Overview#
Helpful Links#
Remotely Proctored Exams: A Student’s Guide and Rulebook - You can share this link with your students.
Remotely Proctored Exams: A Proctors’s Guide - Do NOT share this link with your students. This is for staff only.
2-Device Proctoring#
One of the most important responsibilities as a remote instructor, is ensuring that all quizzes and exams are admininstered with a high degree of integrity using our 2-device proctoring system. The exam & quiz proctoring section has more details on how this works.
Focus Mode
Focus mode should be used in all Zoom meetings when students are required to have their cameras on. In this mode, meeting participants can only see the host and cannot see each other. The host can still see all participants in the meeting itself and in any gallery view recordings.
Lecture Videos and Notes#
Each course has a set of pre-recorded lecture videos and accompanying note sheet outlines. You may use these resources in your own course. A few ideas on how you might do this:
Assign the videos as the main lecture content for your students, and then use your live Zoom time as Guided Problem Sessions, lecture review, supplemental instruction, Q&A, etc.
Use the videos as a resource for you to structure your own lecture videos.
Use the videos as review, to supplement your own lectures.
Notes: Students can use these pdf files to take notes on, either with a tablet or printed out.
Videos: If you decide to produce your own lecture videos, I strongly recommend that you pre-record these using OBS. Even if you pre-record the videos, you should still host a live Zoom Meeting to handle more of the synchronous features of class: Q&A, etc.
Online Homework#
It is strongly recommended that you use an online homework system for your course.
There is an in-house option available to you called WeBWorK. The server for this plaform is managed by CASet here at UB, and is free for students. Additionally, there are custom WeBWorK sets and problems that specifically pair with each of the pre-recorded lecture videos. Please see the webwork section of this website for instructions on how to get started using this.
Helping Students#
Zoom Meetings: Using a portion of your daily Zoom Meeting for questions is a good opportunity to address any difficulties that multiple students may have. This also helps students get to know you and your face!
Zoom Team Chat: Zoom also has a team chat / channel component similar to Discord. This is a good way to host office hours. Students can see that you are avialable on the Zoom Workplace app and can initiate questions by chat, and then you can easily switch over to an actual meeting if needed.
Email: I have found the most efficient way to handle student questions by email, is to have them send me a picture of their work - which I annotate on my tablet and email back to them. I also encourage them to ask content related questions during office hours or class.
Discussion Boards: Student engagement with help forums has decreased over the past few years to the point where I no longer recommend or use them. If you do decide to use a discussion board to answer student questions, two recommended options are Piazza and Campuswire
Collecting and Grading Papers#
UB Learns and Gradescope are the two main options for collecting and grading quizzes and exams. Homework will automatically be graded by the online homework system.
Gradescope#
In most cases, Gradescope is the recommended platform for collecting, grading, and returning written asessments. There are two versions to consider based on whether you need team grading.
Free Version: The free version does not allow team grading. This should not be an issue for summer and winter courses as the instructor is normally assigned all three positions. Other than team grading, the free version has all of the features we need.
Institutional Trial Version: The institutional trial does allow team grading.
If you are going to use team grading, but do not have access to a trial version, you may need to discuss sharing your Gradescope login info with your team. While not recommended, this might be a quick workaround.
UB Learns#
The other option for collecting, grading, and returning written assessments is to use UB Learns. You will need to decide on your particular workflow but the one that has proved manageable for me is:
Create an assignment on UB Learns, where students will make their submissions.
Download all pdf submissions to my tablet.
Grade on my tablet, similar to traditional pen+paper
Upload graded papers to UB Learns using the bulk feedback option.
This method is not as smooth as using Gradescope, but is a viable option if you want to do team grading and do not want to share your login info for Gradescope.