September 23, 2020
This message is distributed to All-Instructors, Academic-Assistant-Deans, and Academic-Department-Managers.
The following is being sent on behalf of the Instructional Support Team
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Dear Colleagues,
In this last week before Fall quarter, the IS Team hopes you have a chance for a bit of downtime. We’ll be with you throughout this term (and beyond) providing opportunities and support for your teaching. As we enter the term, we on the IS Team are thinking about kindness and empathy for students, colleagues, and ourselves. This brief read provides some strategies; this one does as well and links to some other excellent resources. Let us know how we can help! You’ll find contact information throughout this message.
And now, this week’s important items:
Make your life easier by enabling GauchoSpace course crashing
Enabling course crashing means that students on the course waiting list can keep up with class readings and activities on your GauchoSpace site until they become officially enrolled, at which time they are automatically kept in your GauchoSpace site.
Zoom Update: Self-Select Breakout Rooms Available Now!
Zoom meeting hosts can now create breakout rooms that participants can self-select into. If enabled, participants can move freely between breakout rooms, without needing the host’s help. Both the meeting host [i.e., you] and participants [i.e., students] need to be on the most recent Zoom client 5.3.0 to use this and other new features.
Remote Learning Preparedness Survey
Consider using or adapting the Remote Learning survey template in GauchoSpace to learn about your students and their technology access for Fall quarter.
TA Section Sites on GauchoSpace
For large courses with sections, you can have course sites created for sections so that students can access the lecture site and a separate nested section site. Instructors have access to the lecture and all section sites. TAs have access to their own section sites and the lecture site. We can also merge section sites for TAs with multiple sections. Interested in setting this up? Email help@collaborate.ucsb.edu
Campus Core Router Migration Work: Wednesday September 30 from 12:01am-6:30 a.m. Networking, Communications & Security Services staff will test and troubleshoot automatic fail-over of the network core, which will cause multiple network outages. This work will help ensure service resilience during unplanned equipment failures.
Extended Help Desk Hours in Weeks 0, 1, and 2 of Fall quarter
The GauchoSpace help desk is open from 8am - 6pm M-F. Instructors also can schedule (virtual) consultations with any helpdesk from 10-4 M-F. For questions or to schedule a consultation, send an email to help@collaborate.ucsb.edu.
For help with Zoom, GauchoCast, iClicker, Gradescope, Film Reserves, and Technology Loans, the Instructional Development Helpdesk will be open from 7:30am - 6pm M-F, with on-call help on Saturdays. Email help@id.ucsb.edu
For instructional consultation, contact:
Linda Adler-Kassner: ladler@ucsb.edu (click here to make an appt) - CITRAL
Lisa Berry: lisa_berry@ucsb.edu - Instructional Development
Mindy Colin: mindy.colin@ucsb.edu - Instructional Development
Maggie Safronova (m_safronova@ucsb.edu) - CITRAL
That’s it for this week!
The Instructional Support Team