27th March: Organization of distance learning

27. 3. 2020 Vlastimil Mikšík 0 Comments

Dear colleagues,

The situation we are facing is unprecedented and presents many challenges that were unimaginable a few weeks ago. Together with other universities, we agreed to continue teaching despite imposed measures against the spread of COVID19. We have decided not to give up on our principal mission, which is to educate our students and to fulfil the expectation of society.

After the first weeks of this extraordinary situation, we have succeeded in introducing new possibilities for contactless teaching that we have now at our disposal. We would like to thank many active teachers who are involved in the implementation of new technologies that enable us to continue in quality teaching. We would also like to inform you that we received many positive feedbacks from students who appreciated our effort. Unfortunately, we also receive information that some subjects are not provided well and their guarantors do not communicate with students as they should.

We would like to appeal to you that it is your duty to continue with pedagogical activities and to provide quality contactless teaching.

We are aware of the need to clarify the way of contactless teaching and to establish clear rules that we set out below.

How to implement contactless education:

teaching takes place according to the approved academic schedule of the FAPPZ;
keep the content of the subject – each subject has a clearly defined goals and timetable as indicated in its syllabus;
set the conditions for the course completion (credit and examination) and announce them to the students;
- the completion can be processed contactless through LMS Moodle or MS Teams, or by other agreed forms of communication,
- the examination could be postponed until the quarantine measures are abolished, possibly May / June-August / September,
- the examination period of the ending years runs until 7.8.2020,
- examination period of endless years runs until 4.9 2020,
- when you choose the method of examination, follow the method for all students the same throughout the exam period,
communicate with students once a week, respond to their inquiries, inform them and stay informed of their activities, assign homework and control them,
offer alternatives to teaching even for seemingly unsolvable activities (practical exercises, field trips, field exercises, etc.) – be creative, strive to meet the objectives of the subject (upload videos, broadcast online, etc.),
inform your supervisors about any problems within your teaching duties.

We are aware that the situation led us for the form of teaching that we were not sufficiently prepared for. We strive to ensure you, our faculty pedagogues, have good conditions for implementing contactless teaching methods, but the main part of the activity is upon you.

Additional instructions:

• provide your students with a textbook in a form of pdf file if you have them in paper form (eg in LMS Moodle),

• please educate yourself – instructions for MS Teams and LMS Moodle can be found further,

• if you need to consult more difficult tasks in LMS Moodle contact Lukáš Polanka +420 704 870 188, polanka@af.czu.cz,

• we ask the Heads of Departments to provide a mechanism to control teaching activities at the Department – the Head of Department must have an overview of the subjects provided by the Department in this semester and, within the established mechanism, must communicate with course guarantors at regular intervals;

• we ask supervisors of the final theses (DP and BP) to be helpful towards your students, communicate often and help them cope with the difficult situation,

• we remind you that the submission of final theses is postponed until 17.7. 2020 (Bc.) 24.7. 2020 (Mgr.), Submission of the final thesis is primarily expected electronically, submission of the printed version will be specified later,

• Bachelor State Final Examination will take place on 17.8. – 21.8. 2020 and Master’s State Final Examination will take place on 24.8. – 28.8.2020, during this period please do not plan your holidays as you will be needed.

Finally, we would like to thank you for the helpfulness and commitment. Let us take the measures associated with COVID19 as a challenge to be better. We believe we will succeed!

Your dean Iva Langrová and the FAPPZ management