Dear colleagues,

I hope you had a nice holiday break! As we prepare to start the spring semester, a few updates and reminders as you prepare for teaching at SPH. Below, please find links to important resources for setting up and managing your courses, SPH policies on attendance, class participation, and class recordings, as well as an invitation to join our Teaching and Learning sessions and additional resources.

Instructor resources

We have lots of Instructor Resources including the SPH syllabus template, strategies to set up your course on Blackboard, guides to support educational technology, links to trainings offered by BUMC Educational Technology and by BU’s Center for Teaching and Learning, and more.

Attendance, class participation, and class recordings

As a community (the Education Committee, program directors, faculty and staff from across the school and the Governing Council), we discussed attendance and participation and a common theme emerged – learning at SPH best takes place in community, together.  Faculty teach and learn from students, students teach and learn from each other, and we all develop and hone important skills for collaboration, which are essential in public health, together.  Thus, the Education Committee proposed the following action steps, noting that some may be implementing these already.

  1. If faculty have a specific attendance policy, its purpose and process for implementation should be clearly articulated to students in the syllabus. In the event that a student needs to miss a class session, they should be expected to communicate with faculty, teaching assistants and peers (e.g., if teams were to work together during that class session) to let them know, and to make up any missed work within existing structures of the course.  Students have also asked that they not be pressed for specific reasons or documentation for absences.  That said, if a student has two or more unexcused absences in a 14-week course (prorated accordingly), the instructor or a teaching assistant should reach out to ensure that the student has support they need to engage in the course.
  2. If faculty assess class participation, its purpose and process of assessment should be clearly articulated. There should be a specific rubric for grading participation in the course which is either included in the syllabus or made available to the students on request. Faculty should also expand the ways in which students can engage/participate in the course to ensure inclusivity (e.g., viewing a recording of the class session and completing an assessment).
  3. Faculty should continue recording class sessions and can make them available to all or share recordings upon request for students with excused absences, academic accommodations, or as a valuable tool for learning. AV equipment is available in classrooms to record class sessions using Zoom, and some of the larger classrooms are outfitted with recording software, in which case, audio or video recordings can be requested in advance.  Faculty can use their discretion to determine if some content is not appropriate for recording (e.g., a class discussion on a sensitive topic). Students needing to miss a class session due to illness or a conflict (e.g., attending a conference) may review the class recording in addition to making up missed work.

SPH Teaching & Learning sessions

We will continue our SPH Teaching and Learning series this spring, as it has been a very useful way to share ideas and support each other in teaching and learning.  The sessions are held via zoom – please register here. The first session of the spring is Thursday, January 30 at 1 pm and we will use the time to plan our monthly series and to address any issues that participants wish to raise.  The second is Wednesday, February 26 at 1 pm when we will be joined by Dawn Sousa-Hearn, the new Director of the Office of Disability and Access Services.  If you have a topic that you would like to discuss, or have ideas for speakers we could invite, please let me know.   Please join us as you can, and bring colleagues, especially those who are new to our community.  All are most welcome!

Lastly, please find links to important resources below

Looking forward to another great semester.  If you need anything at all, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

Lisa Sullivan
Associate Dean for Education

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