COVID-19 information

Mental health and wellness resources for staff and faculty:

• Renate is available for wellness chats if you need to talk, rdonnovan@uwaterloo.ca
• Mindshift App – for reducing anxiety and stress
• Coronavirus Sanity Guide (FREE) – from Ten Percent Happier
• Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – site on wellbeing and reducing coronavirus anxiety
• My Workplace Health – site on how to reduce Coronavirus related anxiety in the workplace
• Workplace strategies for Mental Health – Canada Life
• UWaterloo Employee Assistance Program

There are several articles on how to navigate COVID-19 that might be helpful:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has posted Manage Anxiety & Stress related to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Five Mental Health Tips Amid COVID-19 Concerns from the Canadian Mental Health Association
• How to prevent loneliness in a time of social distancing by Scientific American

Using LEARN to administer exams:

The advantage of using LEARN is that you can upload a question bank, and different students receive a different group of questions--making it more challenging for them to do the test together.

Take home exams can be offered in a few ways. You can offer a timed test with a specific start and end time and use the randomization function in LEARN. You can provide the exam at the end of classes and give the students until the date of the exam to submit to the Dropbox--similar to an assignment. You could even have a few different versions of the assignment and randomize which students receive which version. Or, depending on how exams are spaced, all the instructors could release the exam the day before the current exam date and give the students 24 hrs to complete it--and submit via Dropbox.  The length of the exam would vary depending on the approach/outcomes. You will want your questions to be higher order questions as per Bloom's Taxonomy.

Using Crowdmark to administer exams:

Instructors may be wondering about using Crowdmark for non-proctored exams/assignments. For those who have never used the assigned assessment feature in Crowdmark, Crowdmark has created a step-by-step video guide.

It would be a great idea for first time users to create a mock assignment and send out to the students in advance of any online exam so that students are familiar with the process of uploading their scanned solutions to Crowdmark (and instructors/TAs are familiar with the differences with administered assessments).

If you have questions, contact your UW local Crowdmark support at cmadmin@uwaterloo.ca.

Another option is a summative assignment that would replace the exam.  The assignment should be something like a "case study" or the equivalent type of problem they could complete in a couple of hours. This could be released and the students given 24 hours to complete it. It would be best if there was no overlap with other courses and a short break between each released exam. The problem, or case, would require them to understand and adapt content from the course in order to complete it. Again, aiming for the higher order Bloom's functions (applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating).  Maybe something like: analyze this problem and create a solution.  You will have to keep in mind the level of the problem be relevant to their academic level and test material covered by their readings or course lectures.

Dealing with time zones:  Earlier it was thought that not many students would be in very different time zones, but it looks like many will be.  If at all possible, please try to accommodate such students in any on-line testing.  Consider allowing a 12-hour window to write the exam. In the worst case, if accommodation isn't possible, and the student refuses to write a 2am exam, please use an INC grade instead of a DNW grade.

Exam timing:  Please remember students have multiple exams (or replacements for exams).  You cannot assume everyone in your class is available during a specific 4 hour slot, for example.  Many students have left Ontario as well, so we also have to think of time zones.  Finally, there are AccessAbility students to accommodate.  If you need to have a narrow-window test, I recommend contacting your students to find out if any of them will have a problem with that timing.  Providing a wider window, or more than one offering, are also good approaches. 

There are many other options. The best option depends on the type of material covered in the course and the desired outcomes.

Looking for on-line exam advice, suggestions for timing on take-home exams or summative assignments – contact Renate Donnovan.

Images for LEARN, Teams and WebEx – to create a more consistent Waterloo-focused experience giving you the chance to download image banners featuring popular campus spaces and faculty colours to use as backgrounds or banners in LEARN. Many of you will be able to use these banners as custom backgrounds for video conferences. We’ll work with IST make these backgrounds available as standard in Microsoft Teams and share instructions on how to use them as soon as the tool allows

Courseware development support – we’ve partnered with the team behind the Keep Learning site  to share existing resources and downloads on our Brand site that includes PowerPoint templates, Word doc templates, icons and more. Using these branded templates is another way you can help create a sense of Waterloo even while we are working and learning remotely.