If a student in your class contacts you that they cannot arrive until after the start of classes, what might you do to accommodate their late arrival?
Due to the wildfire situation in the Okanagan, some students may be unable to arrive until sometime during the first week or two of classes. This is particularly true for international students or students from outside our region from within Canada, whose flights might have been impacted, or for students whose accommodations locally have been impacted by evacuations or property damage as a result of the fires.
We encourage you to find ways to enable students to start their term successfully even if they find themselves in this unusual circumstance of arriving late. Some options might be:
- upload materials (syllabi, readings, presentations, or other resources) into Canvas to ensure they have access to material they may have missed
- writing a brief summary of the material covered in the class, and suggestions for how they might stay up-to-date with the course activities, to upload to Canvas or to email directly to the students impacted
- seek student volunteers who might be willing to share their notes from class with impacted students
- streaming and/or recording your classes in Zoom to provide to the students who cannot be there in person (provide link on how to do this)
- set up a meeting (or have a TA set up a meeting) with the student to connect with them and support their transition into the class
- provide an alternative assessment approach, or other form of academic concession, for any assessments undertaken in the first few weeks of class so students are not disadvantaged, or avoid having assessments during the first week or two of class
If you require additional resources to support students in these circumstances, we encourage you to reach out to your Department or Dean’s Office to discuss options. If you’d like to meet with someone from CTL to discuss any of these possible approaches, do not hesitate to reach out at: ctl.ubco@ubc.ca.
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