Leaning Into 2020

The "Grainger Teaching Academy" Initiative

On Friday, May 29th, an email from Provost Cangellaris announced a campus-led teaching academy that was developed in coordination with our plans. This message explains the college and the campus efforts and their synergies. Five activities are described below and three require your urgent response should you wish to participate in them.

As noted in the earlier email from Provost Cangellaris on May 26, and consistent with what we have communicated in our late spring town hall meetings, we need to spend the summer preparing to provide the highest-quality experience to our undergraduate and graduate students in the Fall of 2020. We are to be planning for two options: (1) a ‘hybrid’ in-person/online Fall semester where most students are on campus but measures are put in place to keep our students, staff, and faculty healthy and safe (more details on these plans will be revealed by the campus committees in the coming weeks); and (2) if there is a second wave of the pandemic, an all-online Fall like we had after Spring Break 2020. Furthermore, even if we begin the Fall semester with in-person instruction, we must be prepared to rapidly and effectively pivot to online-only instruction, if conditions warrant.

Activities to support preparation for the Fall semester

As was announced at the College town hall last month, under the leadership of Jonathan Makela and Harry Dankowicz we launched a Grainger Engineering college-wide committee to plan for these scenarios and to develop a comprehensive Grainger Teaching Academy this summer. The Academy will help support our faculty and teaching staff prepare for the Fall semester. I thank that committee for their work over the past month.

In preparation for the Fall semester, we expect that all Grainger Engineering courses will be set up to be accessed remotely from the beginning of the semester. This includes remotely accessible content, assessments, and learning support. Over the next two months, we collectively need to ensure that we do all we can to provide the exceptional learning experience for our students that we are known for. While we made great strides this Spring in rapidly transitioning courses to remote-delivery, there are areas for improvement that we must address for the Fall. Our goal is that our students – undergraduate and graduate, new and returning – will feel confident in the quality of the educational opportunities available to them.

To that end and working with all departments, we will be supporting faculty and instructors over the summer to participate in the Campus Academy and in the Grainger Teaching Academy for both undergraduate and graduate courses in the following ways:

  • Activity 1: If you would like to participate in the Campus Academy, please self-nominate using this webform before noon on Wednesday, June 3. Slots are limited and our college needs to provide names of individuals interested in participating in the campus’ Academy by June 4. This Academy is intended for instructors that have not taught online before Spring of 2020. A stipend will be provided from campus to those selected to participate in this workshop. Details were provided in the email noted earlier.
  • Activity 2: From June 22 to July 24, we will hold a series of workshops for faculty who are working to transition their course to a flipped delivery model. This track is expected to be more advanced than the Campus Academy. Department heads are soliciting input from their faculty, and we encourage faculty interested in this track to contact their department heads ASAP for more information and to express their interest in participating. We are expecting that at least 2-4 courses from each department to be offered this Fall will be flipped using the work in this track. Grainger Engineering will provide support, resources, TAs, and a stipend for instructors participating in this track. 
  • Activity 3: From June 29 to July 17, Grainger Engineering will hold a series of workshops to support instructors who plan to transition assessments (e.g., homework, quizzes, and exams) to be compatible with either the GradeScope or PrarieLearn platforms. College staff and a select group of faculty will be available to actively support instructors with developing and transitioning material to these platforms. If you are interested in participating in these workshops, please sign up using this webform ASAP. More details will follow in mid-June. We expect a large number of instructors to participate in this activity as robust assessment is important for every course and has been identified as one of the key challenges of online course delivery.
  • Activity 4: In coordination with every department, we will bring together and support communities of instructors who will be teaching laboratory courses in the Fall to develop and share best practices for remote lab delivery. Specific on-line seminars and working sessions will be organized for July. More details will follow.
  • Activity 5: To support faculty who intend to provide synchronous classroom instruction, we will provide training on best practices for using Zoom and other supported tools to engage students in the learning process. These seminars will begin in July and more details will follow.

Our college will also hire TAs and invest other resources to support these activities. Our expectation is that a large number of faculty and staff will be able to participate while also meeting other time commitments on research and teaching, as deemed appropriate.

The schedules and plans for each of the above activities will be provided on this page, which will evolve rapidly in the two next weeks.

Other developments for the Fall semester

In addition to the above, we also plan to support the following in the Fall semester:

  • In preparation for the Fall and to support the assessment preparations undertaken in Activity 3, we will further pilot CBTF-remote capabilities throughout the summer, a service which will be available to proctor exams for Grainger Engineering courses in the Fall. Details on this service will be made available closer to the beginning of the Fall semester. However, if you are teaching a course this summer and wish to be involved in the pilot, please contact Carleen Sacris (CBTF Coordinator; sacris1@illinois.edu).
  • To support our newest students, the ENG 100 course, required for all first-time, first-year students in our college, will be extended to last a full semester. New content will be developed over the summer and added specifically to help our newest students build community and thrive in a blended/remote learning environment. Gretchen Forman (Assistant Director for the Grainger First-Year Experience; gforman@illinois.edu) will lead this effort in coordination with each department.
  • In the Fall, we will expand support for faculty choosing to deliver synchronous activities in their courses via Zoom. This support will entail more robust training, hardware recommendations, and potentially TA support to assist in managing live lectures. Details on this will be made available mid-July.

We expect to invest approximately $2M, which are available to the college through a prior Investment for Growth award, through the Summer 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021. We will work closely with the Department Heads to determine specific allocations of these funds.

We thank you for the efforts you have already deployed this Spring and look forward to working with you this summer.  We are confident that we will all rise to the occasion and provide a high-quality experience for our undergraduate and graduate students in the coming months and year.