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There have been reports of difficulty accessing the syllabus template and gen ed attributes files. These links have been updated below and should be accessible using your SUNY Oneonta single sign-on credentials. Apologies for any confusion.
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Aug. 8, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
I hope your summer has been pleasant. Below please find 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 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, which several faculty who completed the online teaching certification program indicated would be helpful to provide.
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Reminders and Notes:
- As you know, we have migrated to a new digital learning environment, Brightspace. Classes will no longer be posted in Blackboard. IT Services has moved all courses and content that occurred in 2021, 2022, and 2023 from Blackboard into Brightspace. IT Services also maintains an archive of course materials from Blackboard going back to 2014. Faculty needing to access these materials or have them uploaded into Brightspace can submit a request through IT Services. 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 throughout the summer and into the fall; these trainings are announced in The Bulletin each week and can be accessed through the Faculty Opportunities events page. The Faculty Center has also created a Digital Learning Environment Migration webpage with information on our migration to Brightspace.
- The other major development is our launch of the Red Dragon Academy, Oneonta’s new general education program. All incoming students will fall under these new requirements. 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 systemwide program to another. For advisement purposes, please use the requirements outlined in students’ DegreeWorks.
Courses that carry Gen Ed attributes must identify the associated learning outcomes and competencies on syllabi. Use these links to find the new outcomes: 3 Core Competencies and 11 Knowledge and Skills Areas. For your convenience, we've compiled a roster of all courses with Gen Ed attributes.
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Please note that SUNY has resources and assistance available to any faculty member teaching a DEISJ course or planning to do so. Consult your dean for details about the online office hours being held by SUNY DEISJ fellows—and the availability of other SUNY resources—to assist faculty across the system with developing and delivering DEISJ courses.
- When selecting texts, readings, and reserves 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 on Milne Library's OER LibGuide. (Use of library course reserves, OER and other library resources also increase the likelihood of students starting classes prepared with the materials, especially students who have added classes during drop/add.)
- For online courses or courses with online components, student data (names, id #’s, etc.) must be stored in, and grades posted to, the University’s learning management system, 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 see the ADA-compliant syllabus template identifying course information required in syllabi by the NY State Ed Dept. and 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 the importance of this information. (Feel free to delete these links before sharing your syllabus with students.)
- Instructors should establish in writing how they plan to engage and support continuity of learning for students who may need to make recourse to the University’s Excused Absence Policy. Faculty Center staff are available to assist faculty with this effort and continue to maintain a web page with suggestions about using Flexibility in Teaching Modalities.
- The University’s Excused Absence Policy also addresses absences due to 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 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. 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.
- The University’s pilot use of Respondus Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor ended in summer ‘21. Please contact the Faculty Center if you need assistance with other assessment methods or want to learn more about exam settings inside Brightspace.
In addition, TurnItIn.com is currently being implemented into our Brightspace environment to support plagiarism detection. Once this tool has been fully integrated into Brightspace, the Faculty Center will provide details on how it can be connected to assignments in Brightspace.
- Consider spelling out any specific class policies about the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence such as ChatGPT. Are students permitted to use such tools in any phase of their work for your class? If so, specify permissible uses. If not, then underscore for students that use of paraphrasing software (“spinbots”) or Artificial Intelligence-writing software (like ChatGPT) will be treated as a form of plagiarism.
- 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 for 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 should be entered into Web Services (accessible through the Faculty/Staff links in myOneonta) by Thursday, Oct. 19. (View info about interim grades and other Academic Policies and Standards) The goal of interim grade reports is to provide early feedback to students so that they can adjust their approaches to learning. 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 Fall are available on the Registrar’s webpage.
- (Student) Course Surveys (formerly Student Perception of Instruction Survey) will continue to be distributed using the took created by IT Services last year. The dates for full-semester survey administration for this term are:
- Monday, Dec. 4 (course surveys may be opened by instructor through myOneonta);
- Saturday, Dec. 9 (course surveys open automatically); and
- Tuesday, Dec. 12 (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 instructors from Dec. 4 - 8 or on Dec. 9 when they open automatically) and subsequent reminders asking them to complete them by Dec. 12, before final exams begin.
- The last day of final exams for the term is Tuesday, Dec. 19. Final course grades are due by Thursday, Dec. 21. Please note that the review of student progress and status—and academic dismissal decisions—for fall term by the Student Progress Committee will take place on Friday, Dec. 22. Submitting final grades past the deadline will impede the Committee’s ability to evaluate student progress across all completed courses.
- Syllabi should link to the Course Policy and Procedures webpage to ensure distribution of current policy information to students. As the syllabus template states, instructors who distribute hard copies of syllabi should reproduce this information—including shelter-in-place and evacuation procedures, and the designated evacuation site for each class—in their syllabi using the webpage language to ensure accuracy.
Thank you for updating your syllabi and ensuring that your course design and practices align with University policy—and for supporting the success of Oneonta students.
Sincerely,
Enrique Morales-Diaz
Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs
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