Welcome to Online/Part-time Instruction with Critical and Creative Thinking

Guide for Online and Adjunct Faculty, including summer and winter term courses.

Key Links and Contacts:



Following is information that we hope you’ll find helpful as you set up, administer, and conduct your courses online. Here you’ll find information that should help you navigate getting started with the Department of Continuing Education (a.k.a. CCDE). As of Summer 2010, CCDE will be transitioning from a department to a full college in the university over the next year. This may have some administrative implications eventually, but no changes are evident yet.

Also, see the Online Guide for Students, which describes more of the process of registration and online systems.

Administration:


http://uc.umb.edu/
Online courses (and summer and winter session courses) are managed by University College (formerly CCDE - Continuing, Corporate, and Distance Education), in partnership with the various home departments. The Manager of Online and Distance Education is Jason Campos; you may hear from him with instructions and requests concerning your course.
Students (particularly students at a distance) will be using this web site for learning about and registering for courses.

http://uc.umb.edu/certificates/cct/
Review the Critical and Creative Thinking page in this web site for an idea about the kind of information that we'll need to have posted for your course.

Administrative Process to be Followed for New Instructors:

1. Complete all documents in the "Non-Benefitted" packet. Download the two sets of forms (pre-employment forms, and I-9 form):
http://www.umb.edu/administration_finance/hr/personnel/non_benefited.html

2. Compile all of the completed forms, IN ADDITION to a copy of your resume and list of 3 professional references. Send all materials to the CCT program coordinator or assistant coordinator.

3. If needed, attend one of the university's Workshops on use of instructional technology and online systems:
http://univmassboston.gosignmeup.com/

4. Prepare your course. Whenever you have a finalized version (or update) to a course syllabus, please send this to: cctcoordinator@umb.edu

Syllabus Guidelines

A course syllabus is an important part of promoting courses, fulfilling university regulations, and communicating with students. Courses must have an updated syllabus available to students before the course starts, and preferably before registration even begins for a semester. At a minimum, the following items need to be included in the syllabus:
  1. course number, title, and semester ("CRCRTH 601 Critical Thinking, Spring 2013")
  2. instructor info, including how/when to contact you outside of class (office hours, availability, preferred modes of communication)
  3. course web site or other information that points to accessing electronic materials or online systems
  4. course description - typically this should mirror the official description that has been approved for the UMass Boston course catalog, but you may expand upon that further as needed
  5. course requirements, including clear explanation of the assessment and grading system
  6. required texts - please include a full citation and also include the ISBN number, which must be provided to students by law
  7. a statement about accommodation; see example statements showing how you might phrase this, and review the Ross Center guidelines for faculty on addressing situations where students have special needs
  8. optional but helpful:

Notes on the Grading System:


The Bottom Line: Grading and communication about grading needs to be done consistently and systematically, but the specific scale, point system, and relationship between completing work and earning points allows for flexibility.

Key points to know, and guidelines suggested by Peter Taylor:

  1. Lowest passing grade for grad courses at UMB is C. Below that, student gets an F. (This differs from undergrad. grading, which is the basis of the syllabus example you may have received during some previous training.)
  2. Make sure you state your points-to-letter grade scale in the syllabus where students can see it at the start.
  3. The cutoff number for a pass/fail is arbitrary. An instructor could have a grading system where 93 was a fail as long as students knew at the start and the instructor could rationally and explicitly justify their position that the quality/quantity of work done for a 93 in that course was not satisfactory for a pass.
  4. My suggestion is: decide on lowest grade for an A and lowest grade for a C (i.e, for a pass), then divide the difference by 6 and step down from an A.
    e.g., In my courses the minimum grade for A is 95 points and for C is 50 points. That means that the minimum grade for A- is 87.5, for B+ is 80, for B is 72.5; for B- is 65; for C+ is 57.5.

Submitting grades:
The due date is usually about 2 weeks after the official last day of a course, but watch for an announcement from the university with the exact date. You need to enter grades in the Wiser online system, so you need to use your Wiser ID number (looks something like UMS_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ where the underlines are replaced with 8 digits) and password to sign in (these are different than your email/Blackboard password).

Once you sign in, you'll see your course records - you'll just need to go to the "grade roster" page, enter the grades, and then submit them. The following help link leads you to some videos on how to do the various data-entry tasks for the grades - click on the little TV icons on this page (probably the one called "Enter Grades" will be particularly helpful):
http://umb.edu/it/services_ detail/wiser_help_faculty/

Accounts, Online Systems, and Email


The Bottom Line: there are several online systems used by faculty to manage online teaching. UMass Email and Blackboard (as well as the wiki sites) use the same login ID and password. WISER uses a completely independent ID and password.

WISER
http://wiser.umb.edu/
and then find the link for "Faculty Log-on to WISER"

WISER is the administrative online system that allows faculty to review current registrations for their courses and enter grades at the end of the semester. Your login ID takes the form "UMSxxxxxxxx" (where the x's are 8 digits).

Blackboard Vista (formerly WebCT):
https://login.umassonline.net/boston.cfm

As of Fall 2010, the university uses Blackboard as the content management system for online courses. It is likely that this system will be replaced/phased out sometime in 2012, but no definite plans are made. Other platforms are currently being evaluated, such as Moodle and others. Several CCT online courses have started to make heavy use of the wikis, through the university's license of Wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.umb.edu). Individual courses may have their own wiki site, which provides flexibility in many ways about how you present your content.

Your login ID takes the form Firstname.Lastname (and will always be the same that you use for UMass Email)

UMass Email (ends with umb.edu):
https://email.umb.edu/

All instructors must use their UMass email address to log in to Blackboard Vista (boston.umassonline.net). Your login name for the UMass-Boston email system and Blackboard Vista will both use the same ID/password information.

Unless told otherwise, your UMass email address will take the form:
Firstname.Lastname@umb.edu
and will always be the same as you use for Blackboard).

You do not actually need to use your UMB email account to read and write emails, but the university MAY send important announcements to this address though. If you DO NOT plan on actually logging in to this account to read messages, request to have messages sent here to be forwarded to your own email address. Send a message to ITServicedesk@umb.edu to request this.

Please note that you should plan to contact your students before the start of a course, and you will typically want to use their personal email addresses for this communication. All students are also given umb.edu accounts, which are used for formal university announcements. Although students actually have to use these as their ID to log in to Blackboard Vista, the students probably don't consider these to be their primary email accounts and therefore may never check them for new messages (especially new students who don't even know their account details yet). Personal email addresses for students can be retrieved for you by the Program Coordinator - just make a request.

What you should know/keep on file:

Instructor Payments


Pay for adjunct instructors happens through the payroll system that is used by all of UMass. This has several implications that are important for instructors to realize about when, and how pay happens.

Adjunct instructors must sign a contract to teach, which is sent to you once you have confirmed your commitment. For online/summer/winter session courses, this will be managed by University College (formerly the division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education). The contracted amount for a 3-credit course is a standard amount set by University College across all instructors. This will be split proportionally for any team-teaching situations, as mediated by the Program Coordinator.

Should the course not reach the minimum number of registrants (currently 8 students), instructors will typically have an option to teach the course to fewer students, but will be paid on a per-student basis rather than the normal standard amount. Otherwise, instructors can cancel their commitment to teach that course at all.

Instructor payments are spread out over a 26-week period (amounting to 13 biweekly paychecks). It does not matter if your course takes one semester, which is less time that that - the payroll system is set up to distribute payments this way, and there is no way around that currently. The short summer and winter sessions might vary from this somehow but also will probably distribute payments over a longer number of weeks than the course actually runs. The exact full period is reflected on your teaching contract, so please make sure to notice that.

The pay calendar for the current period or year can be found at http://www.umb.edu/administration_finance/hr/forms_instructions/

Adjunct instructors, and all other employees, are paid biweekly according to the pay calendar. Regardless of when the semester or course starts, this calendar is still followed. Therefore, your first paycheck for a course may only show a prorated amount of a two-week period, and this may not reflect the amount you'll normally be paid for two weeks' work.

Additionally, it is possible that your first one or two paychecks may be low anyway. If there is question whether or not the course will run at a certain point before it starts (based on enrollment at that time), correct information may be delayed in getting into the payroll system as enrollment changes after that time. This might mean that it can take a full biweekly period, or slightly more, for the proper details to get into the system and allow it to catch up to your correct pay. Keep this in mind, because CCT courses can be enrolled with a certain number of students one week before the course starts, and yet this number can change quickly up to, and even a few days beyond, the start date of the course actually begins.

Because your paycheck reflects the UMass payroll system as a whole, you'll see some information there that doesn't apply to adjunct instructors and therefore may be confusing. Your biweekly paycheck may refer to "10 hours" of work for that period, as well as show an hourly rate. These figures are not indicative of your actually work and therefore should not be interpreted with this meaning. UMass does not pay instructors hourly. These figures are completely derived by the payroll system based on how it needs to makes calculations in order to pay you your contract amount over the full period. They do not suggest the actually amount of time that you put into a course or the value of your time.

Developing Courses/Making Revisions


Generally, instructors will not be paid extra for any work done to make minor corrections to courses or bring materials more up to date. Any major course redesign will only come with a development stipend if this has been formally approved by the Program Director, so instructors should not take it upon themselves to decide that a redesign is needed and actually go ahead and do it, expecting compensation.