Remote Alternatives to Attendance
Attending class sessions in real time, during the scheduled hours, remains a requirement of all my classes, with no exceptions, necessary in order to earn Actual Attendance and Engagement and Participation credit and impossible to replace after the fact.
For my classes, which focus specifically on gathering, presence, and shared in-person reading as learning tools, I generally require students to attend real-time sessions in person in order to earn credit. However, I allow each student to attend ONE session per term remotely, and to count that session as a class attended — this is in addition to the set number of no-questions-asked absences already allotted in each of my classes. I expect any student attending remotely to adhere to my Rules and Requirements for Remote Attendance, below (read these before you attend remotely; if you cannot meet the requirements, you cannot attend remotely). You can find the remote attendance link here, under “Current Remote Meeting Link”.
This remote attendance option CANNOT be used on days when an in-person test or quiz is being offered.
For students in ENG 202, this remote attendance option cannot be used to replace TA-led tutorial sessions UNLESS you have registered in an online-only tutorial for the full term (online-only tutorial students should also read and follow the Rules and Requirements below).
Unless you make a special arrangement with me ahead of time (see below), this is a ONE-TIME ONLY option, offered in addition to the absences each student is already allotted. Please DO NOT email me ahead of time in order to let me know you’ll be attending remotely: just attend according to the instructions below.
Rules and Requirements for Remote Attendance
These instructions apply to any session I am teaching (and the TA for an online-only tutorial may adopt them or modify them as well):
All students attending remotely must meet the U of T minimum technical requirements for online learning (click here to see what those are). If your connection is not strong enough or reliable enough for you to hear every word I say (and most of what your classmates say), then you cannot receive credit for attending remotely. If connection or audio problems cause you to miss crucial material, then you are not eligible to receive attendance credit.
All students attending remotely must submit their Comprehension Questions by email within five minutes of the end of class. Make sure you know the right email address ahead of time (for ENG 330 and 331, it’s sergi.utoronto@gmail.com; for ENG 202, email the admin TA and specify which tutorial section you’re in). I will never repeat the Comprehension Questions (CQs) at the end of class for remote students whose connection or audio settings prevented them from hearing them on the first ask (see above) — make sure you can hear everything I say in the first place. Make sure your email actually sends. Your admin TA and I will try to email quick confirmations that your CQ has been received; if it is not received, whatever the reason, you will not receive attendance credit.
There is no chat function enabled in my remote simulcast. To be heard, you must raise your hand and then unmute yourself to speak. If you are unable to do this for any reason, then unfortunately I cannot offer you a remote attendance option in my classes.
Hybrid teaching makes it difficult for the professor to stay on top of multiple media at once: it is the remote attendees’ responsibility to alert me immediately, even if it means interrupting the flow of class, of any problems that arise. If we are referring to a slide, handout, or other visual material that you cannot see; if your virtual hand has been up for a few minutes and I have not at all acknowledged it, or if there have been long or frequent intervals in which you have not been able to hear my voice clearly, then you must unmute yourself and alert me to the problem aloud. I may invalidate remote attendance if it becomes clear that remote students have been sitting for a while without even seeing or being able to access the material we’re discussing. The only material remote students may expect reasonably to miss, and do not have to alert me to, is the discussion contributions from fellow students — unfortunately, no microphone will be able to pick all these up.
You do not have to have your camera on if you don’t want to, but I strongly encourage you to turn it on if you can. I also recommend the “Turn Off Self View” function (try hovering your mouse over your own image to find it)—it will hide your image from yourself so you can attend better to others.
Any participation requirements that would apply for the in-person version of a class should be considered double-strength for anyone attending remotely. Remote attendance can often cause instructors to lose track of students, or vice versa; you should be taking proactive steps to ensure that you are actively contributing to the discussion — again, not through the chat, but by unmuting yourself and speaking.
I may check in with you at random, not to ask you a question about class content, but rather just to make sure you can hear me; you’ll need to respond immediately either aloud or by giving a virtual thumbs-up/wave. If you do not respond right away to show you are still attending, I will try again after five minutes; if you’re still not there, I will eject you from the Zoom room and you will not receive credit for attending.
By attending remotely, you are agreeing to give the class and instructor your undivided and full attention for the full duration of the scheduled session. Never open windows during class that are not immediately relevant to the material currently being covered. Never schedule other commitments of any kind during your remote session. If it becomes clear you have abused remote attendance in those ways, I may bar you from future remote attendance and may also reduce your Engagement/Participation grade by a massive amount.
I may likely project the Zoom room onto the classroom screen during our meetings — expect your displayed name and image to be visible to all.
Expanding the Limit on Remote Attendance
Under certain circumstances, I can also expand my limit on remote attendance — if students alert me within the first three weeks of class that they have a truly good reason to attend remotely more than once (do not tell me what your reason is—it might be a health consideration, a housing situation, etc.—just let me know that you have a truly good reason and I will accept that in good faith). Here’s how that works:
If a student without a relevant Accessibility Services letter requests an accommodation for remote learning within the first three weeks of class, then I will allow that student to replace up to four in-person class sessions with online real-time participation. These remote sessions still have to be attended in real time, during the scheduled meetings of our class.
If a student with a relevant Accessibility Services letter requests an accommodation for remote learning within the first three weeks of class, then I will allow that student to replace as many class sessions as they wish with online real-time participation. (In this case, I will insist that you show me your letter.) These remote sessions still have to be attended in real time, during the scheduled meetings of our class.
If a student, letter or no letter, requests an accommodation for remote learning after the first three weeks of class — if an unexpected emergency has arisen (in your request, please do not tell me what the emergency is, just that an emergency has arisen) — then I can still increase that student’s limit on remote attendance to four in-person class sessions as an emergency measure, as long as that student satisfies two requirements at the moment of the emergency request: 1) the student must currently be below the course attendance limit; 2) the student, based on their current participation levels so far, would earn a 75 or above for their participation grade (you can inquire with me or your TA about what your current grade would be). I cannot grant emergency expansions for remote attendance under any circumstances unless both of those requirements are met. Even with the emergency accommodation, remote sessions still have to be attended in real time, during the scheduled meetings of our class.
BUT ONE LAST THING: As a scholar of drama and spoken language, I have learned and demonstrated again and again that real physical presence is crucial to the exchange of ideas in the humanities: computer-mediated presence is not the same (and can be insidious in its simulation/replacement/displacement of real presence) for myriad reasons. Attending in-person classes is the right of every registered student. The university should thus make sure its facilities are accessible to every student it registers; to do otherwise, and so to offer a lower-grade education to students with accessibility issues who are thus forced to attend by using virtual media, is, in my opinion, fraudulent. True accessibility requires actual spaces that are accessible to all students, or that can be modified to be so, not the use of secondary or virtual spaces. I encourage you to advocate for a university that is truly and thoroughly accessible to all of its students’ bodies and minds — and by all means enlist me, if you wish, in that advocacy. As much as I make remote learning options available, I strongly encourage every student to do everything they can to get into the classroom in person—and I will do whatever I can to make that classroom truly accessible to anyone who wants in. I can apply to switch rooms, I can modify lights or slides, I can allow more frequent breaks, I can ask students to mask up (even after the pandemic is over); I can do all this (and more!) without ever revealing who asked for them (or that I was asked)—but I can only do these things if I know they would help someone in our class. So ask. I’m also willing and eager to experiment with new ways to make it more possible for you to attend in person. If you open up a dialogue with me, I’m happy to throw some ideas around. We want you here with us. You, in mind and in body, are part of this university’s scholarly community. If you can’t come in through the usual entries, let’s open new ones.
Do not forget for a moment that bodily and physical presence are vital to the humanities, often in subtle but profound ways: our global experiences in 2020-22 made the importance of real physical presence very clear. If you are a student who felt relieved or liberated to not attend class in person, I suspect that the feeling may have come from a failure on prior instructors’ parts to create a classroom space where you can feel properly at home. So yes, you can use remote alternatives in my classes, but let’s also figure out a way to bring you back home — you, and your ideas, belong here.