The following questions were derived from an emergency meeting of the IUPUI Faculty Council on a proposed change to the academic calendar for 2020-2021, comments submitted with faculty votes on the calendar changes, and subsequent questions received by the Office of Academic Affairs.* If you have questions regarding academic processes in the current environment in the next academic year, please submit them to ude[dot]iupui[at]aao.
*The academic calendar change passed the vote of the IUPUI Faculty Council and the University Faculty Council. The changed academic calendar can be found here.
The questions and responses on this page are subject to change if we are provided with new directives.
Calendar and Scheduling:
Schools and departments will make adjustments in early fall semester based on student distribution in fall classes.
This is a message that will need to be communicated frequently by academic advisors and other staff. For faculty, the technique of Quality Matters in which all activities and assessments are aligned to course learning goals will help reinforce the concept.
See Guidance for Academic Programs Delivered at IUPUI, IUPUC, and IUFW. Like summer, students will be advised to enroll in no more than six credits during the six-week session. During 13- or 16-week sessions, students will be advised to enroll in between 12 and 15 credits. See this graphic. For the spring semester, up to 18 credits across these options is covered by the flat (“banded”) tuition rate.
Fall break has been cancelled to mitigate the spread of the virus due to travel. There will be a Thanksgiving Break from November 23 through November 29. Shifting online after this period helps to ensure that students are not returning to campus after celebrating Thanksgiving elsewhere.
For consistency for students who are in multiple classes, it is important to keep the overall calendar dates, with no Fall break and an entire week at Thanksgiving.
Correct. There are no breaks scheduled up until Thanksgiving. Fall break has been cancelled to mitigate the spread of the virus due to travel. There will be a Thanksgiving break between November 23 and 29. Classes scheduled after November 29 will be conducted online. See the Fall 2020 Academic Calendar.
During a 3-week term students may enroll in up to 3 credits. See this graphic.
It depends on the adjusted classroom capacity for the room that you are assigned. For example, if you are assigned a room that can hold (under new safety guidelines) 25 students but 50 (or more) are enrolled, this means that students will need to rotate such that only 25 can be in the room at once. Start by querying your students (in Canvas) as to whether there are students who MUST participate online only. Then create a process to assign the remainder to attend on campus every other (or third) class – depending on the numbers.
You could make these assignments yourself, using for example, subgroups of your class that you assign in Canvas. Other universities are finding that it’s best to give the students an opportunity to register a preference – either through a survey, or even by setting up a google doc in Canvas.
We have provided department chairs and deans guidance on how to staff a “classroom assistant” role, using staff with capacity, graduate students, or hourly student workers. Supporting the logistics of regulating classroom attendance, e.g., between Tuesday and Thursday class meetings, could be a responsibility that this position could be assigned. You can find that document here.
Yes. This already occurs with late-start courses.
Labs should be adjusted so that face-to-face learning occurs during the first 13 weeks of the semester. In labs where students do not wear PPE (goggles, masks), attendance will need to be capped to maintain social distancing. This may mean that face-to-face sessions are shortened (e.g., half students meet in first 90 minutes; half students meet in second 90 minutes).
Workload:
To be determined by school/program. Some may reduce spring course load by one class for each three-week intensive course taught. Others may treat as overload.
To be determined by school/program. Some may reduce spring course load by one class for each three-week intensive course taught. Others may treat as overload.
All fall teaching, in any session, will count as part of a faculty’s fall load and all spring teaching, including the six-week option, will count as part of a faculty’s spring load. Faculty will be paid overload if their total 10-month teaching exceeds their usual load.
Student Learning and Success:
Our entire community of faculty and staff will need to address this concern through advising, individual interactions with students and communications across all modalities.
No. Only those courses offered in the in-person, hybrid traditional and online interactive formats will have access to schedule proctored exams at IUPUI in fall 2020. See Guidance on Proctored Testing for Fall of 2020.
We cannot assume that all students will be able to take a proctored exam on campus, and ideally the same exam methodology should be used for all students. For this reason, we encourage designing assessments with a focus on the end learning outcome and with flexibility in mind. If there are no other options but to provide an in-person exam, then providing an alternative exam format (e.g., essay/short answer questions) to some students would be okay under these extenuating circumstances. Ultimately, we need some evidence that all students have attained some level of competency for the majority of the course outcomes. Though we originally had been encouraging time-limited online exams, students have indicated that this was particularly challenging when internet connections were slow/unreliable.
Respondus Monitor is now available for remote proctored exams. More information about proctoring services is available in the IU Knowledge Base.
See this Knowledge Base web page, "Assess student learning during COVID-19: Alternate assessment, Respondus Monitor, and Examity."
Faculty will need to accommodate students who for quarantine, health, or other issues cannot attend an in-person proctored exam. Providing an alternative exam format to some students is not ideal but would be okay under extenuating circumstances.
Due to these exceptional circumstances, designing alternative assessments for students who cannot attend an in-person proctored exam is essential.
No. Only courses that are part of online collaborative degree programs coordinated by IU Online will be able to use Examity.
The Center for Teaching and Learning partnered with UITS to develop videos and guides for using classroom technologies. Please see this section of the Keep Teaching website for more information.
Most classrooms have had their capacity reduced by about 2/3. New seat limits are posted in classrooms as well as in the class registration system.
For spring semester, all courses must begin with 3 weeks of online only instruction.
CONFIGURATION:
Online instruction (up to 80% of offerings)
Of the online course sections offered by a department or program:
At least 60% of course sections online with all or partial synchronous instruction–Distance Other or Hybrid Distance (DO or HD)
A maximum of 20% course sections Online All or Online Interactive (OA or OI)
In Person instruction:
At least 10% of course section with all F2F (In Person) or some F2F elements for students (Hybrid Traditional- HY)
Semester sessions
At least 30% of course section in 13-week format
Programs and departments should consider offering a small number of high-enrolling courses in the 3- or 6-week winter session.
RESPONSE:
With respect to delivery mode, the proposed mix is acceptable if there are in-person opportunities (as noted in the previous question). If, however, the plan is for 80% of all classes to have no in-person interaction with students, that would be a concern. In addition to the research results of the student survey, a significant number of prospective and current student questions are asking things like “if all of my classes are online, will I get a discount?” Students prefer some level of in-person interaction for a variety of reasons outlined in the report.
Where possible the 13-week session paired with the new winter sessions could be an attractive option for students. If the course learning outcomes can be achieved in a 13-week format, then moving to that format is encouraged. However, if a 16-week session is preferable for a particular course for pedagogical reasons, then that is fine. We do not have any set proportions in mind.
It is preferred that students attend the classes when offered either in-person or through synchronous video. However, if a student has a pre-existing condition or prefers to not attend in-person activities, then they should be able to complete the activities associated with the course. For this reason, we are asking that all lectures be recorded.
Finals for full semester classes will take place as originally scheduled from December 11 to December 20.
No. The six-week winter session must be considered part of the spring semester due to regulations regarding disbursal of financial aid. The eight week fall sessions can be considered as part of fall banded tuition.
Yes, according to University Policy USSS-05, faculty are considered to be advisors with a legitimate education interest for students enrolled in their classes. Note that Canvas has a messaging feature as another effective way to communicate with students. If a phone number is preferred, school recorders and/or administrative assistants in the academic units should have access to the student information system and/or the IU reporting system to provide those numbers to faculty making such a request.
Consider regular use of the Student Engagement Roster functionality in Canvas.
IU does not have an official attendance policy. Having said that, it is recognized nationally that attendance in a class is critical to student success so each faculty member is encouraged to determine if/when students are logging in/attending/participating in the class and to provide this type of performance feedback via the Student Engagement Roster (SER).
We recommend that faculty don’t “grade” attendance per se, but provide students with something to do in class (e.g., discussion, response to a minute paper) that carries the points. This way, students who must participate remotely can still engage in the same activity (or close to the same activity) and earn the same points.
No “special” S or P grades that apply to all degree requirements will be administered following the Spring 2020 semester. Rather, the use of these grades will revert to their earlier definition and function – see https://studentcentral.iupui.edu/grades-progress/pass-fail.html
Associate deans and leaders in research from each school have been provided with access to guidelines as well as sample documents from IU and other institutions to help guide them in setting protocols for field work, clinical work, and community engaged research. Faculty should contact their school leadership for access to these tools which are also available through the vice chancellor for research. For both research and teaching, PPE is required for any face-to-face interactions, as well as a need for safe transportation to sites and plans for any sanitation on-site.
When participating in off-campus community engaged teaching experiences (e.g. service learning experiences and other forms of community engagement), faculty, staff, and students should comply with the safety guidelines specified in the IU Restart Report including physical distancing requirements, the wearing masks in public locations, and hygiene practices. If a community partner has safety guidelines that exceed or supplement those articulated in the IU Restart Report, the partner’s guidelines prevail. Faculty and program directors should work directly with partners to identify the safety guidelines that the student will be expected to follow during the experience. Additionally, the parties are encouraged to explore the possibility of fully virtual or hybrid experiences for students.
Faculty, program directors, and community partners must be flexible and responsive to requests to alter the format of a community engagement experience based on concerns about safety or if the public health situation changes and government mandated closures and shelter in place orders are reinstituted. Should this occur, every attempt should be made to move toward a virtual or remote experience or an alternative assignment so that the student can fulfill the requirements of the experience in a different manner. Moreover, all parties should work toward an equitable and fair solution that is student-centered and that ensures the community partner’s needs can also be met.
Faculty and program directors offering students a community engagement experience as part of a course must offer all enrolled students the opportunity to complete an alternative assignment in lieu of the community engagement experience. This alternative assignment should be aligned to the learning outcomes of the course, and students should have the opportunity to complete this alternative assignment remotely/virtually. Faculty and staff may not require or ask students to provide evidence of a risk factor or the need for an alternative assignment.
See this web page from the Center for Service & Learning, "Continuing community engaged teaching during COVID-19."
Recording students is fine as long as only the students in that section can view them. Sharing the class streams/recording publicly for some other purpose other than lecture capture would require the students to sign a release.
We recommend that faculty don’t “grade” attendance per se, but provide students with something to do in class (e.g., discussion, response to a minute paper) that carries the points. This way, students who must participate remotely can still engage in the same activity (or close to the same activity) and earn the same points.
Access to online services and resources varies by country. Please see this document: https://kb.iu.edu/d/bggd.
Health and Safety:
All classrooms employ social distancing, masks and cleaning by students and staff, as well as deep cleaning each night. Watch this webinar by VP Morrison for further details: https://broadcast.iu.edu/events/IU_webinar_2020-06-18.html.
In addition, Plexiglas shields are available to place in front of lecterns in general inventory classrooms (though masks must still be worn by instructors). Contact your dean’s office or building coordinator for more information.
If faculty or students have any concerns about being infected or being around someone who is infected, they should complete the COVID-19 Self-Reporting Form accessible via one.iu.edu as soon as possible. Campus contact tracers will provide guidance. In the meantime, individuals should remain quarantined and not attend class.
Ideally students living on/near campus will gather in person in small groups for peer review/editing and discussion, even in writing classes that could be conducted online. Creativity is encouraged with respect to small group work and in-person learning experiences.
When transitioning in hallways, all people will be wearing masks and not lingering in groups.
As in the spring 2020 semester, we would ask that faculty be as flexible as possible as it is extremely likely that members of our community will become ill.
That said, we will rely on academic advisors and faculty mentors to provide students with guidance (e.g., students needing to remain at a distance will be helped to register for courses that don’t involve a mandatory face-to-face component). Students should contact AES if they have additional needs for accommodation, or needs which prevent them from being able to wear a mask.
Please see Restart Report and IU’s partnership with IU Health. Pre-arrival testing for students living in residence halls and arrival testing for faculty, staff and students are occurring in August, 2020. Random samples of faculty, staff and students will be selected for testing in order to monitor the health of our community and to isolate positive cases that are asymptomatic.
Yes. Contact tracing is initiated through the COVID self-report form.
Yes. Areas for isolation and quarantine have been reserved in on-campus housing, and arrangements have been made to provide care and support to students while they are there.
The de-densifying of the campus spaces increases the efficiency of the HVAC units. All HVAC units have new filters installed.
Yes.
Indiana University has set no restrictions on students’ or faculty's personal travel, including weekends, during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Flu shots have been ordered for faculty, staff and students and will begin to be distributed as soon as they are available.
Yes. Each member of our community will receive two cloth masks.
Students will be educated that when they are physically on an IU campus, they must wear masks and that all employees (faculty and staff) will be wearing masks. Students will be informed specifically that they cannot be in a classroom without a mask (in a regular classroom) or other PPE (depending on lab or clinic environment and requirements). Masks must cover both nose and mouth. Instructions for washing masks will be provided.
Faculty will be encouraged (with the support of their department chairs and deans) to address issues directly in the classroom. Faculty do have the right to ask the students to leave the classroom if the student refuses to follow university policy or guidelines. A policy on mask wearing and the consequences of failing to wear a mask has been added to all course Canvas sites and may be found here.
The Medical Response Team has assembled an array of metrics that are being used to continuously monitor our community. It is possible that courses may shift to fully-online either for a specified period (e.g., 2 weeks) or for the remainder of the semester. No single metric is determinative.
When completing the Community Responsibility Acknowledgement (CRA), faculty with certain underlying conditions that put them at higher risk for complications from COVID-19 can request an accommodation. This can be revisited at future time points.
It would be best to not expand the use of very large classrooms, but rather to shift to the delivery of hybrid (distance and traditional) and distance-other courses, using already assigned classroom spaces.
Chairs/program directors should be encouraged to talk with their faculty about curriculum and faculty preferences in order to align these as best as possible. Ideally, we are trying to accommodate both faculty with risk factors and faculty with family members at high risk if we possibly can.
We hope to work with faculty to accommodate any reasonable concern. We encourage faculty members to discuss concerns other than those listed in the Community Responsibility Acknowledgement with their chairs or program directors if possible. Faculty are welcome to contact Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Margie Ferguson as well (ude[dot]iupui[at]osugrefm).
Rooms have been set aside for isolation or quarantine on-campus for students living in the residence halls who might have symptoms or who have been tested positive for COVID-19. Students will be closely monitored by Campus Health Services and provided food delivery services.
Students living off-campus must be isolated or quarantined in their off-campus residence.
The following information is provided by CAPS.
Last year, CAPS implemented new processes that significantly reduced the wait-time for initial clinical contact and referral to CAPS or community services. As we continue to adjust our processes, these procedures will be further refined prior to the start of this fall semester.
CAPS will continue to provide remote clinical services through the fall semester, which may increase accessibility for some students. It should be noted, however, that these services cannot be provided to students living outside the state of Indiana due to licensure laws. CAPS staff will assist students living in other states in finding local resources.
Our partner, Thriving Campus has opened their search portal beyond Indianapolis to allow nation-wide searches for clinical services.
In addition to providing remote clinical services, CAPS is preparing a series of workshops to be offered to the general student population and held on a recurring basis to support students in coping with various types of stress.
Mental health and interpersonal violence prevention outreach and workshops will continue to be offered, primarily in remote formats.
Students who need to learn remotely will be encouraged by academic advisors to register for courses that are entirely online with no required visits to campus. All faculty have been reminded that some students will need to learn from a distance and that courses should be designed accordingly.
PPE has been ordered by schools to ensure that students and faculty involved in in-person labs and clinical activities remain safe.
Yes, you must use assigned seating/seating charts in classrooms. This will help faculty (or a classroom assistant) to associate a student name on a particular day with a particular seat. It will also help students to know exactly where to sit on day(s) that they attend and can potentially help to support contact tracing. Classroom capacities have been reduced to support physical distancing and that student in hybrid courses may need to be scheduled to attend only on certain days. Do not move chairs into classrooms to expand seating capacity.
Yes. Decisions will be made regionally given the very different campus environments and communities that our campuses reside within.
While policies and procedures have tended to be developed at the university level, there will not be a unified decision regarding pivoting to online (unless this is ordered by the governor). Rather, metrics are being monitored independently for each campus to inform campus-specific decisions about shifting to remote learning.
Indiana University is currently using the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests with nasopharyngeal swab as well as the Vault saliva tests. Antibody testing requires blood to be drawn, and there is currently no plan to draw blood for antibody testing.
Testing offered on campus is for IUPUI students, faculty and staff only, but family members are encouraged to get tested at the Marion County Health Department, which offers daily testing at multiple sites throughout the county. The Marion County Health Department offers testing for everyone, regardless of the county in which they reside.
Additional masks can be purchased at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Campus Center.
Only students living in on-campus housing are required to get tested prior to moving into their residence hall. All others are encouraged to get tested prior to returning to campus.
No, but you must isolate yourself for 10 days. Additionally, anyone who tests positive will need to download the Twistle app–a symptom monitoring service contracted by IU Health–that provides daily check-ins and helps you keep track of your symptoms in case things get worse. Twistle also offers a way for IU Health to officially release you from isolation so you can go back to work. Also, there’s confusion around isolation and quarantine–do they mean the same thing and is the Q/I time the same….and the answer is no to both. Isolation is for those who test positive and they must isolate for 10 days after first symptoms appear and quarantine is for close contacts of someone who has tested positive and they must quarantine for 14 days after exposure.
When you are contacted for mitigation testing, you can opt out of the testing process if you meet the established criteria, including -- but not limited to -- having no face-to-face contact with students or employees, not working on campus, etc. Directions will be provided in the email received.
Equity and Inclusion:
In addition to providing guidance for IUPUI faculty and staff returning to campus, communication to IUPUI faculty and staff should also offer clear rationale for the return to campus and the protocols that have been developed in order to promote health and safety on campus.
Additionally, among key messages shared should be information about the institution’s zero tolerance for bias incidents, including anti-Asian bias arising as a result of the pandemic.
These messages should also acknowledge the increased fear of racial profiling on the part of many African American and Latinx men as relates to the wearing of masks.
Finally, a communication plan for the entire campus is essential to ensure that all campus citizens understand and adhere to policies designed to ensure the safety of all.
Course Fees:
No. Only courses that are part of collaborative online degree programs managed by IU Online will be assessed the distance education fee.
Not unless they are part of an all-online program offered through IU Online.
Winter courses in the first three weeks will be part of the banded tuition for fall; those in the six week and three-week (January) sessions will be part of banded tuition for spring. Schools may choose whether or not to offer winter courses, and CTL will help determine if courses are suited to that format.
(Response provided by IU Benefits): Our understanding is the classes that may be shorter sessions will be billed with either the spring or the fall semester tuition per the Fall 2020 website (https://fall2020.iu.edu/academic-calendar/index.html). So, the tuition benefit would cover those sessions up to the fall or spring tuition benefit limits. That said, we haven't seen any information on the cost of those shorter sessions, so we don't have any guidance on how far the tuition benefit will go for the semester if an employee takes a short session plus enrolls for the traditional semester.
Engaged and Experiential Learning:
IU has suspended undergraduate study abroad programs for the fall 2020 semester. Decisions regarding spring semester programs abroad will be announced by October 1, 2020.
Health sciences students “continue to follow guidelines established by the health sciences deans which are aligned with their respective professional organizations for students. Students will not work with known COVID-19 patients.” (IU Restart Committee Recommendations, 2020). Each health science has an associated professional organization that has developed guidance for application in university settings. For nursing, academic guidance is available from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Our basic principles of reentry to clinical are the health and safety of students, faculty and staff, our clinical partners’ readiness to welcome students back to the clinical setting, availability of personal protective equipment and availability of COVID-19 testing. For undergraduates, we have been communicating regularly with liaisons from our clinical partners to identify when we can safely return.
Graduate programs with clinical, internship and practicum components should continue to follow the policies established by their schools and accrediting bodies with campus safety guidelines in mind.
Policy and Liability Issues:
Any liability would be assumed by Indiana University.
Students will be educated that when they are physically on an IU campus, they must wear masks and that all employees (faculty and staff) will be wearing masks. Students will be informed specifically that they cannot be in a classroom without a mask (in a regular classroom) or other PPE (depending on lab or clinic environment and requirements). Masks must cover both nose and mouth. A statement regarding expectations around masks and the consequences of not wearing masks has been added to all course sites in Canvas (see here for text).
Faculty will be encouraged (with the support of their department chairs and deans) to address issues directly in the classroom. Disposable masks are available to students who forget to bring a mask to class.
Faculty have the right to ask the student to leave the classroom if the student refuses to follow university policy or guidelines. A statement regarding expectations around masks and the consequences of not wearing masks has been added to all course sites in Canvas (see here for text).
Faculty have the right to ask the student to leave the classroom if the student refuses to follow university policy or guidelines. If the student does not comply with these guidelines after engaging the department or school administration, referrals should be made to the Office of Student Conduct in the Division of Student Affairs. See Guidelines for Dealing with Disruptive Students in Academic Settings.
A statement regarding expectations around masks and the consequences of not wearing masks has been added to all course sites in Canvas (see here for text).
Prior FAQ:
A three-week session should either be considered part of the fall or spring load (i.e., equivalent to one three-credit course) or as overload.
For synchronous online courses, contact hours remain as if the course were held in physical spaces. Times when students break out into discussions also counts as contact hours. For asynchronous courses, consider the normal learning outcomes and the lectures, readings, and activities required to achieve them: the total will be the equivalent in contact hours.
It is not necessary for every department or school to develop three-week courses. These options will be most useful for electives or for catching up students who may have fallen behind in their program sequences.
The first question is the most complex, in that a confluence of factors need to be simultaneously considered: health risk factors associated with the faculty member/need for accommodation; learning goals of the course; structure (e.g., one section vs. multiple sections) of the course, etc. The determination really needs to be worked through together by the faculty member and her/his department chair or program director.
See Guidance for Academic Programs Delivered at IUPUI, IUPUC, and IUFW. Classes that have been offered in other formats (8-week, 12-week courses) may still be offered, but with the stipulation that the last three weeks of the fall semester and the first three weeks of the spring semester be delivered entirely online.
All General Inventory classrooms are equipped with Kaltura to capture face-to-face sessions. UITS has updated technology in the Lecture Hall and has inventoried some non-general inventory classrooms. Information regarding classroom specifications may be found through the Classroom Database Search.
See Guidance for Academic Programs Delivered at IUPUI, IUPUC, and IUFW. The guidance was meant to give schools latitude in scheduling. It was hoped that all academic units will focus on creating face-to-face interaction where possible, even in the distance-hybrid format, or online other formats. One way to do this is to move core content online, and to treat in-person sessions as supplemental, with application of concepts, discussion, project-based learning occurring in class (as well as online for students needing to learn remotely). In this manner, smaller groups of students can focus on the deeper understanding, integration, and application of material. We are directing everyone to the report on the survey of students and attempting to share that report widely with faculty because it clearly shows students prefer in-person instruction and frequently had challenges with reliable internet access.
Not necessarily. Class size will obviously have some impact. Learning goals and pedagogical strategies are more important. This is true with one exception–all first-year seminars should strive to have some in-person interactions. Given social distancing requirements, this may mean rotating which students attend each week. Additionally, we have placed tents outdoors and mapped outdoor spaces that can be reserved for curricular or co-curricular purposes. To reserve a space, contact Event and Conference Services at 317-274-2702 or ude[dot]iupui[at]cvstneve.
No preference.
No. Please see Guidance on Proctored Testing for Fall of 2020. We accept that proctored examinations are necessary in some instances, but we also encourage a re-examination because there may be limits. Additionally, the student survey results show a number of students experienced challenges with online proctored exams. This is most likely to disproportionately impact students from low-income and under-represented backgrounds.
Respondus Monitor is now available for remote proctored exams. More information about proctoring services is available in the IU Knowledge Base.
Yes, but you are asked to abide by required health and safety measures.
Office of Academic Affairs resources and social media channels
