Instructor Memo October 2020

It is recommended that all faculty/instructors, students and staff use their UVic email address within all learning systems by setting their UVic email as their preferred email in MyPage. It is also recommended to use Single Sign On (or SSO) to enter Zoom rather than entering as guest. This creates the most secure environment. If many of your students are entering as guest, Cybersecurity awareness is even more important in the fully online environment and these resources may be helpful to you.

Please be aware that there are a number of vendors who actively promote their educational technology type products including proctoring products directly to instructors. Unless you are using a UVic-approved educational technology, the product may require a privacy and security review. Faculty/instructors who are approached by vendors are asked to check with LTSI at ltsisupport@uvic.ca to determine if the necessary approvals are in place. At this time, there are no approvals in place for proctoring tools using surveillance type software (e.g. facial recognition, movement tracking).

Based on the best intentions of engaging students and delivering course content, it is easy to create heavy workflows as we begin to teach in the online environment. One of the most common concerns from students and faculty/instructors relates to the volume/weight/workload of courses. If you are noticing that the workflow in your course is more than you had anticipated, you can streamline your course even while it is in progress. From a substantive perspective, this can often be accomplished by reducing the volume of reading, or number of activities (e.g. postings) while at the same time maintaining the overall learning outcomes and grading structure. Assessments should retain their same weighting but can be streamlined to simplify the assessment. Ideas for streamlining courses are available. As you start to prepare the online delivery of your spring courses, please consider the overall workflow for you and your students recognizing that a full course load for students is five courses per semester.

All Brightspace and Teams sites for Spring Term courses will be available to you and are provisioned automatically. If you need to migrate content from another site for your Spring course please submit a request to have a course migrated from CourseSpaces to Brightspace. Also, we’ve just added tips for organizing course materials and assignments within your Spring courses. We know that one of the challenges students are having is in navigating and finding required components of courses across many course offerings. We have also created a new Brightspace sample course template that may assist you and reduce time spent on developing your Spring Course.

A reminder that for all synchronous classes, faculty/instructors need to use the 50-minute academic hour (or 75 minutes for a 90-minute time slot). Students registered full-time are often moving from “zoom room” to “zoom room” and require a break in-between sessions (similar to what happens on campus). And it’s important for you to have a break, too. When preparing video for synchronous sessions, ideally the video length will be no longer than 10-15 minutes, providing an opportunity for discussion/questions between each video segment. In relation to asynchronous offerings, ensure that you have included engagement opportunities within the course structure. As you prepare for Spring, strategies for engaging students and building community in both synchronous and asynchronous formats are available. Where viable, we would recommend a combination of asynchronous (lecture components, for instance) and synchronous components (discussion groups, office hours, tutorials, for instance) for a course.

Accessibility is an important issue for students in the online environment and LTSI has created a set of resources to improve accessibility. We are also pleased to announce that Kaltura captions are now generated automatically on upload of videos. They take 15-30 minutes to appear, but there is no need to request. Captions won’t automatically appear for videos already uploaded to Kaltura, but these can still be manually requested. The Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) is also an important resource should you have questions about student accommodations, including accommodation in online exams. More support will be available for instructors to assist with accommodations and exams. Students with accommodations are first and foremost UVic students and we ask that you refrain from using terms such as “CAL students” in your communications so that we can all support an inclusive and welcoming learning environment.

Online teaching is new to most faculty/instructors, it is also a new experience for most students. It is important to keep the lines of communication open as we all find new ways of working within the online environment. We would strongly encourage you to provide some forum for student feedback at the mid-point of the course, with an emphasis on how to make the experience better for the remainder of the term. This not only builds relationship and good-will with students, it also recognizes the dynamic and challenging environment within which we are all working. To assist you in this, there is a “ready-made” tool available to you in Brightspace sample course that can be easily copied into your own site. We’ve heard from many instructors that this is an effective way to get student feedback early on in a course. Other less formal approaches include using the whiteboard or annotate tools in Zoom. Before eliciting student feedback, it is important to be clear as to what type of feedback you are seeking (provide examples of constructive feedback) and how the feedback will be used. Once you have received student feedback, you are welcome to bring that feedback to work with a Learning Experience Designer to get support and make modifications to course design (in the present term or for a future course offering).

Creating a respectful classroom culture is important in any classroom and is especially significant in the virtual environment where communication is more reliant on educational technologies. Setting clear expectations within the classroom is integral to supporting an inclusive and respective learning environment. Ideally this is done, at the start of the term, but can be employed at any point in the term (it is never too late!). Students need to know your expectations and that you will quickly and effectively address any concerns that may arise. There are a number of strategies that can be used to address challenging behavior. It may also be helpful to review with students periodically the online student conduct policy and should concerns arise, faculty/instructors as well as TAs and students can report concerns that they have through onlineconduct@uvic.ca.

Please keep in mind that medical documentation is no longer required to support an academic concession. You may have students in your online or f2f course who cannot attend a synchronous session of an online course or a f2f course on campus because they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, are sick, and/or are self-isolating. In the f2f instance, it is important to discourage attendance in the case of illness. To support students, you should provide course content to such students; however, it is not necessary to record your lectures for this purpose. Students could be provided with the powerpoint or other course materials used to deliver the synchronous session; or as an instructor you could meet with students in a virtual office hour setting to review the missed session.

As an instructor, it is important to discuss your expectations with your course TA, and to ensure that those expectations can be accomplished within the assigned hours (this includes time for training). You may need to adjust TA duties or request additional TA support so that TAs are not working beyond their paid hours. Tips for working effectively with TAs include: checking in on a weekly basis with your TA to help prevent burnout and to ensure that your TAs are fully prepared to undertake their TA responsibilities; and secondly, provide TAs with specific details (guidelines) of what you are asking them to do. Remember, for many TAs this may be a new experience, their first time marking or facilitating a discussion and they need supports and resources to guide them in their work.

Many faculty/instructors and students are concerned about academic integrity. As we have described in the Academic Integrity Framework, it is important to use multiple strategies to support academic integrity. At the outset and in an ongoing way, it is important to emphasize your expectations as to academic integrity in all forms of assessment, clearly stating prior to exams the academic integrity standards, and requiring students to review/agree to an academic integrity pledge. In addition, UVic now has acquired Respondus, a lock-down browser, proctoring type tool that limits software access. It can be used in conjunction with Zoom. A new resource is also available that describes how to use Respondus Lockdown Browser and Zoom together. There is also a Respondus request form to complete to ensure that faculty/instructors and students have the necessary information to effectively use this tool.

There are a number of questions and concerns emerging related to assessment practices in general and final examinations specifically. If you are seeking assistance with assessment practices, please contact ltsisupport@uvic.ca, for specific questions regarding student accommodations contact the Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) and contact the Registrar’s Office for questions regarding exam scheduling. In the coming days we are bringing together academic and administrative leaders to identify issues and problem solve (including looking at ways to streamline scheduling). Further guidance on assessment practices and final examinations will follow. For now, we want to share that we are hearing that online assessments/examinations are taking students longer than expected to complete. As you estimate the time required to complete the assessment, keep in mind that doing the assessment online may take students longer than completing the same assessment “on paper” and provide a substantial scheduled margin of time to account for this and for students to be tech ready (log in time, for instance).

We want to clarify that there are no restrictions in the Academic Regulations (section on “Evaluation of Student Achievement”) around hand-in dates for projects during the final exam period. You can ask for final projects/recitals/group projects/essays etc. to be due during the final exam period. If you have already scheduled such work to be due right before the final exam period, at your choice, you can retain the deadline and provide an extended window for handing in the work (we have heard from students who are experiencing a high number of assignments due right before exam period).

Access supports for any of your online teaching questions through ltsisupport@uvic.ca We are more than willing to assist you, and no question is too large or too small. In addition to contacting LTSI directly, you can always request: one-on-one consultations or “drop-in” Tues, Thurs, & Friday 2-3pm to discuss your concerns. The faculty mentors program is also very popular in some Faculties, ask your Chair or Dean if your Faculty has an online faculty mentor. As always, the full breadth of resources are accessible through Teach Anywhere. Having taught, for one or maybe even two terms online, some of you may be interested in accessing supports to improve your course design and the student experience. We are most willing to also work with you in addressing the next level of questions you may have. Contact your dedicated Faculty LTSI Support Consultant teams through ltsisupport@uvic.ca.

Teaching online can be time consuming, particularly the first time you teach a course. Below is a list of “hands-on” supports that are available to you immediately (for Fall term or for Spring). It is important to access supports so that you can spend your time on the pedagogical aspects of the course. Fill out the Request Form and TIL will respond.

Here are examples of how we can help:

• Demo Student: Request a demo student option be added to your course (allows you to truly
  see your course from a student’s perspective)
• Quiz Set Up & Build: Have TIL enter your quiz questions and/or check your settings
• Assignment Set Up & Build: Have TIL enter your assignment details and/or check your settings
• Gradebook Set Up & Build: Have TIL create your gradebook or just check your settings
• Consultation or hands-on help organizing content in your site
• Respondus Lockdown Browser for Exams

Teaching online for the first time can be challenging. Many faculty/instructors find the initial term difficult and support from colleagues can be essential to shift from “trying to copy what you have done in the face to face environment” toward truly embracing an “online approach to teaching”. The Instructors online forum is designed to provide an open avenue for communication and sharing of ideas. Please don’t struggle alone, reach out in the Teaching Online Teams Forum or directly to LTSI.

Many students have entered the fully online learning environment for the very first time this fall. They too are working at becoming familiar with Brightspace as the new learning management system, and the other new technologies (e.g. Zoom, Kaltura, Crowdmark, Microsoft Teams). There are numerous resources and supports available to assist students so that faculty/instructors can focus on course delivery and don’t feel compelled to assist with the technologies at the same time. Students’ “first stop” for support with any technology is the Computer Help Desk, helpdesk@uvic.ca. There are also numerous self-paced and live sessions for students offered by LTSI. Learn Anywhere is the central portal through which students can find/access the full range of students support services including academic supports and is continuously being updated with new information. Students can now access Online Learning Strategists to gain support for their online learning challenges. In addition the University has acquired through BCNet access to the AliBaba Global Application Acceleration service. This provides enhanced internet access for students living in Mainland China.

As a critical tool to build student communities and meaningful engagement outside of the learning setting in a predominately online environment, all new to UVic students (undergraduate & graduate) will have opportunities to participate in New Student Connect. Participating students will be assigned in small groups by Faculty and/or interest groups to upper year peer mentors who will provide a wealth of knowledge about student life, the UVic student community, available support services, and ways that students can get connected as needed. Learn more about New Student Connect here.

In addition to providing both face to face and online mental health resources through our new Student Wellness Centre (opened in July), a new 24×7 phone & online student mental health resource and support program is now available for all UVic students, no matter where they are located, at any time. Known as UVic Support Connect, this is a great resource for instructors to refer students to when supporting a student who is struggling. As a UVic instructor, you can also directly consult with Support Connect about how to support a student if you are concerned.