Guidelines for instructors

Because of recent changes and improvements, questions about Crowdmark should be directed to the IST help desk for Crowdmark.

This is, of course, not a question with an easy answer. However, it is important to know that students at Waterloo Mathematics typically take five courses per term, so it’s not reasonable to expect them to work more than eight-nine hours per week on your course. Three of those hours are probably spent in lectures. One or two more may be spent in tutorials. That only leaves three-five hours for homework and studying.

If the course you are teaching is not a MATH course, then you should consult your home department/ school about homework policies and procedures.

If you are teaching a MATH course, then students in your class may hand in their assignments to a set of drop boxes outside MC 4066, which is the Tutorial Centre. The procedure is as follows.

• In the first week of term, if your course is to be assigned a drop box, then the MUO will tell you which drop box to use, and the combination to the lock on your drop boxes. In any case, the MUO will also tell you who your graduate Teaching Assistant (“grad TA”) is, and who your undergraduate markers are.
• If your course has been assigned drop boxes, you then tell the students which drop box to use, and tell only your graduate TA what the combination is. (If your course has not been assigned a drop box and you would like to use one, please contact the MUO to see if this is possible.)
• For every assignment, your grad TA will be responsible for collecting the assignments from the drop box, and distributing them to the undergraduate markers for marking. The undergraduate markers should not find out the combination to the drop box lock. If you have no drop box, or if you are not using the drop boxes, then you should arrange with your grad TA some other method of collecting the assignments and distributing assignments to the undergraduate markers. After the markers have marked the assignments, they should return the assignments to the grad TA, who should record the assignment marks.
• The grad TA is responsible for managing the undergraduate markers. They are also responsible for recording assignment marks and reporting these marks to you when you need them. Once assignments are marked, your grad TA will return them to you so you can give them back to the students.

If you are using Crowdmark then it is very easy to send an email to each student that links to their respective assignments.

When returning paper assignments to students, you must take certain measures to protect student privacy. Ideally, you should hand back assignments individually to students in lectures or in tutorials. Instructors are not permitted to leave homework assignments in the hallway for students to retrieve, for reasons of fire safety. Privacy also prohibits the returning of exams to students in a non-private manner, although privacy policy does permit assignments to be left in a public place for students to retrieve, provided that no assignment is left for more than two weeks, and that any student who wishes it can have their assignment returned in a private and confidential manner. Normally, assignments and exams are returned in tutorials or office hours, although other arrangements that are consistent with the fire and privacy regulations are possible, too. Whatever your assignment return method is, you should tell students that they may arrange to have their assignments returned in a more private way.

All this information, and more, can be found in the Schedule of Classes.

Here is an alternative front end to the Schedule of Classes.

Class lists, in Comma-Separated Values (CSV) format, can be obtained from Quest. If your course is using Learn then it is easy to get list of class photos by clicking on Instructor Tools.

To access Quest, you will need a WatIAM ID and password. This, in turn, requires an employee ID, which you get from Human Resources when they sign you up to begin your employment here. If you have any questions about this process, you should consult the staff in your home department/school. If you have no home department/school, consult the associate dean for undergraduate studies, in MC 4024.

If you are teaching any course other than a MATH course, then you should consult your department/school for guidance about how to assign final grades.

For MATH or MTHEL courses, final grades are normally assigned with a class average between 65% and 75%. If you are teaching a MATH course and you find that your class average is likely to fall outside that range, you should contact the associate dean for undergraduate studies in MC 4024 to discuss your grades.

In the Mathematics faculty, 50% is a minimal passing grade. In some courses, though, 60% and 70% are important thresholds for students, because of prerequisites in the sequel courses. In these cases, when you assign your final grades, you should be careful to make sure you can defend your decisions to award grades just below those thresholds. The following is a table of which thresholds are relevant for which courses:

If your course does not appear in this table, then 50% is the only relevant mark threshold.

1. Log into Odyssey using your CAS authentication.

2. In the 'My Course Offerings' tab, select the appropriate terms and course.

3. Click the 'Enrollment' link, you'll find an option 'Grade Revision'

4. Click 'Prepare' and enter the student ID number followed by a comma and the final grade. You can change more than one grade on the same form by adding a new row for each student and grade.

Please note that if the grade applies to a course that was taken more than a year ago then the grade revision needs to be approved by the Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies.