Waterloo alumnus and Theatre of the Arts staffer James Nicoll penned a blog entry on Tor.com that highlights genre works dealing with the preservation or destruction of written materials.