(Updated 3/19) Plan for Class as Part of the COVID-19 Response

The University has officially transitioned to “alternative delivery” for the rest of the semester

Short version for CS559:

We’ll try to change as little as possible. We’ll move lectures, consulting hours,

  • No in-person lectures - they will be provided as pre-recorded lectures
  • Workbooks and Quizzes as they have been
  • Staff Consulting Hours (afternoons) via appointment or via Blackboard Collaborate
  • Final Exam TBD
  • We’ll try to find other ways to give you extra support

Longer Version:

As you are probably aware, the University has switched to “alternative delivery” for the rest of the semester.

After March 23rd…

This is all a big experiment. Please bear with us as we work things out. Fortunately, most aspects of class are already online. This is our current plan. We may need to update it.

Assignments:

All assignments (workbooks and quizzes) will follow the original schedule. We will continue to use Piazza and Canvas for communications. We will release Quizzes on Thursday afternoon (due by Sunday night), and try to release Workbooks about a week before they are due.

Communications:

We will continue to use Canvas announcements as our primary way to broadcast announcements to students. It will be especially important to watch out for these announcements. You may want to configure Canvas to alert you when there is an announcement.

Please continue to use Piazza for asking questions (publicly and privately).

Please do not use Canvas to send messages to course staff: we don’t always see them.

Lectures:

In-person lectures are cancelled. Lectures will be pre-recorded and made available on Mediaspace (Kaltura, where they are now). When lectures are available, we will make an announcement on Canvas and Piazza. We will try to make the lectures available before the usual lecture times. Rather than 75 minute videos, we might break them into smaller chunks.

To ask questions about lecture, please use Piazza. We will make special folders for each lecture to help organize questions about the lecture. We will try to respond to these questions quickly, especially during the lecture times. If you post a lecture question, please give the (approximate) time in the lecture (the media player shows the time).

You can watch lectures any time after they are posted. We will have them posted before the scheduled class time so you can watch them in the scheduled class time if you want. We will try to be extra responsive to questions on Piazza around the scheduled day of the lecture. We’ll try to keep an “errata/explanations” sheet - so if you have a question or comment on something that could be better explained, please let us know. It is hard to edit the video after the fact, but we can put things into the notes.

As always, the material in the lectures will be relevant to the week’s quiz and workbook, so you probably want to watch the lectures before doing the quiz and workbook.

We will continue to make before and after versions of the slides available.

Stay tuned for announcements about video lectures: we plan to try some experiments. For one, we will point you to extra resources that may help. We may try extra “video help sessions”, or bonus lectures, or … (right now, I can be ambitious)

Consulting:

In person consulting hours and the Professor’s office hours are cancelled.

Course staff will be available during those times for communicating electronically. We will use video conferencing for consulting hours.

For the afternoon consulting hours, we will use Blackboard Collaborate (it is available from the CS559 Canvas page). The course staff will set up a session that people can join.

Please continue to use the Google Form signup sheet (there is a link on the course web page, but its https://go.wisc.edu/tx994t). It’s a little hard to manage groups online, so having the forms as a queuing mechanism will be really helpful.

For the Professor’s “walk in” office hours, I will post a “Google Meet” link that people can join during the time (I’ll announce it on Piazza and my home page). And again, please use the signup form.

I also remain available for video conference by appointment. Please send email or use Piazza.

Final Exam:

To be determined.

I suspect the University will provide us with options on how to deliver a remote exam, or we’ll have to be creative.

Grading Information:

Grading information will continue to be posted on Canvas as it has been.

If you want to question a grade, please send a private note to the Course staff within a week of the grade being posted.

At present, we do not plan to change the grading policy. However, we may need to adjust expectations because of the unusual course delivery mechanisms.

Conclusion…

These are exceptional times.

Please try to say safe and healthy. This means more than just practicing social distancing - it means taking care of yourself emotionally and physically. The uncertainty is difficult for many (if not all) of us.

Class will be different. We’re being thrown into some new things quickly. We (me, students, staff) are all in it together. We’ll figure it out.