Newsletter January 3, 2024
cte.utah.edu

The team at the Martha Bradley Evans Center for Teaching Excellence is here to support you as you get your courses up and running. This “Semester Startup Edition” contains information that all instructors should keep in mind when developing syllabi, assignments, and more.

PPM 6-100 requires the following for ALL U of U courses: 

Syllabi must be posted at least one week prior to the beginning of the semester. Not everyone is ready to publish their Canvas courses this early, though. These instructions will guide you in creating a hyperlink to your syllabus from the course schedule in case you are not ready to publish your syllabus with your Canvas course a week in advance.

Faculty should provide reasonable accommodations to students who cannot attend classes due to sanctioned University activities, University closures, or sudden illness or emergencies. 

Reading Days are protected time for students to prepare for the final exam and assessment period. Instructors shall not require any course-related activity, assessment, or submission of work on Reading Days. Instructors may use Reading Days for optional activities, such as office hours. While an instructor cannot initiate required course-related activity, assessments, or submission of work on Reading Days, instructors have the option to accommodate student requests for required work and/or examinations to be rescheduled for a Reading Day. Reading Days restrictions do not include responsibilities with external placements, such as clinical positions and internships.

The Office of the Registrar and PPM 6-100 state that final exams should be held according to the Final Exam Schedule developed by the Scheduling Office.

The Center for Teaching Excellence website has several Syllabus Design resources, including a Syllabus Checklist and Syllabus Template that indicate required and recommended content and University policy statements. We update our checklist and template regularly with updated policies and information from across the university.

You can also request a consult with CTE staff for more in-depth course and pedagogy questions. 

Digital Learning also offers a Pre-Semester Checklist for getting started in Canvas, as well as several Canvas Help links. Or, if you need more one-on-one support with Canvas or other course or pedagogy-related ideas, consider popping into our Virtual CTE drop-in hours on January 3, 4, and 5 from 8-5. We will have several team members logged in and waiting to help instructors.

Creating a new Canvas course, but have no idea how to get started? Want to refresh your course design, but not a huge fan of working with that pesky little rocket ship, Design Tools? Digital Learning has released a new, all HTML-based Canvas course template that can help you get started!

No programming skills required– this template covers all the bases and includes all the instructions you’ll need to get started.

This template is the official outline for new courses available from UOnline, so you’ll be prepared for whatever kind of modality you might be teaching next semester.

Interested in using this new template? Check the template out here, or search for “University of Utah Gen3 Template” in Canvas Commons.(Can’t access the link? Make sure you’re logged in to Canvas!)

New updates scheduled to be published before Spring 2024. Template for Summer 2024 to be available in Spring. Interested in learning more? Contact University Connected Learning.

All instructors receive notices from the Center for Disability and Access when their students require accommodations, but there are things you can do that will benefit ALL students, regardless of whether they are seeking support from CDA. CTE’s Teaching for All document provides guidance for instructors on creating an accessible classroom environment that implements principles from Universal Design for Learning and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as well as some practical accessibility tips for common tools like Kaltura, Adobe Acrobat, and more.

When developing assessments and assignments for your course this spring, consider the following:

There are lots of really cool things you can do with AI in your course. CTE has developed an AI Generative Tools page that presents an AI checklist, assignment ideas, AI Tools and Detectors, and more. If you’ve got questions about how to incorporate AI into your courses, please schedule a consultation with us or drop in to our Virtual Drop-In Hours this week!

The highest student course feedback response rates tend to come from instructors who incorporate time for feedback into their course schedule. This can be as simple as devoting 20 min of class time to allow students to complete the student course feedback forms, or developing more reflective assignments around the feedback form. CTE has put together a list of resources to help you think about how to increase your student course feedback response rate (and thus the usefulness of the feedback received). In Spring 2024, the SCF response window will run from 4/15/24 to 5/9/24.

Recent conversations around CTE have raised the fact that students often don’t know where to go when they have a concern. For many reasons, students may feel uncomfortable raising these concerns directly with the individual in question. We compiled the below table to help campus members know where to go when they need to report information.

 

A course syllabus is a critical teaching tool, and including a statement on basic needs in your syllabus educates and connects students to important resources to help them meet their basic needs. Our new Basic Needs Support Statement encourages students to seek assistance when needed and fosters a culture of care by emphasizing the support systems in place to help them thrive. This statement is included in CTE’s Syllabus Checklist and Template, but it may also be appropriate to include it in other places in your course materials, such as Canvas sites, or your first class presentation.

 

Basic Needs Student Support Statement. Success at The University of Utah includes learning about and using available resources. The Basic Needs Collective (BNC) is a coordinated resource referral hub. They educate about and connect students to campus and community resources to help them meet their basic needs. As a central location for resource referrals related to food, housing, health insurance, managing finances, legal services, mental health, etc., any student experiencing difficulty with basic needs is encouraged to contact them. Drop into their office in the Union basement or schedule an in-person or virtual visit with them online through their webpage: https://basicneeds.utah.edu/.

If you’ve read this far, we appreciate your attention to our newsletter and to your teaching, and we think you should reward yourself with some of the Faculty Wellness opportunities on campus. The Employee Wellness site provides several resources for faculty and staff on campus. Or you can sign up for a fitness class through Peak Health and Fitness or through Campus Recreation. If you want to sign up for a class through Continuing Education, make sure to submit your reduced tuition form  by January 7.

University Teaching Grants

Due Jan. 29 / March 13

Public Service Professorship

Applications due Jan. 31