Dear Colleagues:
It has been an extremely difficult time for many in our community impacted by recent events on campus. We appreciate your unwavering commitment to supporting UCLA’s teaching and learning mission, ensuring academic continuity by shifting to remote instruction this week.
To support your efforts to facilitate teaching and learning online in a secure and effective manner, we are deploying a quick guide with some supportive resources, Support for Remote Teaching in Bruin Learn. Below are some highlights from the quick guide:
- Zoom Security: To maintain the integrity of your virtual classrooms, it is crucial to secure your Zoom sessions. Detailed guidelines can be found on page 2 of the teaching resource linked above, which was created by the Bruin Learn Center for Excellence (CoE) with contributions from various teaching support units across campus. Implementing these measures will help to avert unauthorized access and disruptions to your synchronous online classes.
- Extended Office Hours: The Bruin Learn Center of Excellence (CoE) and the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) staff are available for live support with extended office hours from 9 AM to 7 PM through May 10, 2024. This service is designed to assist you in real-time with any challenges with Bruin Learn and Zoom that you may encounter. Visit CoE and TLC Office Hours for more details.
- CEILS Zoom Discussions for Teaching Support: The Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences (CEILS) is hosting virtual spaces to listen to your concerns, brainstorm ideas together, and provide strategies that can be implemented easily without adding a lot of preparation time to your workload. These sessions are scheduled for today (5/7/24), tomorrow (5/8/24), and Thursday (5/9/24). For more information and to access the zoom link, please view the announcement from CEILS.
We have received questions from instructors about approaches to best support student learning during midterms. Here are some ideas for your consideration. You may choose to utilize these suggestions depending on your individual instructional needs, as aligned with individual departmental and Academic Senate policies, and in ways that ensure equitable access to all students.
- Remote Exams: Explore resources and tools related to creating online exams and quizzes, including information on using Speedgrader, remote proctoring, and how to provide additional exam time for individual students with approved accommodations through the Center for Accessible Education (CAE).
- Take Home Midterms: Instead of trying to provide makeup exams to students impacted by these events, consider offering a take-home midterm.
- Replace the Midterm Grade with the Final Exam Grade: Consider offering the midterm as planned, allowing students who perform better on the final exam compared to a midterm exam to replace the midterm grade with the final exam grade. It’s important to announce this option to all students in your class ahead of time. This strategy benefits all students and is thus inclusive of those who are not able to take the midterm at all.
- Provide Extensions: Instead of managing the many student emails you’re likely to receive about late assignments, consider providing extensions to midterm assignments due this week.
- Alternative Assessments: Consider ideas and suggestions crowdsourced by our campus teaching support units for implementing alternative assessments.
The Academic Senate has communicated guidelines and additional resources that may be beneficial to instructors with academic planning for remote instruction. Please review the Updated Instructional Adjustments shared by the Undergraduate Council and Graduate Council, with the latest update provided on May 3, 2024.
Our community’s well-being and your ability to teach effectively are our top priorities. We understand the difficulties posed by these sudden instructional changes and are committed to supporting you through these shifts in course modality. Please do not hesitate to reach out to the Teaching and Learning Center for additional information about transitioning to remote instruction (Help@teaching.ucla.edu).
We also understand that several instructors are seeking resources to support thoughtful, compassionate conversations with students about the events on campus affecting academic continuity and, in some cases, disrupting class sessions. Instructors may find some of the strategies provided in our teaching guide, Teaching Strategies to Support Academic Continuity Through Difficult Times, helpful in navigating these conversations. This guide was designed from the perspective of pedagogical wellness, which emphasizes the role of care, concern, and respect in shaping an inclusive, safe, affirming and resilient learning environment for our Bruins, and the educators who teach them, to thrive.
Lastly, we welcome you to share concerns or suggestions with us to help improve our teaching support resources and services. Accordingly, please contact Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Eric Wells at EWells@teaching.ucla.edu for further assistance.
Sincerely,
Erin Sanders O’Leary
Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning