Dear Colleagues,
Thank you all for your amazing work on the first day of classes after spring break. I know it has not been without some bumps in the road. We are gathering feedback on how things went and I wanted to send along a few tips and lessons learned from the first day of classes:
- Student Support – We are hearing from many faculty that using the first class to communicate with your students about their needs, challenges, and concerns is going well.
- Tip: there are many excellent articles on strategies for working with your students to manage this transition, including this one from Inside Higher Ed.
- Internet access – Students are all in different stages of transitioning back to their permanent addresses, which may mean that some will have internet access issues. This could also be the case at their permanent addresses. Please be flexible with your students.
- Tip: Canvas and Zoom can both be used on mobile devices, and students might consider turning on the “personal hotspot” (iPhone | Android) option on their phones to connect their laptops to their phone’s data connection. You might also point your students to free wifi options.
- Exams/Quizzes – While we are being asked not to give graded assessments this week, it’s worth noting that for future weeks timed exams/quizzes can be an issue in Canvas if students have a connectivity problem.
- Tip: consider alternatives, such as sending students the assessment by Canvas assignments or files (or even by email) at a certain time and asking for them back within the time limit.
- Canvas Notifications – Canvas turns notifications on for announcements by default. Some students turn these off, however. You may wish to ask your students to turn them back on so they get notifications when you make an announcement.
- Tip: consider creating alternative ways of communicating with your students such as email, text group chats, or use zoom just for informal meetings.
- Zoom – There have been reports of some minor hiccups with Zoom, from links taking a long time to load to class recordings taking hours to process. This is to be expected.
- Tip: make sure students have installed the latest version of Zoom.
- Proctorio – Proctorio can now be enabled by faculty directly. If you had students take a practice exam last week and are expecting it to continue this week, there may be an issue with the way our license was set up last week.
- Tip: please contact cndls@georgetown.edu, and we can help fix the problem.
Please do share any successes or challenges with us as you hold your classes. And, as a reminder, we are holding virtual drop in office hours every day from 9 a.m.-6 p.m., with extended hours Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week (8 a.m.-7 p.m.). For more information about these and more support options, please visit https://
On behalf of my colleagues in CNDLS,
Eddie Maloney
Executive Director, CNDLS