Update – Teaching Resources & Guidance

Thank you for the hard work you have all put in over the summer to get ready for the fall semester. Whether you’re teaching online or in-person, preparing for the start of classes has required a lot of extra effort as well as anxiety and uncertainty.

I know that many of you feel that you have the semester well in hand. Some of you may still have outstanding questions about using Zoom and other tools or methods for teaching online. I asked Joe Tenbarge of the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services for some helpful resources, and he passed along this excellent list of his favorites.

A list of college contacts who can help you with your course.

A community for online/blended course planning.

A helpful resource to best utilize Canvas.

LAITS’s guide for Liberal Art courses contains basic information that any instructor may find useful.

This from the Moody College of Communication, but there are a variety of other CSU-specific resources as well. Reach out to your Dean’s office to find out more.

When your students go into your course in Canvas, they will see a link in the left-hand menu called “My Textbooks” (you can see it too). This feature, which was created as a collaboration among the Canvas team, the University Co-op, and the Provost’s Office, will guide students to any textbook(s) or digital course packets you have adopted through the Co-op for your class. This will make it easier for students to order the course materials and will provide students a comparison shopping tool for most textbooks. Digital content purchased will be available at the student’s Bookshelf site (they will be provided directions for access at the time of purchase), and physical content can either be shipped (free) or picked up at the Co-op. Note: My Textbooks feature can also include any Open Education Resources (OER) or PDF texts or materials you have adopted for your class, but you would need to formally adopt them through the usual Co-op adoption process. Alternatively, those materials can be sourced from the OER publisher (e.g., OpenStax) and/orposted directly to your Canvas course. Any course packets prepared by UT Document Solutions (physical or digital) would need to be acquired through their usual process.

The university recently shared Academic Flexibility Guidelines and we have an update to better support international students who are requesting to be exempt from synchronous content due to time zone differences. To help address this, we ask faculty to be clear with course expectations and provide flexibility where warranted. Modifying participation expectations due to student time zone differences should be considered when pedagogically appropriate, or necessary due to illness.

Finally, I would like to encourage any of you who are able to come to campus safely to consider doing some kind of socially-distanced outdoor activity with students some time during the semester. Over 75% of the seats in classes this semester are being taught online, so our students are not going to get to know us or their classmates very well. For example, I am planning to lead a campus tour for students and talk a bit about some of my memories of UT. You don’t have to do anything very time-consuming that requires a lot of preparation. But, if everyone does something that will add up to a lot.

Thanks for your dedication to the university and our students.

Art Markman

Fall Planning Committee