To our U of T Engineering undergraduate students
The Faculty’s primary aim is to support our students to complete this term by providing you with the best possible learning and assessment experience that we can at this point. To do this, we are asking instructors to develop alternatives to final exams, now called final assessments, that let students best reflect their learning in each course, using guidelines that include:
- In the development of these plans the Faculty expects that all course instructors will consult with students in their courses in appropriate ways.
- Instructors will then put the proposed option to a student vote. With the approval by a simple majority of those who vote, the course can move forward with the proposed plan.
- For consistency, the Faculty suggests that courses use one or a combination of the following approaches for the final assessment:
- Take-home exam,
- Final report, essay, project, lab and/or
- Quercus online quizzes
- In designing their plans, instructors will consider solutions that support Academic Accommodations and Academic Integrity.
As I shared with you earlier this week, for this Winter 2020 semester only, students enrolled in undergraduate programs will have the option of choosing how their grade is recorded on their transcript, which could include a percent (%) grade as normal, or opt for a Credit or No Credit (CR/NCR) option after they see their final grades. Students would also have the choice to drop a course with no academic penalty at that time. We have also created an undergraduate student FAQ page to answer many of the questions that will come up, and we will continue to update it as we hear your feedback.
Graduate students: We are working with the School of Graduate Studies on options for final assessments in your courses and will be following up with you directly in the coming days with more info.
Chris
Christopher Yip
Dean
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
University of Toronto
To our U of T Engineering undergraduate students
With the adaptations and alterations to courses this semester, we are making some changes to give our students every possible opportunity to succeed and have agency over their own studies.
For this Winter 2020 semester only, students enrolled in undergraduate programs will have the option of choosing how their grade is recorded on their transcript, which could include a percent (%) grade as normal, or opt for a Credit or No Credit (CR/NCR) option after they see their final grades.
- These choices can be made by individual students and indicated in ACORN — they will not be applied on a course-wide basis.
- For this Winter 2020 semester, there will be no limit on the total number of courses to which students can choose to apply the CR/NCR option.
- The CR/NCR option will be available for both core and non-core courses.
- We will extend the drop deadline for all undergraduate courses to one week after the Exam Committee has approved the final grades and they are available to students.
We came to this decision after extensive consultation with your Chairs and Directors, the Vice-Deans Undergraduate and First-Year, as well as the Exam Committee, which included representation from the Engineering Society.
To our graduate students: more specific information is coming soon for graduate courses. Currently the School of Graduate Studies has extended the deadline to drop graduate courses without penalty to 25 April 2020 — with the intent that this gives students the opportunity to fully consider any proposed amendments to course delivery before they make the decision to continue or drop.
Regarding final assessments for both undergraduate and graduate students, we’re working nonstop on putting together solutions that will give instructors the ability to deliver meaningful and productive evaluations or assignments, and that give students the best chance to succeed. We’ll be coming back to both faculty and students with more details on that shortly.
Chris
Christopher Yip
Dean
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
University of Toronto
To our U of T Engineering students, staff and faculty
Following U of T’s guidance directing employees to work from home and research to wind down by the end of this week, student T-card and fob access to U of T Engineering buildings will be disabled as of 5:00 pm on Friday, 20 March 2020.
This means the spaces will be inaccessible to all students, including research-stream graduate students. Faculty and staff will retain access for emergency situations only, such as critical maintenance of research equipment that cannot be planned for in advance. Post-doctoral fellows are considered staff. Facilities & Services will continue to patrol and maintain security.
We will keep our community updated as the situation evolves: uofteng.ca/covid19.
Chris
Christopher Yip
Dean
Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
University of Toronto