April 27, 2020

This message is distributed to All-Instructors and SBADM-L.  (Click here to view description of distribution groups.)  

The following is being sent on behalf of The Instructional Support Team 
**************************************************************
Welcome to week 5!

We’ve made it halfway through the term - great job to everyone! This week, a couple of reminders for this midterm season.

Showing kindness goes a long way!
A reminder that as we move into mid-term season, students appreciate knowing that you understand that this is an especially difficult time. Last week’s blog post in The Scholarly Teacher is a great 3-minute read on empathizing with students in tough circumstances. And studies like this one provide background and possibilities for supporting your students’ academic success as they go into the second half of the quarter (see p. 11). Try a GauchoSpace survey to collect feedback, send an email via Peachmail letting them know that you know this term has been challenging and encouraging their success, and/or remind them of campus resources. They will appreciate knowing that you care.

Faculty who have attended the open-forum coffee talks and happy hours hosted by Instructional Development and CITRAL shared strategies to support students who are struggling, too. They’ve mentioned:

  • Having flexible due dates and/or a flexible range of time to submit course work.
  • Leaving the Zoom room open after a meeting for students to chat with you (like they might do after an in-person class)
  • Using direct, private messaging in Nectir or other messaging apps to check in on students who seem to be struggling
  • Structuring the grading scheme so that a subset of the lowest scoring formative assessments can be dropped

GauchoSpace Gradebook setup and displaying your grades to students

As assessments and activity grades continue to come in, it can be helpful to display grades for students to monitor their progress in their courses. If you haven’t already, now is a good time to finalize setting up your GauchoSpace gradebook and to look at how you are displaying your grades for students and how the hierarchy of your gradebook is set. You can even set your course up to exclude future empty grade items so the gradebook will show students a current course total. Email help@collaborate.ucsb.edu for more assistance or to schedule a Zoom consultation about your gradebook setup.

That’s it for now. Have a great week!

The Instructional Support Team