Recommendations for Teaching in a Remote or On-campus Environment

The College of Arts and Sciences Class Guidance Documents for Fall 2020 were produced by CU Boulder faculty in June 2020 with the intent of providing recommendations, ideas and observations about teaching in a remote on-campus environment. Three committees drawn from all divisions in the College of Arts and Sciences were asked to provide ideas and recommendations in four areas: Lab Classes, Field Classes, Large Lecture Classes, and Remote or Online Teaching. While there is no lack for information in all of these areas, this is an attempt to aggregate information collectively authored by the rank and file faculty who are currently teaching at CU.

Guiding Principles of These Documents:

1. The teaching documents do not serve the same purpose as the implementation guidance issued by Campus committees. Instead, these documents simply provide faculty and departments with ideas and recommendations regarding how they might address the challenges associated with teaching at a University during a pandemic. The recommendations and ideas are nothing more than suggestions on how to meet the criteria and constraints set forth by the Campus Administration.
2. Faculty, staff, and student safety is paramount. The recommendations offered assume that safe conditions have been established by the Campus. These documents are agnostic about Campus policy designed to offer an ‘in-class’ experience in the Fall 2020. They do, however, reiterate the importance of assigning teaching responsibilities equitably especially in light of the extra contractual pressures faced by instructors, lecturers, and graduate students.
3. The students coming to campus for the first time or those returning currently experience a world with many unknowns and tremendous upheaval. As faculty, we should embrace those concerns openly. Open discussion in any format is an important tool we can use to both help our students learn and chart a path forward once they leave the hallways and Zoom channels of CU.

View Recommendations for Teaching in a Remote or On-campus Environment