Update to staff - 19 March 2020
Dear colleagues,
We are all still coming to terms with the enormity of what coronavirus means for the world, our University, our own work and our personal lives.
Today (March 19) brought another development with the announcement by Scotland’s Deputy First Minister John Swinney of the cancellation of Scotland’s school exam diet, which has never happened before.
We need to take time to digest his statement, but Scotland’s Chief Examining Officer has advised that a certification model can be put in place to ensure young people in our schools and colleges are not disadvantaged. We will circulate any information you may need around this where appropriate and assess what it means for our admissions in the next academic year.
Home working
We expect almost everyone will be working from home by the end of today or at the latest tomorrow. From Friday evening, access to the buildings on the Aberdeen campuses for everyone, except for staff maintaining essential services, will not be permitted. The only exceptions to this will be a handful of cases for a short period (e.g. to allow experiments to be wound up). These very few exceptions have been agreed between Heads of School / Directors and the Director of Estates & Facilities. Unless you have been given formal permission please do not attempt to enter University buildings after Friday evening.
As we start to adjust to home working, there are some useful training resources to help support us all to adjust to working remotely. There is also a range of resources for managers to help you stay connected with your teams remotely. More information can be found here.
Tools and support for learning, teaching and assessing remotely
The Centre for Academic Development is providing multiple online sessions, bookable through the coursebooking system, to support remote learning, teaching and assessment:
- Blackboard Collaborate Ultra for teaching online
- Panopto (lecture capture and podcasts)
- Online assessment using MyAberdeen
Further information about teaching remotely is also available on our eLearning webpages.
The Centre for Academic Development has also created a resource which you may find useful when thinking about alternative assessments.
Please contact staff in the Centre for Academic Development for further assistance, either by emailing elearning@abdn.ac.uk or for more general enquiries, cad@abdn.ac.uk.
Sickness & reporting
The latest health advice is available here, including what to do if you or anyone in your household falls ill. Please remember to continue to report your sickness absence to your line manager as usual. If you suspect you may have coronavirus you should NOT go to your doctors’ surgery, pharmacy or hospital.
Further advice
The FAQs are being updated constantly. It has been and continues to be a huge task for staff across the Directorates to create and then update these on a daily basis, and we want to acknowledge this and thank everyone involved for this crucial effort. If you have suggestions for how the FAQs might be improved, or have any other enquiries please email coronavirus@abdn.ac.uk.
Wellbeing ezine
From tomorrow, we will be issuing a weekly wellbeing ezine providing advice and information to help you through this challenging time. We will also write again tomorrow with some thoughts on what has already been achieved collectively by the university community in the last week, and begin to turn our attention to what lies ahead.
Best wishes
George and Karl
Professor George Boyne |
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