Dear faculty colleagues,
As many of you begin to plan for your classes this week, we have been working on some guidance to share with faculty that could help you think about the best way to prepare for resuming classes. The checklist below was created by Dean Brent Iverson with contributions by a committee of faculty and student representatives.
As mentioned previously, the university will have a full spring break as previously scheduled, and the semester will end at the same time as originally scheduled. Therefore, MWF instructors have lost 4 class periods, and TTh instructors have lost 3 class periods this semester.
For reference, in a normal spring semester there are MWF 44 class periods, TTh 30 class periods. A normal fall semester has MWF 42 class periods, TTh, 28 class periods. Due to the closure through Tuesday, this spring semester will have MWF 40 class periods and TTh 27 class periods.
It is essential that faculty make adjustments to their syllabus to accommodate for the reduction in the number of class periods and the disruption to academic activities for both you and your students. Like you, many of our students had no power, or worse, and could not spend any time studying or working on schoolwork as a result of the storms. Please keep this in mind as you work through the following faculty instructor checklist for now through March 1.
Here is a suggested checklist that you may find helpful.
- Decide whether you will be making up all, some, or none of the lost lecture material, assignments, and exams due to the closure. These will be very difficult choices, but thinking this through and making those difficult choices now will make the rest of the semester smoother for everyone.
- Adjust the timing of all scheduled assignments, quizzes, and exams for the rest of the semester, so students have a reasonable amount of time to complete or prepare appropriately. Therefore, any assignments or exams originally scheduled for last week or this coming week need to be adjusted assuming students could not work or study from Monday, February 15 through Tuesday, February 23. All later assignment or exam schedules should also be adjusted, or eliminated, based on your decisions from 1) above. Please avoid just delaying everything so students have an unreasonable amount of assignments due, or exams, the last week of class this semester.
- If in 1) above you choose to make up some or all of the lost material, decide now how you will be making it up.
- You might want to record lectures or shorter modules using the recording feature in Zoom and posting on Canvas. Please assign the viewing of these posted videos earlier in the remainder of the semester if possible, not crammed into the last week of school. (https://wikis.utexas.edu/display/LAITS/Record+a+Lecture+with+Zoom).
- You might want to replace lecture material with reading assignments from the textbook or other sources, or new quizzes or problem sets with assigned reading that walk students through the material.
- You might even be able to find useful modules online that you can assign such as those posted by organizations like the Khan Academy (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQM4SoZofZWuG6v7JRTk4rg) or from another university faculty member somewhere. If you have never searched what is available online out there, you will probably be surprised at how much of your class content is available online or in YouTube, trust me, your students are looking at it anyway.
- Create a new syllabus by March 1 based on 1), 2) and 3) above for your class, and send this out to students to avoid confusion and so we remain in compliance with HB 2504.
We hope you and your families are safe. It has been a hard week on you and all our community. Thank you for everything you are doing.
Sincerely,
Dan Jaffe