CEAS Fall Implementation: July 2 update

  July 2, 2020

Overall Progress - Campus

  • The campus released an update this week on the progress of the campus implementation teams as part of the Road Map to Fall 2020.
  • Campus has initiated a summer retention strategy to encourage students to return to their studies in the fall. College faculty, advisors, and admissions staff are actively participating.
  • Return to Research will begin moving toward an expanded phase (50% occupancy) starting July 13.
  • Plans and health and safety protocols for residence hall move-in are posted on the Housing and Dining website. 
  • The social distancing subgroup has submitted recommended protocols for classroom spaces to the Facilities Task Force and is now focused on building circulation and base signage packages.
  • The Office of the Registrar, in partnership with the Facilities Task Force for COVID-19- ready classrooms, is completing room assignments for in-person and hybrid in-person classes for fall.
  • OIT has received one-time funds to provide Dell laptops to CU Boulder instructors and lecturers with unmet personal-technology needs and will be working with academic units to identify eligible recipients.
  • OIT is expanding resources for remote teaching and learning by significantly increasing remote-capable classrooms (more than 350); acquiring a tool, My Mediasite Personal Capture, that will allow instructors to record, edit and share their own content from any location; and expanding remote access to software that students would typically access in an on-campus computer lab.

Overall Progress - CEAS

  • The COVID-19 Ready Team is working on the college’s Risk Mitigation Plan for fall. 
  • The Academic Instruction team is exploring several concerns, including tools and strategies for capstone instruction, space for first-year projects, integrating CU 101 modules, and promoting best practices for remote and online teaching through weekly discussions and tutorials. They have supported the submission a teaching modality plan to campus.
  • The Resource Alignment and Academic Instruction teams have created an engineering-specific instructor-needs survey that will be sent to faculty in July. 

COVID-19-Ready Team - Bill Doe, Massimo Ruzzene, Cherie Summers

  • Identifying key college concerns such as: (1) unique design aspects of our buildings; (2) transportation to East Campus for ChBE, AES and EVEN students; and (3) integration of lab space and protocols with classroom space and protocols.
  • Draft sanitizing plans for common areas have been developed. There will be no custodial service to individual office spaces in the fall semester.

Academic Instruction - Rhonda Hoenigman, Mary Steiner

The Academic Instruction team has created sub-teams to address specific topics. 

CU101 - Fernando Rosario-Ortiz

  • Instructors integrating CU 101 content in the classes. Students that would not have access to one of the intro courses would then be covered via COEN 1830 and ENES 1010. Modules will include COVID-19, anti-racism, and other campus-wide topics.

Senior projects - Daria Kotys-Schwartz

  • All departments have plans for either remote or hybrid delivery of capstone lectures; client, faculty advisor, and team meeting formats are an ongoing discussion for each department.
  • Capstone project scopes will likely need to be reduced by 20+%.

Freshman projects - Angie Bielefeldt, Mindy Zarske

  • GEEN 1400 lectures will be remote/online; GEEN 1400 labs have ongoing discussion. 
  • Freshman Projects Expo will be online.
  • Spatial/Visualization training will be fully remote/online.

Technology readiness - Nick Stites, J. Franklin

  • Developing a laptop program for the college that focuses on supporting students with high financial need. The short-term plan is to leverage Chromebooks as much as possible.
  • Developed a fully-functioning test case of an ITLL computer in the cloud. This cloud-based system enables scalable, remote-access to over 60 software applications, including limited-access engineering software. In conjunction with the Chromebook program, it allows students to have a more holistic experience, regardless of the technology they own.

Remote and online lecture best practices training - William Kuskin

  • Phase One: “Going the Distance” is fully implemented. There are three elements: (1) A weekly faculty discussion; (2) a twice weekly tutorial session; and (3) a weekly themed tech session. The weekly events are recorded and posted.
  • Phase Two: Canvas Community Course & Course Cartridges are being released this week, offering pre-made cartridges that faculty can import to build their own classes, and a “What’s Your Plan Symposium” is scheduled for July 27.

Remote exam best practices - Ken Anderson

  • Generating a set of best practices and recommendations to enable consistency and coordination across the college this fall. Guidelines will be developed by mid-July that can be communicated to CEAS faculty ahead of the fall semester.

How to build small group interactions into remote classes - Balaji Rajagopalan

  • Team met for the first time this week and is discussing how faculty, teaching assistants and students can create small group interactions to support student success.

Resource Alignment - Rory Kopela, Doug Smith

  • 300 Chromebooks arrived to provide to students who are unable to afford appropriate computers. We are still determining if these will be lent out, sold at cost or sold at a discount to students. 
  • The team is continuing to identify instructional needs for the fall semester, including technology, outdoor spaces, student support and software needs.