Announcements to CEDC Students

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March 14, 2020

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:

 

1. Starting Monday March 16, faculty have been asked to transition to remote delivery of course content and not host any face-to-face class meetings.  Most of our offerings are ready to transition.  Those that are not will be postponed until they are ready to deliver remotely.  Your faculty instructors have been and will continue to communicate operational details to you.
2. Our computer labs will be open early next week to provide students who do not have online access the opportunity to access course offerings/materials, but we recommend minimizing their use.  These labs are implementing new operational protocols including multiple cleanings during the day and social distancing practices.  These procedures will be posted at each lab – please read and follow them.  Please feel free to contact lab managers using our publicly-published contact information.
3. We will also begin to transition some computer laboratories to remote log-in only to enable students to access specialized software that resides only on laboratory computers.
4. If you do not have the computing resources needed to access the remote teaching for your courses, or are in need of any other support, please send an email to Engineering@ucdenver.edu and we will seek to assist with help or connections to resources.
5. Please remember to maintain social distancing and do not gather outside of class or campus to complete coursework.  Please take advantage of Zoom for any group meetings.
6. Over the next few days, we will be transitioning the operations of our other laboratories, machine shops, maker spaces, etc. to either remote access and/or suspending their operations.
7. Across our departments senior design instructors have already modified or are assessing the need to modify courses if we have to dramatically pivot from existing group-based design projects.  There is also uncertainty regarding many competition-based projects and whether such competitions will even be held.  We will be monitoring these and modifying plans accordingly.
8. Our student advising services will continue, but remotely.  Please look for communications from advisors regarding procedures and feel free to contact them with questions.
9. Department and college offices will be physically closed starting Monday March 16, but personnel will be working remotely and will be accessible by email and telephone using our publicly-published contact information.
10. We are aggregating college messages and activities to students, faculty, and staff in a single website (https://engineering.ucdenver.edu/about/dean's-office/COVID19 ).  We will do our best to keep this updated with college communications.  Department communications will not appear there.
11. Graduate students should coordinate with faculty advisors regarding research activities.

 

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

 

 

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March 9, 2020

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:

1. Encourage students who are sick to STAY HOME.
2. If they are sick, they SHOULD STAY HOME.
3. Develop ways to get content and materials covered in class to students who stay home because they are sick.
4. Create plans with their classes and department administration about how to get announcements to students.
5. Plan alternate ways to deliver content missed in class. Methods will vary, but will likely include using various technologies including Canvas, Zoom, email, and cloud storage services. We are creating training to help instructors who need it to quickly pivot to using these technologies. We recognize that technologies can not help with a number of our classes, especially lab-intensive ones, and are working to manage these to the best of our abilities as well.

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

Resources for remote learning

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. 

List of Resources on COVID-19 (pdf)

Announcements to CEDC faculty & staff

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March 19, 2020

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:

 

1. We have transitioned all of our teaching to remote learning. This looks very different across the nearly 240 courses we are teaching this semester. I am thrilled that there are many creative ideas being implemented and these are being shared among faculty across our units.
2. Please continue to take an empathetic approach with your students and do all that you can to accommodate their needs. It is clear that this is creating many hardships for students and we don’t even know the full extent or range of issues yet. To this end, tomorrow we will survey our students and ask them for feedback on how things are going, what we could do to help, etc. We will seek input, without making any commitments, on elements being discussed across the country, such as pass/fail grading.
3. Research labs on the Denver campus and Anschutz Medical Campus are effectively being shut down for a two-week period beginning yesterday. I apologize that this has not been as clearly communicated as it could have. Later today I will forward a clarifying communique from the Provost. During this period all activities other than critical maintenance of facilities/infrastructure will be suspended. Requests for exemptions will be considered by campus leadership for extraordinary circumstances. These requests can be sent directly to me at martin.dunn@ucdenver.edu (please copy Petrina at petrina.morgan@ucdenver.edu) and I will advance them for a decision as rapidly as possible. This is clearly not business as usual. Departments have all submitted lists of critical personnel and security on the campuses will use these to check for appropriateness of people on campus. Please note that this process could all change at any point in time, based on circumstances beyond our control – we will do our best to rapidly notify you if there are changes.
4. Please look for ways to use the time you cannot spend in research labs directly to advance your research, e.g., analyzing data, writing papers, writing proposals, etc. Please communicate with your research sponsors directly to alert them of our situation. In general I think you will find them understanding. FYI, here is a nice article describing discussions of research issues across the country.
5. We have a case of a bioengineering staff member who is presumptively positive for COVID-19. The staff member was in a lab in Biosciences 2 at the Anschutz Medical Campus last week as well as in the Inworks Anschutz Medical Campus facility last week. The person is self-isolating and self-monitoring. Based on guidance of the Anschutz Medical Campus and Denver campus, we have notified bioengineering and Inworks faculty and staff, asked them to self-monitor and self-isolate. Yesterday we carried out thorough cleaning and sanitizing of the impacted facilities. Leadership is following up with the applicable public health department to determine if there are any additional recommendations other than those provided by CDC and CDPHE. In general, as cases grow, please do not expect that these will be announced or that you will be contacted directly. Our understanding is that the public health departments simply cannot trace diagnoses at this time.
6. I meet with our Executive Committee (chairs, associate deans, college administrator) daily to update on daily conversations I have with campus leadership and to hear and share experiences across our units. I am finding this very helpful. We will continue to meet at this cadence and I encourage you to communicate accomplishments, issues, etc. through your supervisors if you would like them surfaced with this group.
7. You are receiving updates from many places, e.g., the president, chancellor, and departments. I’ll try not to repeat any of these messages in my updates but encourage you to read them as they arrive. My intent is for our college messages to be aligned with these, but given the dynamic nature of the COVID-19 situation things are moving and changing quickly so please understand if there is any confusion and know that we are doing our best to harmonize communications.
8. Please take a look at the message from Chancellor Horrell yesterday regarding graduation and start thinking about possibilities for our college. We will soon engage in this seriously.
9. Please take care of yourself and your families and practice good prevention protocols as directed by the CDC. If you suspect that you have been infected, please notify your supervisor as soon as possible so we can address immediately. Any supervisors who are so notified should notify me at martin.dunn@ucdenver.edu and copy Petrina at petrina.morgan@ucdenver.edu and Keith Jones at keith.jones@ucdenver.edu.

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

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March 12, 2020

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.

1. Yesterday you received campus communications with a number of announcements, including that CU Denver would move to remote teaching and a work from home plan on March 30.
2. We have already begun training exercises to prepare for March 30 and to be able to pivot to remote operations before March 30 if needed. These include launching about 12% of our 231 courses online this week, transitioning dean’s office staff to a mode of working every other day from home in a way that always maintains visible customer-facing presence and support, and departments working through plans for work from home for their staff.
3. We have launched training for college faculty and staff to help with this. So far the sessions have served 37 participants, and another is scheduled at AMC today. We also created a CEDC Online Teaching Help desk (online.teaching.help@ucdenver.edu) that is currently being supported by six faculty who have expertise and graciously offered their support.
4. To aggregate messages and activities in a single place, we have created a website (https://engineering.ucdenver.edu/about/dean's-office/COVID19 ). This includes both communications and resources that are rapidly being prepared by colleagues across CU Denver as well as across the country. We are not reviewing these, but posting them as best as we can for you to access.

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 

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March 9, 2020

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:

1. I have asked our department chairs – and I am asking you – to start moving any courses that are possible online now and stop meeting in person.  Chairs can use their discretion in this process but I’d like to have a significant number of our courses online by the end of the week, perhaps 50%.  Faculty should manage their Teaching Assistants in this process and work with them to move their efforts to an online format as well.
2. We will hold two training sessions tomorrow (Tuesday) for faculty to learn the basics of doing online teaching with Zoom, Canvas etc – one at 12pm (NC-2413 or zoom; https://ucdenver.zoom.us/j/195408406) and one at 4pm (NC-2013 or zoom; https://ucdenver.zoom.us/j/980760330).  Additional sessions are being planned for Wed downtown, and Thursday at AMC – invites will go out shortly.  The different dates/times are just to accommodate people’s schedules – no need to attend more than one.  We are rapidly putting these together so don’t expect them to be professional.   You can expect that we will work with you from whatever state of knowledge you have to build your capabilities.  I think the in-person sessions will be much more valuable than the zoom offerings at this point.
3. We have proposed a staff work schedule that has half of our staff working at home on MWF and the other half working at home on TThF.  Staff in my office will start doing this on Wednesday, and I have asked chairs to prepare staff to do something similar in the departments if possible.
4. The intent of 2 and 3 is to use this as a training exercise to prepare for large-scale work at home and online teaching activities, and work out bugs in each.  I have asked chairs to report the progress on this to Associate Dean Keith Jones on a daily basis.
5. Please communicate to students in our classes that we are concerned about their safety, working hard to manage this very unusual situation, and that we need their understanding and cooperation to succeed.
6. If students are missing class due to sickness, anxiety about getting sick, precautionary self-quarantine, etc., faculty should use their judgement on how to handle these situations while trying to accommodate students as much as possible.  We have told students to stay home if they are sick, and it may be possible to spread COVID-19 even though you show no symptoms, so we don’t want them to feel pressure to attend class.
7. I sent an update to students over the weekend.  I realize I should have copied you so that we are all on the same page – my apologies for not doing so.   I attach that email below for your information.
8. Please remember that this is a unique situation and our success relies on each of you engaging constructively, and helping each other as well as helping our students.  I have been thrilled with stories your chairs have told me about your collaborative and helpful efforts already, and I look forward to working with you to navigate these challenges.

Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have questions or suggestions.

Marty

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March 6, 2020

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:

1. Encourage students who are sick to STAY HOME.
2. If you are sick, YOU SHOULD STAY HOME.
3. Find a way to get content and materials covered in class to students who stay home because they are sick.
4. Make a plan with your class about how you will get announcements to them about class sessions that might be cancelled, either if you are sick or classes are cancelled across campus. A suggestion is to tell them in advance (i.e., now) that you will let them know by 6:30 am on the day of class if class will be cancelled, through a Canvas (or other) announcement. It would be ideal if ALL faculty would operate with this consistent approach. Please coordinate this with your department administrator, as they may be needed to communicate if you are sick.
5. For any cancelled classes, please find an alternate way to deliver the content missed in class. Methods will vary, but may include uploading lesson materials to Canvas, recording a Zoom video lesson and emailing students a link to the file, emailing PowerPoint or scanned lesson notes, etc.
6. Make sure you have the technical skills to conduct a remote class. This is likely going to be through Zoom which is available to all students, faculty, and staff. Zoom has the capabilities to do much of what we need to administer a class, e.g., deliver lectures, hold office hours, and facilitate class meetings. Familiarize yourself with how to use Zoom teleconferencing software for class meetings, including how to record video lectures through Zoom, how to share your computer screen with your students through Zoom, and how to share a virtual whiteboard with your students through Zoom. Instructions on how to use Zoom can be found here https://www.ucdenver.edu/offices/office-of-information-technology/software/how-do-i-use/zoom. Do a trial run to make sure you can record a Zoom video. FYI, every course Canvas page has a zoom icon button on the menu. You can go into Zoom and schedule a recurring meeting for your course, and should share this with students. You can post this in the announcements. This way you have one Zoom meeting room for your class, and students can login during the prescribed time.
7. Make sure your students know how to join a Zoom meeting. Ask them to install the Zoom app on their computers or phones (https://zoom.us/download). When students access Zoom for the first time from a device, they will be asked to download the app.
8. If the Zoom meeting is recorded, when you end your meeting, Zoom will automatically download the recording as an mp4 to your computer. You can then upload the mp4 file to your Files on Canvas for students to access. I’m told there are various ways to do this and encourage you to share these among you.
9. The Office of Digital Education has just made available the following resources to help faculty who may need to pivot quickly online. (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dEQ8inU5ks6URR1SAwgZXNADg_NowGAp?usp=sharing).

 

Faculty and Staff:

1. Encourage students who are sick to STAY HOME.
2. If you are sick, YOU SHOULD STAY HOME.
3. Work with your supervisor to create a plan for how you could work from home. Identify any obstacles to working from home to your supervisor.
4. Ensure you can access necessary work files from home. Consider putting the files you need on Microsoft OneDrive, so they are in the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere (all CU employees have 1TB of storage available). Instructions for using Microsoft OneDrive are found here https://www.ucdenver.edu/offices/office-of-information-technology/software/how-do-i-use/onedrive. If you need to connect to the University network to access files, you can do so through the Remote Access VPN. Instructions for installing and using the VPN are located here https://www.ucdenver.edu/offices/office-of-information-technology/software/how-do-i-use/vpn-and-remote-access

 

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.

Google Teach from Home

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.

1. Don’t post Zoom URLs in public spaces - not Twitter, not forums, not open. Share only with meeting attendees.
2. Use Advanced Settings to ensure that "Who can share?" is set to Host Only.
3. Don’t use a Personal Meeting ID for Zoom meetings. These are easy to find and hack. The default Zoom Meeting IDs are randomized, and difficult to find and hack.
4. Use Require Meeting Password to be doubly careful. Include the password with the Zoom URL when sending invitations.
5. Use the Waiting Room feature to control who enters your Zoom.
6. Use Advanced Settings to disable file transfer.
7. Lock the meeting after it starts. Look under Participants at the bottom of the Zoom window. You can lock the door here.

 

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