In case it's helpful for other people, here's the announcement I just sent out to my classes through Canvas. Your course setup is probably different from mine, but I think it may be helpful to see examples of how other professors are communicating with students. Some of my classes have slightly different structures, so I've tried to indicate the ways I changed the announcement between those courses.

Hi all,

So as I'm sure you've heard by now, Westminster College is canceling all face-to-face classes through the end of the month. This is the right decision; we all need to work together to flatten the curve and prevent the medical crisis from getting real, real bad. A big part of that is limiting the amount of face-to-face contact we have with each other, because that's how viruses spread, so let's just not meet in person, yeah? Also, wash your hands. :)

Here is Westminster's timeline, as I understand it:

   
Week What's happening
March 9-13 Spring break
March 16-20 Classes are cancelled (extended spring break)
March 23-27 Classes are held online
March 30 - April 3 Maybe back in person? We'll see!

So what does all this look like for our class? I don't have complete answers to that question, and I'm going to be taking the next few days to figure out better answers. However, I promise that I will do my absolute best to provide you with a good and worthwhile course. I also just have to admit, in the interest of transparency, that there's just no way the course experience will be the same as it would have been – but like, that's okay! It's going to be what it's going to be, and that's all it can be.

Here's some stuff that I have figured out so far, and some things that I'm going to be thinking about more in the days to come.

Content coverage

I super don't know if we're going to have time to “cover” (whatever that means) all the stuff I was originally planning to. Expect the list of learning targets to change a little bit because of the time constraints on the course. We'll need to play this by ear throughout the rest of the term.

Existing assignments

Fortunately I think our existing assignment structure – Problem Sets and (Webwork sets / R modules) – will continue to work pretty well. We're handing in all of these things in online anyway, so yay, no big disruption here. 

Deadlines

For the rest of the semester, I'm offering unlimited extensions on all deadlines. Essentially, everybody gets unlimited free tokens, (and I'm going to make it so Webwork sets will remain open indefinitely). I will continue to put due dates on Canvas assignments, because they will help you stay on track. Please don't ignore deadlines, but know that they are flexible. 

Here's what you definitely shouldn't do: Definitely don't wait until the end of the term to do all the work for the course. You will hate your life, you won't learn very much, and I'll be pissed that I have to grade everything all at once. :)

Quizzes

I don't know that a daily exit quiz makes sense anymore, and we're definitely losing a couple of days anyway. I'm thus removing quizzes from the final grade calculation table. I don't want you to stop doing quizzes! They're still useful! I'm going to think about ways I can align quizzes with sections instead of days, because I think that makes more sense in our new situation, but you'll be on the honor system for completing them.

Drop-in hours

I'm going to move drop-in hours online, clearly. I'm exploring a couple of different platforms, including Zoom, Twitch, and Discord, and I'll let you know what I find out about which one works best. Plan on the current drop-in hours schedule, but since there's significantly less constraints on our scheduled time, maybe we can schedule some new times that offer some more flexibility (evenings?). We can also continue to use the youcanbookme system to make appointments for other times to meet virtually.

Project changes

(For my classes with creative projects:) I think that the extra week we're not meeting might change your creative project plans. Please feel free to modify your proposal if that's the case.

(For my statistics class:) I'm certainly not going to ask you to collect data for your project this semester. Instead, you should plan on locating some existing data, either in one of the libraries in R or somewhere on the internet or whatever. Please feel free to email me if you'd like some help locating interesting data and planning your analyses. More on this the week of the 23rd when we come back together. :)

Changes to the syllabus

Clearly all of this is going to cause a bunch of changes to the syllabus. I'll be updating the google doc; watch for changes to be indicated in different-color text.

What you should do next week

Per instructions from the provost, we won't be holding any formal meetings of class. I'm going to invite you to a super low-key, super informal meeting at our usual class time on Monday. It'll be through Zoom or Twitch or Discord or something like this. I'm not taking attendance; this is just an opportunity for you to see some familiar faces and ask some questions. No math will happen (unless you have interesting math questions) and you do not need to attend if you can't.

I'm also going to extend a few deadlines, and I'm going to sit down and grade a ton of stuff. That will probably prompt a ton of rewrites. Take this upcoming week and knock all of those out, so that you're ready for new stuff starting on March 24.

Thank you

Thank you, thank you, thank you, in advance, for your patience and flexibility as we figure all of this out together. I'll be in touch with more details as I figure them out.

Let's all trust each other that we're going to do as good of a job as we possibly can in the circumstances. Let's take care of each other, and care for each other, even though we're at a distance. This is cheesy, but let's hold each other in our hearts. We don't have to be in person with each other to do that. We don't have to be in person with each other to learn.

Stay safe and wash your hands,
Dr Bagley