Happy New Year, and I hope that you had a happy holiday season and are refreshed and rested. 

The University will re-open fully tomorrow, Monday, January 3.  However, in light of the current COVID surge, and since there are relatively few students on campus during the January intercession, I have asked the Vice Presidents and Deans to determine who must be on campus for the next three weeks so we can remain open, but at the same time reduce density. Where individuals can fully carry on their job responsibilities remotely, I have asked the Vice Presidents to use their discretion to allow this from January 3 – 21.  We expect that all campus operations will resume fully in person on Monday, January 24. 

A lower density on campus during this surge will protect employees on campus as well as those at home. 

If you do not hear from your supervisor before you are due to report for work on Monday, you should report as scheduled. 

All other policies remain in force, including the mask requirement and the requirement to upload your proof of your booster shot by January 18^th, or within 7 days of eligibility. Information on how to upload will be forthcoming later this week. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to adapt to the requirements of this ever-changing pandemic, and for doing your part to keep our community safe and healthy. 

Sincerely, 

Susan Poser

President

Dear Members of the Hofstra Community, 

Due to the increase of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and upon the recommendation of our partners at Northwell Health, all Hofstra students and employees will be required to receive a COVID-19 booster vaccination in 2022.

Everyone must get the booster shot within seven days of becoming eligible to receive it, beginning with those eligible on or before January 18, 2022, and upload proof by January 18. Boosters are widely available and a location near you can be found here (https://www.vaccines.gov). 

Those who are not eligible to receive the booster by January 18, must get the booster and upload proof within seven days of becoming eligible.

For those who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccination, eligibility for the booster is six months after the date of the second dose.

For those who received the single dose Janssen/J&J vaccine, eligibility is two months after receiving the vaccination.

FAQs and Information about how to upload your booster shots will be available and sent by email to the entire campus by January 5, 2022, at the latest. Please watch your email over the next few weeks for more information.  We wanted to give everyone advance notice of this booster requirement, and we note that the above is subject to appropriate review with union representatives.

In the interim, students with questions can contact safestarttesting@hofstra.edu, and employees with questions can contact the Office of Human Resources at benefits@hofstra.edu.

Thank you for all you have done to keep our community safe and healthy. We will be in touch with more information soon.  

Sincerely,

Susan Poser

President

A Message from Hofstra University Library

Many publishers have reached out to the academic community with offers to provide access to databases, electronic services, and ebooks at no charge.  These are being added daily to the appropriate sections of the Library web page (http://hofstra.edu/library)  Most can be found in the sections Database by Subject (left side) and eResources (right side).  

 Please be aware of these guides that offer easy access points to these resources as well as library services:

• Students: https://libguides.hofstra.edu/students

• Faculty: https://libguides.hofstra.edu/wecanhelp

Subject specialists have also prepared guides to library resources on a variety of subjects.  Those guides can be found here:  https://libguides.hofstra.edu/?b=s

Please reach out to your subject specialist (https://www.hofstra.edu/library/library_contact.html#facsubject) for help using these or any other library resource.  Also, please be aware that librarians are live on chat 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. most of the week.  Please encourage your students to reach out for any research support they may need, and avail yourself of this live assistance as well: https://libanswers.hofstra.edu/.

Just a reminder that the Bookstore has suggested RedShelf (https://redshelf.com/) as a possible source of a textbook.  VitalSource (https://www.vitalsource.com/) is another place to try.  Each requires registration using University credentials. 

The Writing Center will be tutoring exclusively online through the end of the Spring semester.  

Writing Center Tutors can support students on brainstorming, drafting, and revising writing assignments for your courses. Online tutoring is text-based, in that students cut-and-paste their work into our online tutoring platform and tutors will “chat” with students in real-time via a textbox.

Below are instructions to share with your students:

Writing Center Tutors are available for online appointments. Here’s how to make and access your online Writing Center appointments this semester:

• Visit our website, https://hofstra.edu/writingcenter, and click “Make a Writing Center Appointment” to log-in to our schedule.

• Select an available appointment time, indicated by a white box.

• At the time of your appointment, log-in to the schedule and click on the appointment window, indicated by a yellow box.

• A new window will open. Click the link that reads “Start or Join Online Consultation.”

• You will be automatically redirected to a chat room with your tutor and have the ability to paste or import your writing onto a large text window and chat with the tutor in a sidebar. The chat does not use voice or audio; it involves typing.

Please contact writingcenter@hofstra.edu with any questions.

Dear Colleagues:

This message is from Vice Provost Stavros Valenti:

We have asked all instructors to adapt their courses for remote teaching.  Some will reply primarily on synchronous live-casts of class sessions, while others will adopt asynchronous methods such as distributing to students recorded lectures and posting questions to discussion boards.

I have heard from several faculty who are eager for examples of synchronous remote teaching. Here is one example of how to organize an 85-minute synchronous Zoom class meeting.  Soon this example will be posted to the “Faculty: Teaching Remotely” page:

https://www.hofstra.edu/about/it/it-remote-faculty.html

If you think some of your instructors may find this useful, please modify it as you see fit and distribute.

-Stavros

Remote Teaching

One example of how to organize an 85-minute synchronous online class meeting

All instructors at Hofstra will be adapting their courses for remote teaching. If you are considering the use of synchronous online lectures and discussions as your mode of remote teaching in the weeks ahead, here is one example for how to organize an 85-minute synchronous session.

(1)   Begin the class session – say, a Zoom Room session – with a 20-minute interval to take attendance, answer questions, and provide a brief overview of the topic for the day.  For this overview, a few presentation slides could be “shared” with students.  Zoom has a “Polls” function that allows you to poll students, anonymously or not, on the fly or by using a poll created before your session.  You can use the Poll to ask “Where are you now? (Home / School)” or “How clear was the article you read for today? (Very clear/mostly clear/Mostly unclear/Very unclear)” If you wish to make the live broadcast available to students unable to attend the live-stream, you can turn on the “record” function, use the “Save to Cloud” option, and distribute it (or not) to one or more students after the Zoom session ends.  You can also make a separate recording of the covered material to share with students not able to attend the class live stream.

(2)   With the Zoom session still live, instruct your students to open a browser screen and navigate to Blackboard Discussion, where you have already posted a “Discussion Forum” with content to be read and discussed.  The forum question could require students to read a passage online or in a text, post a comment of 100 words or so, and reply to one or two other students’ posts.  You can also direct students to view online a video program or portion of a program; Sarah McCleskey of the Axinn Library can help you obtain a link to video content.  Alternatively, you can have a live discussion in Zoom, and the current speaker’s image and audio will show in the foreground.  Zoom has a Breakout Rooms function where you can automatically or manually assign groups of students to separate Zoom Rooms, drop in to each Breakout Room to monitor progress and offer guidance, and then end the Breakout Rooms sessions and return all students to the main Zoom Room. Students who cannot join by video can still join by computer audio or by telephone.

(3)   Use the last 20 minutes of class to wrap-up your Zoom session: Recap important points, walk through additional material using a shared presentation slide set, field questions, etc.  Give a brief preview of the topic for the next class session, assign work to be completed before the next session, and let students know how to reach you if they have further questions. End the Zoom session.  

This is just one example of how to organize a live broadcast of a class session.  It is for you to decide how to arrange remote teaching to meet our obligations to students in this challenging time.  We are asking a lot of our faculty and students to adapt to life off campus and a remote teaching and learning environment. We owe it to students to be available. A live broadcast of a class session is one of many teaching resources available to you.

Our IT department has already posted a web page with video tutorials on web tools for teaching remotely:

https://www-staging.hofstra.edu/about/it/it-remote-faculty.html

If you would like to learn more about using Zoom meetings for synchronous online instruction, I highly recommend that you view a recording of a recent 45-minute webinar (March 2020), Zoom for Education:  https://hofstra.zoom.us/rec/play/vJR5d-j5q283HNGcsgSDV_5wW9Tpe_qs0CVM_PIEmknkVnAAYVGlZuMaZ7NAORKJB_fFeWJ9L4d5ilrn?continueMode=true

S. Stavros Valenti

Vice Provost for Accreditation and Assessment

ProvostOnline@hofstra.edu

S.Stavros.Valenti@hofstra.edu

516-463 5400 / 516-463-5057