Dear Romance Studies Faculty, Graduate Students and Staff,

Another sunshine filled spring day is on doorstep. I hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy it and see all of the flowers starting to burst forth around town.

Connecting With Students While Teaching Remotely

Mary K has shared two useful articles from Michelle Cox, Director, English Language Support Office wrote for the Knight Institute’s website.

An article guiding faculty in connecting with and remotely teaching international students who have returned to their home countries: https://knight.as.cornell.edu/guidance-faculty-getting-staying-connected-international-students

And an article for international students who have returned home, with advice for connecting with faculty, advisors, and mentors: https://knight.as.cornell.edu/guidance-intl-students-getting-staying-connected-cornell

Reasons for Using Canvas Over Other Tools

Rachel Bean, Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education is recommending courses use Canvas as their course management system as a matter of preference. Here are some of the reasons that have arisen to motivate this:

  • International students: Those including students in China, may not have access to/be able to receive Cornell emails or link to anything hosted on google. They do, however, have access to Canvas and messages sent through this forum, either open discussion or the “Inbox” function. They can also access Zoom. So if a faculty member wants to share materials, have a discussion or send a Zoom link for a remote lecture, the student would only be able to see those if they are shared on Canvas not by email.
  • Canvas requires a Cornell-ID to access: This means that all materials can be shared without concerns about materials being accessed, used and shared in ways that are not appropriate, and no risk that emails are going into the “Junk” mail. By having these communications in Canvas it provides privacy. For example we have heard of instances in other institutions where zoom links to lectures have been accessed by non-students and they have joined online discussions and heckled/disrupted them and also concerns about recordings being accessed and used for purposes for which they weren’t intended. Having them on Canvas provides some protection against this.
  • Consistency: Students will be assuming Canvas will be their primary way to access materials. They will have it open and will be able to quickly move from one course to another to see updates and communications.

Scheduling Zoom Meeting in Canvas vs. Scheduling Outside of Canvas

When scheduling a Zoom meeting in Canvas, it will generate an event on the students’ Calendars in Canvas. This method will also track student “attendance” and “attentiveness” in a Zoom session right in Canvas. This method is recommended for discussions and “class-time” activities.

When scheduling a Zoom meeting outside of Canvas, there will be no Calendar event in Canvas (unless you manually generate the event). This method will track “attendance” and “attentiveness”, but it will not be listed in Canvas, and, depending on a student’s settings when joining a session, may not show information that makes them readily identifiable. This method of creating a Zoom session is recommended for setting up office hours (as described at https://canvas.cornell.edu/courses/1848/pages/scheduling-zoom-office-hours

Library News

Cornell University Library is now offering trial access to ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Northeast Collection through May 29th. This includes searchable full-page PDFs of the Ithaca Journal from 1914-2011.

The URL to access this database is https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/hnpusne/news/fromDatabasesLayer?accountid=10267

(Alternatively, if you are in a ProQuest database, you can click on Change Databases at the top, scroll down go the News & Newspapers databases, open it, and scroll down to ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Northeast Collection‎  (1785 – 2010), the 19th title listed in the title list. The link from there is the same as the URL above.)

New York titles (with years covered) in ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Northeast Collection:

  • The Ithaca Journal (1914-2011)
  • The Journal News (Rockland) (1889-1990)
  • New York Daily News (1919-2009)
  • Press & Sun-Bulletin (1904-2009)
  • Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (1871-2008)
  • Star-Gazette (Elmira) (Coming in Q3 2020!) (1891-?)

Stay well, stay strong and stay in touch,

Mary Beth