Protocols for Undergraduate Teaching

This document outlines the protocols for undergraduate teaching within the Faculty for the academic year 2023 to 2024.

1.     Summary.

2.     Recording teaching and online teaching. 

3.     Seeking student permission for recording. 

4.     Attendance at lectures by those not taking philosophy papers 

5.     Use of Moodle. 

6.      Accessible documents 

6.1 Making PDF files accessible. 

6.2 Making Word documents use docx. 

6.3 Making Powerpoint slides accessible.

1. Summary

Teaching in person

The Faculty of Philosophy will be following guidance from the University to offer in-person teaching as the norm. 

 The facilities developed to allow for online teaching remain in place and if there are good health-related, logistical or pedagogical reasons to depart from in-person teaching on an exceptional basis this can be facilitated. These particular exceptions should be made known to students as soon as possible on our regularly updated Lecture List and on the relevant Moodle page. 

Being Updated for 2023.

University policy is that staff should record their lectures and that the recordings should be made available (on Moodle, via Panopto) for the duration of the academic year. It is, however, the Faculty of Philosophy’s local policy that this remains at each individual academic’s discretion. Please indicate clearly to students at the start of your lecture series whether those lectures will be recorded or not.

Communication with Students

All teaching staff will be responsible for communicating with students about deviations from the default teaching mode via Moodle, and for uploading handouts and lecture notes etc. to Moodle as appropriate.

​​​​​​​Reuse of recorded teaching materials

In line with the University Policy on the re-use of teaching materials, staff may only reuse previously recorded material when it is purposely designed for re-use, as part of a coherent course of teaching, and where it has been reviewed to ensure it remains relevant and coherent. 

2. Recording teaching and online teaching

   2.1 Audio recordings

Audio recordings can be made within Panopto itself, or via another method such a mobile device or laptop that creates an MP3 file. That can then be uploaded onto Panopto. Once the recording is in your folder in Panopto you can then copy it to the relevant course folder in Moodle by selecting the recording, clicking ‘copy’ and then choosing the appropriate course folder. If you wish to, it is also possible to use Panopto to create a combined file of audio and powerpoint slides. There is more information about how to use Panopto to upload audio files in the Philosophy Faculty Panopto guide available here:

https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/files/documents/philosophy-using-panopto-overview.pdf

2.2 Video recordings

Where an audio recording is not be adequate you may wish to record a video. For instance, a student’s SSD might require them to have access to a video recording of a lecture. Students who rely on lip-reading may be able to make use of video recordings but not audio recordings.

The University has been working to equip centrally managed teaching rooms with AV equipment for lecture capture. You may organise “scheduled lecture capture” where you pre-schedule a recording to take place in a lecture theatre at a set date and time by providing your consent to the Faculty office.

Alternatively, you can also record your lectures manually via your laptop, either using Panopto or other software. We recommend using Panopto to record material. Panopto allows you to record a slide show alongside audio and visual recordings

If you choose scheduled lecture capture, you may need to seek consent from any other speakers. See section 3.

If a room has scheduled lecture capture, the recording of the lecture should automatically upload to the relevant course Panopto folder for that course. If you have recorded a lecture manually on your laptop using Panopto, then the lecture should automatically upload to your personal Panopto folder, from where you will need to move it to the relevant course folder. If you have recorded your lecture manually by some other means, then you will need to first upload the recording to your personal folder in Panopto and then move it into the relevant course folder.

If a lecture or other session is manually recorded, it should be uploaded to Panopto within 48 hours of. Lecturers are reminded that it can take considerable time to upload recordings to Panopto. A one-hour recording may take as long as 50 minutes to upload.

Once a video has been uploaded to Panopto, you can use Panopto’s editing tools to remove parts of the recording, or to add captions (see §2.5). There’s more on all Panopto’s functions in the Faculty guide to using Panopto here:

https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/IT/philosophy-using-panopto-overview.pdf

There is up-to-date information about which centrally managed spaces have lecture capture equipment (for scheduled or manural lecture capture) here:

https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/teaching-and-learning/lc/where-lc

2.3 Recording Seminars, Seminar (Discussion) Groups etc.

Students will be expected to attend live seminars. Since these are likely to involve a significant amount of student interaction, instructors need to take care to abide by the University policy on recordings and to gain student consent in particular. See section 3.

For recording interactive sessions with multiple participants, it may help to make use of an OWL. The OWL is a combined video-conferencing camera and microphone, that replaces the built-in web camera on your computer. It automatically detects sound and movement, and makes the in-person current speaker visible to remote participants.

The Faculty office has two OWLs, which may be pre-booked for use outside the RFB. To do so, you must book via the online booker system, and then collect it from the Faculty library between 9 am- 1 pm and 2 pm-5 pm Monday to Friday.

Since recording of seminars and discussion groups is at the discretion of the instructor, please make explicit to your students if you intend to do so, and under what conditions you will make the resulting recording available to them, by posting this on the Moodle website for the course. For instance, you might choose to make the recording available to all students for the duration of the academic year, as will be the case with lectures, or you might choose to only make it available to students who have extenuating reasons for missing a live teaching session, such as being abroad. You will be responsible for disseminating the recording to students in such a case.

Instructions on how to publish a video recording to Moodle via Panopto can be found here: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=13191841, and here: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=13191771.

2.4. Ensure recordings are appropriately located and named when uploaded to Moodle Please check that any recordings you upload appear in the relevant section of Moodle, in the “Panopto” section.

When using a laptop/desktop computer, the section is usually found in the narrow column on the right-hand side of the webpage, directly below the “iDiscover” section. When using a smaller device (e.g. tablet/smartphone), the section may appear towards the bottom of the central column, due to screen display resizing.

When uploading recordings to Moodle, Lecturers are asked to use a standard naming convention for their recordings. Please name files in line with the following protocol: Part, Paper Number and name, Title of lecture course, Leader’s name, and Lecture week number, e.g. “Part II – Paper 2 Mind – Consciousness – Jessie Munton – Lecture 1”.

​​​​​​​   2.5 Captioning Recordings

Captioning recordings significantly helps improve their accessibility for a number of students, in particular those with hearing and attentional difficulties. The University is legally bound to ensure all teaching and learning materials are accessible, and so you are strongly encouraged to add captions to your videos. You can do so quite simply when uploading them to Panopto: in ‘Editing’ mode, select ‘captions’ form the menu on the left-hand side of the screen, and then ‘Import captions’. There is more information about how to add captions to recordings on various platforms in this document here: https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/caption- summary.pdf

​​​​​​​ 2.6 Live streaming in-person teaching

In addition to recording lectures, instructors may wish to live-stream in-person sessions. Most teaching rooms should be equipped with AV  equipment which would allow the creation of a Panopto webcast to create the live-stream. This guide explains how to live-stream through Panopto: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=12062241. You can also create a live-stream via a zoom meeting, but this may require you to bring your own laptop.

If you intend to live-stream your teaching, you will need to set up the meeting or webcast in advance, and share the relevant link on Moodle, under the section called “Live Online teaching links”. Instructors would be well advised to take their own laptop/tablet/smart phone with them to the in-person session, to provide a back-up should the computer equipment installed in the lecture room fail or otherwise prove unreliable.

​​​​​​​   2.7 Live (“synchronous”) online-only teaching

If you wish to run a live on-line teaching session, you can use Zoom to do this.

UTOs and Temporary Lecturers in the Faculty will be provided with a Faculty Zoom license, available for their sole use. They will be responsible for setting up their online teaching sessions themselves, so as to coincide with the timings in the Lecture List. For all other categories of teaching staff (e.g. affiliated lecturers, research fellows including JRFs, Postdocs, PhD students giving lectures or leading discussion groups/logic classes, etc.), the Faculty will organise the online sessions and will send the leader the relevant information (e.g. weblinks, log-in details).

The session leader will be responsible for posting the weblinks and log-in details for their online sessions onto Moodle and/or distributing the information via Moodle’s Quickmail function (see §5 below). This will be the case regardless of the status of the session leader, i.e. regardless of whether the session leader is a UTO/Temporary Lecturer with access to a Zoom license, or whether they are someone, e.g. an affiliated lecturer, PhD student, etc., whose Zoom meetings are organised by the Faculty. Instructions on how to add URL links to a Moodle course can be found in section 5 of the Faculty's guide to Panopto/Moodle, available here: https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/IT/philosophy-using-panopto-overview.pdf

    ​​​​​​​2.8 Recording live online teaching

There are two ways to record on Zoom: prior to the meeting, under “Meeting Options” you can select the option “Automatically record meeting”; alternatively, once the meeting has commenced, you will find a “Record” button at the bottom of your Zoom interface. In either case, you will be given two options: “Record on this computer” or “Record to the cloud”. Whilst recording, it is possible to “Pause” the recording in the midst of the session, and then to “Resume”; this is useful if there are portions of the session that you do not wish to appear in the recording, such as student participation (see section 3). You will find the “Pause/Resume” and “Stop Recording” buttons at the bottom of the Zoom interface.

​​​​​​​     2.9 Use of pre-recorded material

Some instructors may wish to use pre-recorded material either as a means of delivering a course of lectures, or as part of a course that also includes in-person or live online elements. For instance, students might watch an introductory video prior to meeting to discuss it.

In line with the University Policy on the re-use of teaching materials, staff may only reuse previously recorded material when it is purposely designed for re-use, as part of a coherent course of teaching. Content must also be reviewed to ensure it remains relevant and coherent. The University policy on the re-use of material is available here: https://www.educationalpolicy.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/re-use_guidance.pd

3. Seeking student permission for recording 

Recordings must abide by University policy, including securing consent where necessary from student participants:        

https://www.educationalpolicy.admin.cam.ac.uk/supporting-students/policy- recordings

In particular, should a participant’s personal data (e.g. voice, image, opinion, etc.) be processed in the recording, then, whilst their consent may not necessarily be required, there are conditions under which it is required. A participant’s consent is not required when each of the following hold:

1. the participant’s contributions are optional, not expected, or otherwise not

required in order to meet the learning objectives of the session

2. the participant has been notified in advance that the session will be recorded
3. the participant has been notified that they have the right to object to being recorded, and informed of what action, if any, they may take to avoid being recorded.

In practice, this is likely to mean that explicit consent is not required for the recording of lectures, provided you clearly notify participants at the start that the session is being recorded and that they have the right to object. If students do object to their personal participation being recorded, you can then pause the recording should they participate.

Should any of a)–c) not hold, then consent must obtained from each participant. Since in seminars and discussion groups the participants’ contributions are expected rather than optional then you must seek consent from participants if you intend to record the session. This consent can be either verbal or written, but it is the instructor’s responsibility to keep a record that it was obtained:

https://www.educationalpolicy.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/recording_policy.pdf

The University offers a template for how to obtain consent from students here: https://www.educationalpolicy.admin.cam.ac.uk/supporting-students/policy- recordings/template-statements-students

If students do not consent to being recorded, there are two ways to avoid including their participation in your recordings. During the live webinar, you may “Pause” the recording during periods of audience participation, and then “Resume” as you return to the non-participatory sections of the session. However, note that this is not fool- proof: participants’ personal data may still inadvertently be recorded. Alternatively (or additionally), following the webinar, you may upload the video to Panopto, and then edit out periods of audience participation; see §2.c of the Faculty’s guide to using Panopto, available here:

https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/IT/philosophy-using-panopto-overview.pdf

and the guidance here: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=13191731

4. Attendance at lectures by those not taking philosophy papers

Students who are not registered as taking philosophy papers are able to request access to the Moodle site. If the room turns out to be sufficiently capacious, then instructors can invite students not actually taking the paper to attend in-person lectures.

5. Use of Moodle

Moodle will be the main channel of communication between students and teaching staff. You can use Moodle to upload lecture materials and recordings, to post updates about the teaching modality you are using, and to message students taking a course.

1, Handouts and lecture slides

All teaching staff are to be responsible for uploading any accompanying handouts, lectures slides or other equivalent materials to Moodle. These are to be made available throughout the academic year, in keeping with existing practice. They should be uploaded to the “Lecture Handouts” section of the relevant Moodle page. This section is usually easy to spot. It may be found in the central part of the webpage, below the “Live Online Teaching Links” section. Instructions on how to upload materials to Moodle can be found in section 4 of the Faculty's guide to Panopto/Moodle, available here:

https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/IT/philosophy-using-panopto-overview.pdf

2. How to message all students formally taking/borrowing a given paper

Session leaders may send messages to all students registered for a given Paper by using the “Quickmail” function on the Moodle page for that Paper. Instructions on using Quickmail can be found in the section entitled ‘Composing an email’, on pp. 2ff. of the following guide: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/5601851/mod_resource/content/47/Quick mail%20Block%20Basic_3-5_FINAL.pdf

Note that you can make sure your message is sent only to students, not to all those with access to the Moodle site, by using the ‘role filter’ drop down menu in the Quickmail function to select ‘students’ and then use ‘add’ to add them to the recipients list.

Where a lecturer messages students to inform them of a change to teaching arrangements or similar (for instance, if an in-person session has to be cancelled or moved on-line due to illness), then this message must also be sent to the Faculty Office (phil-admin@lists.cam.ac.uk), as per normal practice, to ensure records are updated and Office staff are equipped to deal with enquiries from students.

3.  How to use / edit Moodle

For a labyrinthine set of guides to Moodle, see here: https://www.vle.cam.ac.uk/course/index.php?categoryid=30

For guidance on specific topics, see the following links