Fall 2020 UARK Pedagogy

If you choose to teach face to face in the Fall of 2020, you have a few guidelines that must be maintained during this time. These guidelines have been evolving over the last few months, so this wiki article may not be current at all times.

1. Students must be given assigned seats to assist in contact tracing
2. FAMA must approve your room for your class size or you will need to split your course up into separate meetings
3. Students must maintain a distance of 10 feet from instructors
4. Students must maintain a distance of 6 feet from each other
5. Students will need to wear a mask while seated.
6. You must have a flexible absence policy that allows students to miss long periods of time due to Covid19. This also means you need to have a concrete policy with step-by-step instructions on how to make content up.
7. You must record all classroom content and broadcast it synchronously for students who opt to take your course remotely.
8. You MUST ensure all students have the same access to success in the course. There can be no penalties, perceived or real, for students who choose to take your course remotely.
9. Office hours and conferences should be held virtually.

You should default to using Blackboard for your course. Zoom has become the preferred provider for Fall 2020 remote courses, and you will have integrated sign-in via Blackboard. Collaborate Ultra is the backup/secondary platform.

Here is the UArk IT page on Getting Started with Zoom.

When you are teaching synchronously on Zoom, you will need to record activities for students who may be unable to attend due to illness or who may need to access the materials again to watch at their own pace. You should always remind students that these synchronous activities are being recording.

To record, simple enable Cloud recording on Zoom. Once your recording is done, you'll get a link from Zoom with a passcode for viewers. You will then need to post this to your Blackboard course site in the correct lesson folder for future reference.

You should try to hold synchronous class activities during your normal class time at least once per week. You should use a minor grade of some sort to track students to make sure they're not falling away during the semester.

You absolutely cannot require students to meet outside of your class times, as this may interfere with a face to face course or another synchronous course that they're taking.