Remote Teaching Recommendations

It sounds like the problems experienced by instructors on Monday were mitigated over the past two days. Today’s update will be focused on teaching.  Following are important recommendations from Martha, and a few pieces of information:

1. Please be aware that neither YouTube nor Kaltura is allowed in China. If you have students who have returned to that country, please make sure that you post mp4 files of your lectures directly to Canvas.
2. We are required to keep a written record of which students ask to receive an S in a graded class or a grade in an S/F class. If your class is small, saving e-mail requests is sufficient. If your class is sufficiently large to make that difficult, a Canvas survey may be your best bet. We have attached an example a faculty member from PBS used.
3. Due to the extreme disruption of going on line—and the skyrocketing rate of positive coronavirus tests in Indiana—many faculty are guaranteeing students that their grade will not go down over the last five weeks of the class. This allows you to focus your time on the students who really want to learn the material.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this model, so each instructor should make their own choice.
4.  In some of our classes, we have had students who have dropped the class ask to re-enroll, now that they can get an S in the class instead of a grade. We strongly discourage allowing these students to re-enroll.
5. ITG just placed an order for additional ipads in anticipation for longer-term online course instruction needs.  Please fill out a job request if you need hardware to support your online instruction, so we can get ahead of the need: https://itg.indiana.edu/job-request/

As we are becoming accustomed to the challenges of working remotely, we’ll try to ease back into some normal business.  We’ll attempt to hold the faculty meeting scheduled for this coming Tuesday via ZOOM, and we're moving forward with research ranks, etc.