In cooperation with the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, we are closely monitoring the Coronavirus and formulating plans and responses to this very dynamic situation. Student and faculty/staff updates will be posted here.
Questions? Contact your department or the dean's office.
Dear CEDC Students,
I know you are receiving many communications regarding the COVID-19 (Coronavirus); here I want to provide a brief update from our college. Please know that our plans are fully aligned with campus plans, we realize there will be many challenges for all of us as we progress, and we are committed to working with you to address any and all challenges you face.
As you undoubtedly know, the situation is rapidly evolving, and it is likely it will continue to do so. Yesterday our plans to transition to remote teaching, learning, and the provision of college services was dramatically accelerated with a goal of doing so as much as possible by Monday March 16. In brief, here are actions we have taken/are taking:
Please look for communications from departments and faculty in the coming days. Again, we expect things to evolve quickly. We will be doing our best to make sure you are informed as completely and quickly as possible, and we are doing our best to ensure consistency in communications across all units.
We realize this is an unprecedented hardship for you and we are committed to doing everything we can to make it as manageable as possible for you. I am sure we will have some missteps along the way, and I ask you for your patience and support as we navigate this together.
Many thanks,
Marty
Dear CEDC Students,
I know you have heard much about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) in the news as well as in campus communications. I want to briefly update you about the actions we are taking in the college to prepare for it. I want you to know that this is a highly unpredictable situation and that preparing for it is our highest priority.
I have asked Keith Jones, Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives, to serve as the point person for the college regarding our plans to minimize teaching disruption and business services across the college. He is working hard to manage the situation.
I want to emphasize that we all have a role to play, and encourage you to help each other, as well as help our faculty and staff in any ways you can as we move forward.
Given the high heterogeneity of what and how we teach, learn, and do research across our departments – spanning two campuses – there will be significant variability in execution across the college. As you can imagine, utilizing technology will be essential, and we are working quickly to provide training of various forms across the college.
I know many of you have already participated in preparations with faculty in your classes and I want to thank you for this. I am impressed with these efforts to date, however I know we still have considerable work to do and I want to assure you that this is our highest priority and will be ongoing.
As part of our plans, we have directed faculty and staff to:
I ask you to please support our folks as they develop these plans. In anticipation of using Zoom which is available to the CU Denver | Anschutz community, you can familiarize yourself with how to install and use it. Instructions can be found athttps://www.ucdenver.edu/offices/office-of-information-technology/software/how-do-i-use/zoom.
As more campuswide (Denver and Anschutz) information becomes available it will be posted to the CU Denver COVID-19 website and the Anschutz Medical Campus COVID-19 website and we encourage you to check there for additional information and resources. My office will update you regularly as we proceed with our college-level planning and you will also receive information from your departments and faculty as the situation evolves.
Hopefully we will not need to implement any of our plans, but we need to be prepared to do so rapidly if necessary. Don’t hesitate to contact your department administrators, Associate Dean Keith Jones (keith.jones@ucdenver.edu), or me (martin.dunn@ucdenver.edu), if you have questions, suggestions, etc.
Thank you for your efforts and support as we prepare.
Marty
Martin L. Dunn
Dean and Professor
College of Engineering, Design and Computing
University of Colorado
Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus
martin.dunn@ucdenver.edu
Loving Lynx fund for students facing financial hardships
CARES Act Student Emergency Fund Application
CU Denver's Modified Grading Policy (Summer/Fall 2020)
Remote Access to CEDC Software
CU Denver OIT resources for learning
Tutorials about remote learning
Need a doctor? The Auraria Health Center is open for students, faculty and staff.
Lost your job and need a meal? The CU Denver Food Pantry in the Student Wellness Center has food, and the City and County of Denver has food stamps.
Need a computer? Notebooks for Students is a non-profit organization that has affordable laptops.
Need internet service at home? Comcast announces comprehensive plan to keep people connected to the internet. In addition, Comcast's Internet Essentials provides qualifying subscribers with two months of service for free (which also saves your phone data plan).
Need a discounted data plan? Contact your cell phone provider to ask about "low-income" programs for unlimited data.
Dear CEDC Faculty and Staff,
First, THANK YOU for all of your efforts over the past couple weeks preparing for and now executing our COVID-19 plans with the health and safety of our community as our top priority. As you know, this an historic time. I have seen and heard incredible stories about your generous and creative efforts and can’t tell you how proud I am of you all. As we soon head into spring break, I want to update you on some key issues:
Again, thank you for your remarkable efforts – they are truly inspiring – and please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
Marty
Dear CEDC Faculty and Staff,
As you know, things are moving quickly in all ways regarding coronavirus planning – I want to briefly update you on key elements of college planning that has been ongoing.
As we rapidly move forward, there are at least two challenges we have yet to fully figure out and your creative thinking will be central to doing so.
First, while online delivery is fairly smooth for many courses, it is not for some, especially lab-intensive and hands-on design courses. Clearly the existing experiences in many of these classes cannot be directly delivered online. Please think about how you could replace the learning outcomes from these with experiences that can be delivered remotely, and what is the real importance of particular experiences that might be sacrificed.
Second, we have work to do regarding executing exams remotely. We are exploring some solutions, but again, courses have their own nuances and I ask you to think about how you might accomplish assessments in your courses.
With these and many other things related to the coronavirus planning, I encourage you to share ideas, solutions, etc. with your colleagues and help each other.
In addition, please be as accommodating to students as possible regarding attendance and related issues.
Each day I hear more stories of you working together, learning together, and creating and exchanging new ideas to manage this situation. I greatly appreciate this and know it is essential to our successful management of this unique situation.
Thank you again for your efforts and please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
Marty
Dear CEDC Faculty and Staff,
I want to briefly update you on our Coronavirus plans.
You should know that our campus leadership is working with our experts at the Anschutz Medical Campus and tracking the advice of the CDC closely in order to keep our campus community safe. The campus and system (president) released communications today – please pay attention to these and all subsequent emails from the campus regarding updates on policy and practice related to the coronavirus.
Our college has made this our top priority and is working quickly on many dimensions of the issue. We have planned daily coordination with the department chairs to update. Here are the key advances today:
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
Marty
CEDC Faculty and Staff,
I know you have heard much about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) in the news as well as in campus communications. I want to inform you about the actions we are taking in the college to prepare for it, and call you all to action to this end. I also want to thank you for what you have already done to prepare as individuals and as departments. I apologize for the lengthy email, but please do read it through.
COVID-19 has the potential to disrupt normal ways of doing business in the College of Engineering, Design and Computing. In some places where COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred, employees have been asked to work from home and campuses temporarily closed. Today the University of Washington moved all classes for 50,000 students to an online delivery format for the rest of their quarter.
We are currently planning how to continue to provide courses and conduct business with the least disruption possible if we were asked not to come to campus. We expect to share more regarding such plans, including trainings we will provide to help all faculty and staff manage operations. In addition, we will be informing students of plans. I have asked Keith Jones, Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives, to serve as the point person for the college and he will be working hard to manage the situation.
However, I want to emphasize that we all have a role to play in the preparation and execution of plans. Given the high heterogeneity of how we operate across departments and teach classes within departments, there is likely to be significant variability in how we execute across the college. As you certainly know, utilizing technology will be essential. Our technology capabilities vary widely across the college, and we will be working quickly to provide training of various forms. While this might be uncomfortable for some, I encourage us all to look at this as an opportunity to develop some new and valuable skills. I encourage you to discuss this among yourselves and offer help to each other when possible.
I’d like to share some common actions we should all take to prepare for this potential situation – these can be done immediately, and we will provide additional support and training to the best of our ability:
Faculty:
Faculty and Staff:
As more campuswide information becomes available it will be posted to the CU Denver COVID-19 website and the AMC Covid-19 website and we encourage you to check there for additional information and resources. My office will update you regularly as we proceed with our planning.
Hopefully we will not need to implement any of these steps, but we need to be prepared and need to rapidly work together to do so. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions, suggestions, etc.
Marty
NEW! Summary of online assessments and best practices
Families First Coronavirus Response Act
Teaching resources and workshops are being sent out from various sources. Although we won’t be reviewing each of them for quality, we hope you find these useful.
Technical resources and tutorials for working remotely, a website developed by CEDC IT and CLAS IT
CU Denver OIT resources for teaching remotely
CU Denver OIT resources for working remotely
Guidance for the research community - OGC is closely monitoring sponsor and federal agency guidance regarding COVID-19’s impact on sponsored projects. Updated information will be posted on the OGC website at https://www.ucdenver.edu/research/OGC/Pages/COVID_Guidance.aspx. We are duplicating FAQs on our site as well as the campuses’ COVID site on Research Continuity.
Institutional and Agency Responses to COVID-19 and Additional Resources
All faculty, staff, and students at CU Denver have access to Techsmith Relay, a tool for distributing videos to your audiences. Techsmith Relay does not have a storage limit, so it helps with limitations that Canvas has. It also supports automatic Closed Captioning for accessibility. Check it out and sign in with your CU Denver credentials.
CEDC online Zoom training (March 10, 2020, 4 p.m.)
Video tutorial on using Zoom through Canvas, created by CAM professor Travis Vermilye
7 Tips to prevent Zoombombing: These are presented in recommended priority.
Rapid Remote Teaching Resources, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Rapid Remote Teaching Strategies Virtual Training, presented by the CU Denver Office of Digital Education (Scheduled for Friday, March 13, 2020, at 10 a.m.)
Guides is a quickbase of technical resources and supports for faculty rapidly transitioning from on-ground to online. It remains a work in progress and will continue to be updated.
ThinqStudio is launching a faculty support hub in Microsoft Teams and offering Zoom consulting to offer peer support in digital pedagogies.
"Going online in a hurry"- The Chronicle of Higher Education
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