Dean's Letter to Address the Start of Remote Teaching (March 21, 2020)

2020.03.21.
Dean's Letter to Address the Start of Remote Teaching (March 21, 2020)

Dear Students,

Next Monday (March 23) remote teaching starts at the university, and we would like to provide you with some information about it.

The basics of cooperation in education

We need to be mutually aware that the operation in the state of emergency considerably differs from what we have been used to. This may not only manifest itself in that we are trying to convey knowledge and test its acquisition by remote teaching rather than the traditional forms of education and examination. Since a hitherto unexperienced situation has occurred in our lives, we have no fail safe guidelines to handle it by. While we do our best to make sure that you can pursue your studies without obstacles, some unforeseen problems will certainly occur that we cannot prepare ourselves for. The capacity of information technology infrastructures is limited, and it may happen that lecturers or students encounter these limits. We need to realize that the forthcoming weeks or perhaps months can bring hardships to any of us that may fundamentally affect the intensity of the cooperation in education. I am asking you as I am asking my colleagues to handle these situations with patience and seek mutually beneficial solutions.

Changes stemming from remote teaching

We were not planning the semester to be realized in the form of remote teaching, and the course descriptions written at the beginning of the semester were not created for online teaching. The new situation necessitates the rethinking of several issues, which makes it almost certain that a major part of the existing course descriptions need to be altered.

Currently, were are not planning to extend the academic year but are preparing for the possibility that the state of emergency will not cease to exist even during the examination period. Therefore, devising the means of electronic examination may be part of the changes in course requirements.

During the state of emergency, changes are expected to be introduced in the Academic Regulations for Students, whose purpose is to also ensure the students’ progress under the extraordinary circumstances. Negotiations about these changes are going on between the university bodies including the Students’ Union.

When preparing for the transfer to remote teaching, we aimed to realize it with the simplest and most fail safe means, since we are aware that our students’ access to devices of information technology and internet may be considerably varied and may even become increasingly difficult, since they have to use them concurrently with their siblings and parents working from home.

At our Faculty, the default platform of online education is CooSpace, and we continue preferring its use in future. As you have previously been informed, the university has also suggested the use of MS Teams and/or MS Stream as new interfaces of online education; about the options of access to these you can read below. Trainings and courses that have been using different education platforms can of course carry on without any changes.

ELTE’s IT server capacity is limited, and due to time restraints there has been no room for ample development. Thus, the university decided to introduce cloud-based solutions to aid remote teaching. The Information Technology Directorate [IIG], therefore, made it possible for all ELTE students to access the o365 environment. For this, in the first step, you need an IIG/Caesar ID. Students with active status who do not have an IIG/Caesar account yet can request the account creation online at https://ugykezelo.elte.hu by providing their Neptun code. After this, you will be able to access the MS Teams and/or MS Stream platforms, which is important, as some of your courses may migrate to these interfaces. (Your lecturer will send you a notification and an invitation via the platform if she/he decides to use MS Teams/MS Stream as remote teaching tools.) You can learn more about these platforms and their access by reading the brief user’s manual issued by IIG.

In most cases of remote lecturing, however, we will prefer making study materials available to you 24/7 over interactive e-meetings. Online lectures will mostly be consultations. I’d like to point out that the study materials you will access serve only educational purposes – these materials are the property of the university and can be copied/saved/shared/multiplied only with the authorization of the university.

Other important information about the semester

  1. Based on the specific nature and curriculum of each seminar and lecture, your lecturers will decide what e-platforms they wish to move your classes to. They will send you a notification regarding their decision.
  2. The deadline for submitting your thesis, due to the special circumstances, is 3 May 2020.
  3. PhD-students are required to register for their complex exam until 31 March 2020. The Doctoral School will provide information about other deadlines later.
  4. Due to the state of emergency, please expect changes in the Academic Regulations for Students.
  5. Student support services moved to online environments as well. Please, acquaint yourselves with the special operation order of faculty offices (including the International Office, Academic Registrar’s Office, Dénes Némedi Faculty Library, Doctoral School of Sociology, as well as the faculty institutes & departments).
  6. I kindly ask you to track all your incoming private and Neptun-messages, as well as the faculty’s information/news board continuously

As ELTE and the Faculty of Social Sciences are not institutions specialized in remote teaching, most of our lecturers – under strong time pressure – started exploring the possibilities of the tools developed for remote education not less than a week ago. Therefore, I kindly ask for your patience and proactive cooperation if the newly developed study materials you will soon receive will not be perfect. 

I wish safety and good health to you and your loved ones for the upcoming hard weeks and months ahead of us. I sincerely hope that when this time full of difficulties and uncertainties end, we will return to the Faculty of Social Sciences and meet again as an even more compassionate and stronger community.

Sincerely,

Gábor Juhász
dean