FAQ

The Keep Teaching website offers a variety of resources, including help with Canvas, Kaltura, Zoom, and other technologies as well as tips and best practices for teaching online. 

Your campus teaching and learning center also provides resources to move your classes online.

For students, the Keep Learning site provides information about the most commonly used technological tools in online courses.

You should communicate with your students as soon as possible, even if you are still building your Canvas course site, and/or have yet to adjust your course syllabus.  Use Canvas Announcements or Canvas Inbox to notify students of next steps, and also how they should communicate with you.

To contact your campus library, visit Contact your campus librarian.

We are pleased to report an additional (and free) option for presenting learning materials to your students in this transition to online teaching.

Many of the IU eTexts Publishers are offering their etexts free of charge (for the duration of the spring term) to those who have not already made the transition to IU eTexts (Canvas Course). Currently, that list includes:

• BVT Publishing
• Cambridge University Press
• Hackett Publishing
• Human Kinetics
• McGraw Hill
• Pearson
• Sage
• Springer
• Wiley
• WW Norton
• More publishers are expected to announce soon

If you’d like to get a free eText for your students, submit an order with this form. (The list of participating publishers will be updated in the form.)

The etexts will be presented on the university-standard, engagement-promoting, feature-rich, and Canvas-integrated e-reader—Engage (Canvas Course).

Engage also allows you to present Open Educational Resources (OER) and materials you have created yourself (PDF looks best, but you can also present Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more than 15 other file types). If you want an instance of Engage just for these types of materials, send a request to the IU eTexts team at etexthlp@iu.edu.

Learn more about IU eTexts and Engage at IU eTexts: A Faculty and Staff Introduction (Canvas Course). If you have any questions or wish to discuss, please don’t hesitate to contact us: etexthlp@iu.edu.

The semester will not be extended. Other than the additional week of spring break, the semester calendar remains unchanged.

No, the Office of Online Education, the Office of Collaborative Academic Programs, and University Academic Affairs are closely monitoring the primary regulatory bodies and all have communicated a great deal of flexibility in regulatory requirements as universities adapt to the COVID-19 epidemic. Professional accreditors may have additional guidance, but in general, following university policies, procedures, and guidance for online classes is sufficient.

For more information, please visit https://teachingonline.iu.edu/programs/covid-compliance.html

Zoombombing refers to uninvited users entering a Zoom meeting and using the share screen feature to display graphic or otherwise inappropriate content. Here are some walkthroughs of the top things you can do to keep your meeting secure.

Before your meeting

• Securing your Zoom sessions (video & article)

During your meeting

• Managing disruptions during Zoom meetings (video & article)

For details and more suggestions, see Zoom privacy and security features.

Important: Any IU user who will be working with Protected Health Information (PHI) in Zoom should use a Zoom Health account.

There are a number of considerations to keep in mind when attending classes remotely. A list of tips for smoother remote class meetings is available here or on the Keep Learning site.

Students, faculty, and staff can download the software without paying a fee from IUware, including products such as Adobe Creative Cloud and Office 365. If a product isn’t available on IUware or can’t be installed for another reason, IUanyWare may be used to run software from any internet-connected device (computers, tablets, Chromebooks, and mobile phones).

Additionally, the STC PC computer labs are open and available for virtual access. Instructors and students can access the STC lab computers using IUanyWare and use the software installed on those machines. For more information, see Access IU STC labs during campus closures/COVID-19.

If you or your students are near campus WiFi lot-hot-spots are available. You can also download the eduroam Companion App to find network locations near you (for more about connecting to eduroam, see About eduroam at Indiana University). Remember to practice physical distancing when accessing networks outside your residence.

Temporary service interruptions may occur, either due to planned maintenance or unexpected outages. Visit status.iu.edu to see real-time availability of IU-supported systems and information on upcoming planned maintenance. You can also contact your campus Support Center or check the active IT Notices from the IT Notices link at the top of any service homepage (e.g. zoom.iu.edu, kaltura.iu.edu, or canvas.iu.edu).

As always, temporary service interruptions may occur. To ensure the security and privacy of student data, and to ensure that you and your students receive the technical support you need, only use tools that have been approved for use at IU (for example, those listed in External tools available in Canvas or on the Keep Teaching Resources page). If you're unsure whether a tool or service is approved for use at IU, contact your campus teaching and learning center.

Because many students will have shifting obligations, time zones, and technology access, it is unlikely that they will all be able to easily participate in synchronous classes via Zoom.  Instructors are strongly encouraged to choose recorded video options (like Kaltura) over live ones (like Zoom) whenever possible in order to address the challenges mentioned above and to make sure students with technology or scheduling challenges are not marginalized.

Available at no cost to IU faculty and students, Kaltura Personal Capture (available for use on both PC and Mac) allows you to record your screen and webcam simultaneously, making it ideal for recording presentations and lectures.  With the Kaltura Media Editor, you can then easily edit your recordings and upload the recordings for your students to access through your Canvas course site.  Unlike Zoom and other tools that require synchronous (“live”) participation, recording your lectures using Kaltura Personal Capture frees both you and your students from the requirement of being online at a specific time.  This asynchronous approach could also prove especially beneficial to students who are in different time zones/studying abroad, as they can view your lecture at a time most convenient to them. 

The Collaboration Technologies Video Production Team continues to service requests at no cost for faculty. For a list of available services and contact information, see About Faculty Media Production Spaces.

Use the IU VPN only if you are trying to access a service you can’t get to another way, or if your IT Pro has told you that you need to use VPN. While typically the IU VPN would provide additional security on public networks, in order to ensure network availability, using the IU VPN will only connect to the IU network when necessary to load services (e.g. campus-specific library resources). Do not rely on the IU VPN to protect your network traffic on non-IU networks at this time.

IU will not assert ownership rights in any and all forms of Traditional Works of Scholarship created or used as instructional materials, including but not limited to class recordings in Kaltura and Zoom, by IU faculty as a result of the suspension of face-to-face classroom teaching due to COVID-19.  See IP Policy UA-05 for details.

Engage also allows you to present Open Educational Resources (OER) and materials you have created yourself (PDF looks best, but you can also present Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more than 15 other file types). If you want an instance of Engage just for these types of materials, send a request to the IU eTexts team at etexthlp@iu.edu.

Learn more about IU eTexts and Engage at IU eTexts: A Faculty and Staff Introduction (Canvas Course). If you have any questions or wish to discuss, please don’t hesitate to contact us: etexthlp@iu.edu.

Use Canvas Modules to easily organize and sequence your course materials and assignments.

No. All campus testing centers have been closed until further notice from the University.

Canvas Quizzes can be used to create quizzes and tests with a variety of options that allow for multiple-choice, short answer, and essay types of assessments.  This tool also allows for question banks to be used that shuffles the questions for each student giving them a unique test, cutting down on cheating.

Instead of trying to do a quiz or test online, students can do a take-home essay exam, write a paper, or do a project.  There are a variety of alternative assessment techniques that don’t rely on taking an online test.  You can also offer up the opportunity for students to do more authentic assessments which would have students apply what they have learned and use their judgment to new types of situations or scenarios.

Each campus is deciding on whether or not there will be course evaluations done for the spring 2020 semester. 

Contact your campus Academic Affairs Office to inquire about plans on your campus.