|
|
Jan. 8, 2025
Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year! I hope your holidays have been peaceful and joyful.
Please find below information and reminders intended to help you prepare for the upcoming term. Some of this information has changed, so please review and update your syllabi accordingly. The accompanying syllabus template identifies the information required in syllabi by SUNY and the NY State Education Department. The template also provides guidance on best practices in syllabus development provided by the Faculty Center. I hope to see you at Institutional Success Day on January 17. The agenda includes many sessions on university initiatives and policies that will help position us all for success as we collaborate to advance the university’s educational mission.
Also, I would like to especially highlight three matters that are either new or require clarification.
- Please note that as part of National Job Shadowing Day on Feb. 3, students may approach you about their plans to participate in local job shadowing experiences that the Career Planning and Networking Center has organized. (Students have the option of participating for 2, 4, or 8 hours, and the CPNC staff have reinforced the need for students to discuss any implications for class attendance with their faculty.)
- As you likely know, our campus has a newly revised Excused Absences Policy (more details below), which was recommended through the shared governance process and approved by the President during the last academic year. Class-specific policies and practices pertaining to student absences must align with the university-wide policy on student absences.
- Our Distance Education Policy includes a definition of in-person courses as utilizing “online modality in less than 30% of its instruction and class activities.” This definition, known as our “30% rule,” establishes the ceiling for online components in in-person classes. The original intention of this policy provision was to differentiate fully-online courses from in-person courses that include some online activities and engagements. Please know that university policy—the 30% rule—does not support pivoting an in-person course (for example, shifting to online work or meetings at the semester’s end) as defensible pedagogy. In-person classes should be held on campus until the scheduled last day of class.
Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Resources:
- 24-hour Local Crisis Hotline (Oneonta/Otsego County) 1-844-732-6228, call/text 988 or chat online for trained counselors in the location of your area code.
- Middle Earth Peer Assistance Hotline (when classes are in session) 518-442-5777. Monday-Thursday 1pm-midnight Friday-Sunday 24 hours/day.
- If there is a life-threatening emergency, call 911 or University Police at (607) 436-3550.
- SUNY Oneonta Student Basic Needs, Mental Health and Wellbeing Resources.
Archived Course Materials:
Brightspace Trainings & Use:
- Syllabi for all classes—independent of modality—must be available to students in Brightspace and submitted to your department for archiving by the second day of the semester.
- The Faculty Center for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (“Faculty Center”) will continue to provide synchronous in-person and online trainings on Brightspace. These trainings are announced in the Bulletin each week and can be accessed through the Faculty Opportunities events page.
- For online courses or courses with online components, student data (names, ID #’s, etc.) must be stored in, and grades posted to Brightspace. However, content (e.g., YouTube videos, webpages, journal articles, publisher content, etc.) can reside elsewhere. Faculty delivering on-campus courses are strongly encouraged to include class materials in Brightspace in case an online pivot becomes necessary for any reason.
- Please contact the Faculty Center if you need assistance with other assessment methods or want to learn more about exam settings inside Brightspace. TurnItIn.com is fully functional in Brightspace to support plagiarism detection. Please submit a ticket through the IT Service Portal to request training on how it can be connected to assignments in Brightspace.
Gen Ed Requirements & Course Learning Outcomes:
- Incoming students will fall under the requirements of Oneonta’s new General Education program, the Red Dragon Academy. Transfer students may have already satisfied SUNY’s general education requirements at previous institutions, however. Other transfer students may have had requirements waived to “hold them harmless” during the transition from one system-wide program to another. For advisement purposes, please use the requirements outlined in students’ DegreeWorks.
- Courses that carry General Education attributes must identify the associated learning outcomes and competencies on syllabi. The learning outcomes for all 11 required knowledge and skills areas are available from SUNY’s General Education Framework website. (Resources for faculty teaching DEISJ courses are also available through SUNY’s site.) The 3 competencies embedded in Knowledge and Skills courses can be found on this newly revised Red Dragon Academy website.
Library Course Reserves & Open Educational Resources (OER):
- When selecting texts, readings, and reserved materials, please consider library materials in all possible formats–physical and digital texts, and media. In support of your choice, the library manages both print and electronic course reserves.
- Open access is another consideration. Open Educational Resources (OER) are free to students and easy to share online. Digital texts (eBooks, journal articles and other library resources) are accessible to students in all course modalities and easy to use. Learn more about OER and get help from the library in discovering digital texts. (Use of library course reserves, OER and other library resources also increases the likelihood of students starting classes prepared with the materials, especially students who have added classes during drop/add.)
Syllabus Requirements & Template:
- Click the button below to review the ADA-compliant syllabus template identifying the course information required in syllabi by the NY State Education Department. Please ensure your syllabi include this information in an accessible format. Links to sections of the OPEN SUNY Course Quality Rubric (OSCQR) have been included in the template to give additional insight into this information's importance. (Feel free to delete these links before sharing your syllabus with students.
- Syllabi should link to the Course Policy and Procedures webpage, as the syllabus template specifies, to ensure distribution of current policy information to students.
- Consider spelling out any specific class policies about the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence such as ChatGPT. The Faculty Center has collected a wide-range of AI usage statements (you will need to click on the AI Syllabus Policy Examples tab at the top of the page) that can be used in your syllabus to outline the expected use or non-use of AI in the classroom.
| |
Excused Absences Policy:
- The University’s Excused Absences Policy addresses absences due to both illness and religious observance. New York State Education Law (section 224-a) requires that institutions excuse—from examinations, study, or work requirements—students who, due to religious beliefs, are unable to attend class(es), and obligates faculty and administrative officials to ensure students are availed of opportunities equivalent to the work missed during religious observance.
Office Hours:
- Office hours are essential opportunities for student engagement that must be specified in syllabi. Faculty are expected to establish and hold one office hour per class weekly (e.g., a 3-course load requires 3 hours of office hours weekly), in the modality of the class. In other words, in-person classes require in-person office hours, and online classes require online office hours. Faculty delivering in-person classes may choose to schedule online engagements with students seeking meetings outside of established office hours. However, faculty delivering online courses cannot require students to be on campus for meetings or any other purpose.
Credit Hours:
- The number of credit hours allocated for each course is directly correlated to the number of instructional contact hours. The degrees we award, our ability to distribute financial aid to our students, and indeed our institution’s accreditation hinge on us meeting our instructional hour requirements for credits awarded. Please keep this obligation in the forefront of your class planning.
- Generally, a three-credit course requires 150 minutes of classroom activity and six hours of out-of-class student work per week or the equivalent.
- For laboratory, field work, practicum, workshop, studio work, one credit is awarded for the equivalent of 15 periods of such activity, where each activity period is 150 minutes or more in duration with little or no outside student preparation expected.
Interim Grade Reports:
- Interim grade reports should be entered into Web Services (which can be accessed in the Faculty/Staff links through my.oneonta.edu) by Tuesday, March 25. The goal of interim grade reports is to provide early feedback to students so that they can adjust their approaches to learning, seek additional support if needed, and make informed decisions about their course enrollments. Interim grades, along with other forms of feedback—even low or no stakes—provided regularly to students helps them know where they stand. Other key dates and deadlines for Spring are available on the Registrar’s webpage.
Course Surveys (formerly Student Perception of Instruction Survey):
The dates for full-semester survey administration for this term are
- Mon, April 28 (course surveys may be opened by instructor through my.oneonta.edu)
- Sat, May 3 (course surveys open automatically); and
- Wed, May 7 (course surveys close automatically, end of day).
- Faculty who want students to complete course surveys during class time should specify so in their syllabus. Students will receive links to the course surveys when each is opened (either manually by the instructor from April 28–May 2 or on May 3 when surveys “open automatically”) and subsequent reminders asking them to complete them by May 7, before final exams begin.
Final Exams & Final Grades
- The last day of final exams for the spring term is Wednesday, May 14. Final course grades are due by Friday, May 16. Please note that the review of student progress and status—and academic dismissal decisions—for spring term by the Student Progress Committee will take place on Tuesday, May 20. Submitting final grades past the established deadline will impede the Committee’s ability to evaluate student progress across all completed courses.
| |
Thank you for updating your syllabi and ensuring that your course design and practices align with University policy, and more generally for supporting the success of Oneonta students.
Sincerely,
Enrique Morales-Diaz
Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs
| |
|
|
|
|
