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School of Public Health Academic Continuity

In the event of a long-term campus closure, it will be important for the University of Washington School of Public Health to maintain academic continuity in its current course offerings. The School and its faculty owe it to their students to provide the best available academic experience during a long-term disruption.

The expectation for teaching during a disruption will be that online teaching methods will be most prominent. After a fire or earthquake classrooms may not be habitable, and during a pandemic social isolation measures will likely prevent classes being held. With this in mind, the School recommends the following plans for maintaining course continuity in an online setting.

Prepare in advance

  1. The best way to be ready to continue teaching online is to put course materials online, such as syllabi, reading assignments, and other important materials. In doing so, an instructor will be better positioned to point his/her students directly to a URL they can pull information from rather than trying to push electronic versions of the documents to students. It will also save time trying to reconstruct or reconstitute a course during or after disruption.
  2. Using learning management software (e.g. Moodle) is the best way to maintain course materials. Consult within your department to see if they're using a learning management system and how to use it.
  3. If your department is not using learning management software, then use the university's course information server (courses.washington.edu) to set up a site for your course. Instructions are available for setting up an account. If you need an easy tool to set up a course site, Catalyst provides CommonView, which is tailored for creating course websites.
  4. Make sure to provide students with a link to your course materials and remind them that this is where they can find the syllabus, reading assignments, etc.
  5. Class lists are now electronic. Go to myuw.washington.edu, log in using your UWNetID credentials, and click on the "Teaching" tab. On this page there should be links to a list of students in each class taught as well as their contact information.
  6. Back up your information. Make sure you have at least one copy of your course materials and class lists backed up to portable media, another computer, or to a secure online storage service. In addition, it would be a good idea to keep a printed copy of these stored at home or office.

Should Disruption Occur

  1. The decision to continue teaching online will come from the department chair (?). They will inform faculty whether to proceed with plans for academic continuity.
  2. There are two instructional models that could be considered for continuing a course online -- a "coorespondence" model and a "file-sharing" model using Catalyst ShareSpaces.
    1. Coorespondence Model: A classical "correspondence" model, only using e-mail. E-mail students using the contact information on the class list asking them to continue with the course readings. Type up your lecture notes and e-mail them to your students in a timely manner. Offer to answer any questions over e-mail. Ask the students to discuss topics and readings over e-mail.
    2. Catalyst ShareSpaces: This method, using the file-sharing functions of Catalyst ShareSpaces, has been used effectively in teaching classes online. To post class materials for your class:
      1. Go to www.catalyst.washington.edu
      2. Link on ShareSpaces on lower left list.
      3. Follow the Instructions to set up the shared space. When it asks you who do you want to share files with, it even gives you the option of sharing it with your class list (which it has already).
      4. Upload the files you want to share.
      5. Notify your students of the web address of the shared space. To get an email class list, go to: www.myuw.washington.edu.
  3. If the instructor is comfortable with sharing their personal phone numbers, they can do so and offer to answer questions over the phone (perhaps keeping to office hours to reduce strain on their own time concerns).
  4. If their department already offers learning management tools, they should consult with the department on the best ways to use them for online learning.
  5. Instructors should keep in mind that during a major disruption the situation will not be normal, and so instructors should be mindful of each student's situation (e.g. loss of loved ones, loss of home/livelihood, sick with pandemic contagion). While maintaining academic continuity is important, so is being sympathetic to students during what may be a very stressful time for both instructor and students.

More Advanced Options for teaching online

If an instructor would like more advanced options for maintaining academic continuity, they can consider the following tools. However, IT staff may not be in a position to support these tools during a disruption. It will be up to the instructor to decide whether to use these tools and to learn how to use them in instruction.

  • Catalyst's suite of learning tools, available at catalyst.washington.edu. In addition to the aforementioned CommonView and ShareSpaces, Catalyst also provides WebQ for creating quizzes and surveys and GradeBook for tracking and publishing grades (If their department already has a learning management system such as Moodle, it would be better to use that instead of Catalyst.)
  • PBWorks, a wiki/collaboration tool. This could be useful in getting students to interact around class topics. Relatively simple to set up and use and is free (some control features are premium edition only).
  • Ustream.tv, a free site for recording and streaming video, such as lectures. This will require having a video camera for their computer or laptop.
  • Google Docs, which provides free word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet applications that can be shared online. While like Microsoft Office, their feature sets are limited.