Announcements are an important vehicle for connecting and communicating with your students. You are encouraged to post weekly announcements in your classes to share updates, relevant information, and clarifications.
When creating announcements remember these tips: helpful, relevant, timely, and short. Don't repeat items in the syllabus or content of the CGHS Student Resources. If you teach the same course from term to term, carefully review your announcements every single term to ensure they are still accurate. In addition, please do not delete or make announcements unavailable within a course. Announcements become part of the course content, which should be made available to students at all times.
If your announcement is longer than the textbox area, consider creating it as a separate document and then posting it as an announcement. Do not send the information in an email or Inbox message. Any documents sent via email are NOT considered announcements. Any information that is to be provided to all course participants should be done via announcements, not via email. This ensures all course material is contained within the course.
Along with posting announcements each week, CGHS encourages instructors to provide additional information and resources throughout the term, including:
At the start of each term, each instructor is required to create a Welcome Announcement for each course. Weekly announcements should be posted in subsequent weeks. Although there are exceptions, instructors will generally receive access to their course(s) three weeks prior to the start of the term, and announcements can be created and loaded into the course before it starts.
The Welcome Announcement is usually the first course announcement and should include these key points:
Welcome to CFAC 1000: Faculty Orientation
Example:
[My name is ______ and I will be your instructor for this course. I am very excited to teach this course because ______. My professional experience includes ______.
Course Overview
During our 10 weeks together we will: understand the issues involved in planning, implementing, and revising a comprehensive faculty evaluation system; comprehend each of the eight steps used to design a comprehensive faculty evaluation system; create a weighting system that accurately reflects the various components involved in evaluating faculty; understand the contributions of peers, students, and administration in the creation of a faculty evaluation system; and create a weighted electronically scorable comprehensive faculty evaluation tool.
Interaction is integral to your success in this program. You will find that you will learn much from your peers and facilitator. The more you participate, the more you will learn and enjoy the program.
Student Expectations
Please read each and every announcement and email. I realize you are all likely very busy, so I do my best to include only important, pertinent information in my communications. Thus, it is critical that you read all announcements.
I will read each and every post in the discussion forums and will periodically ask for application, personal and professional experiences, and request sharing of additional resources or current events that tie to the discussion. When providing resources please summarize the resource and state how you believe the resource is applicable.
Late assignments will not be accepted unless there are extenuating and unavoidable circumstances. You must make arrangements for late work to be submitted prior to the due date, and only after discussion with me. The following policy will be implemented related to work submitted late:
Plan to spend appropriately 10-15 hours each week on this course; the course has been designed with this effort in mind.
CGHS takes Academic Honesty very seriously. If I identify any concerns I will share them with you. When in doubt, cite it!
Instructor Expectations
I will respond to all emails within 24 hours.
All grades with summative feedback will be posted within 96 hours of the assignment due date.
I will be available by email anytime but will also hold Office Hours each week. I will be online and available [Tuesday evenings from 8:00-9:00pm (CT)]. Please email me if you would like to meet with me during another time.
I am looking forward to knowing you better and to share this learning endeavor.
Signature
Late Assignment Policy (from the catalog)
Late work is not accepted without prior approval of your instructor. Failure to obtain approval before the due date may result in a zero for the assignment.
Instructors may develop their own personal late policies for assignments. Be sure to include very specific rules for your course.
It is important to clarify your rules up front as you cannot retroactively punish poor participation if there are no rules. Your Program Chair is an excellent resource for developing a late policy, should you have questions.