Daily Update – April 7
April 7, 2020
Daily Update – April 7
Update from the Library
This update comes from CUASA’s Professional Librarian Representative, Isla Jordan.
Although the physical building has been closed for a few weeks, the library continues to offer many of its services and resources remotely. Much of what the library offers was already online (e.g. library guides, e-books, databases and e-journals), and this continues via omni and the library website. Interlibrary Loans (ILL) is not operational.
Library staff can still purchase electronic material, including online videos, but print materials are not being purchased at this time. Professors and Instructors can contact the library if they need course readings, e-books or other digital materials for their students. The library’s Reserves staff are purchasing and negotiating permissions with publishers.
The library continues its Ask the Library chat service to answer library questions from students and others. Specialists are continuing to offer their library research support in an online capacity. For more information on getting help from the library, click here.
New to many Carleton librarians, but not all, is helping EDC with online teaching of core technologies like cuLearn, Big Blue Button, and Kaltura. Planning for offering individual partnering with course instructors for the summer term is underway.
Examinations Period
With the end of the winter term, we now enter a radically different examinations period. As previously announced, there will be no face to face exams held on campus. Instead, course instructors have been given the flexibility to determine methods of assessment for completing their courses, whether by delivering exams online, by email, through take-home assignments, or not at all.
The University expects that all students to respect and follow Carleton’s Academic Integrity Policy when it comes to completing their exams through whichever methods have been set by their instructors.
We would like to remind CUASA members that, while students are being given the option to designate their grades as satisfactory or unsatisfactory (SAT/UNS), you will still submit their final grades as you normally do. Students will then be able to contact the Registrar’s office to make the change.
To help mitigate the risk of system issues, the University has set up a redundant system to help offset the load on cuLearn during online exams. To implement this, the University has distributed an exam management guide and has asked all course instructors to submit their exams for replication on this special server.
We have heard concerns from CUASA members on this, particularly on the possibility of the exam being reformatted by someone other than the course instructor. We have raised these concerns with Scheduling and Examination Services and await their response. We are also waiting for further details on how student accommodations for online exams will be handled through the Paul Menton Centre.
As we mentioned in our post-JCAA update last week, we have been told that any members who no longer wish to offer an exam for their winter term courses should notify Scheduling and Examination Services as soon as possible.
