If part of students’ grades depends on meetings that you don’t lead, decide how any remaining portion of the grade tied to those meetings will be earned and communicate that to students. 

Post lecture notes/recordings on the sections that you don’t lead, so that students can review content independently or use them  to complete assignments. You can record your live sections or upload a recording to Bruin Learn. If you post your recordings to Bruin Learn, you can also update captions within Bruin Learn.

Students can submit “exit papers” as they are leaving class (e.g. indicating a main takeaway or remaining questions from the lesson); for larger classes, students can submit through BruinLearn in a “Graded Survey” that assigns points just for submission.

You can create a self-grading online quiz with multiple attempts for student mastery, and provide  information about where students can find relevant information. You can choose to explicitly make this collaborative to foster discussion.

Here is an array of options to consider depending on what is the best fit for your course and time:

• Create a structured online discussion (by section groups, if appropriate) to provide an online space for students to interact asynchronously. 
• Encourage students to help each other with homework, complete group projects, ask  administrative questions, and share tips to practice self-care in a Bruin Learn Discussion Forum (and allow liking posts) or Slack chat.  
• Annotate a reading together, asynchronously, by asking (section groups of) students to  comment on it in Google Docs (check sharing permissions) or using a software such as Perusall. 
• Explore more options on this UCLA Ideas and Recommendations for Alternative Assessments doc.

• If you offer in-person office hours, consider opening a Zoom room at the same time to accommodate students who are unable to make it in-person.
• Consider Zoom-based group office hours so that multiple students can attend without worrying  about space.  
• If you host multiple office hours, consider creating themes for some of the hours (e.g.  how to organize a paper, solve difficult problems for exams, review a complex topic).  
• If you expect large groups, consider recording the office hour session and sharing it with all students. 

Create a way for students to submit questions about exams and organize questions/responses thematically using tools that are familiar to you and/or your students (e.g. Google docs, google forms or a discussion board).

• Encourage students to use or choose from common categories of questions (i.e., the “big  ideas” that you have defined as your key learning goals and outcomes) so that you can sort questions into groups as you put together responses.
• Consider different formats for hosting “review sessions” that provide all students with access: create an FAQ, video response, reply to discussion forum questions, live review session on Zoom and record/share. 
• Avoid hosting review sessions that will not be accessible to all students (e.g. review sessions  during any time other than the scheduled class times, unless recorded and shared).

If homework grading will be delayed, consider posting sample solutions or annotated examples of exemplary work.

Consider providing a short video of “common successes and pitfalls” that you can glean from quickly scanning students’ homework.

If easier for you, consider recording audio/video feedback comments for student assignment submissions in Bruin Learn.

Dropping assignments may shift the weighting to different categories, which can in turn shift students grades in an unexpected way, so we recommend any of the following:

• Assume 100% for anything submitted that did not get graded (because some students may count on doing better on later assignments).
• Provide students options for what to weigh more and/or whether to drop an assignment (but this may be too much work in large courses).

• Consider using tools integrated into BruinLearn so that they get (more) automatically graded and become part of the gradebook.
• Consider using Gradescope to grade items using rubric – more info here.
• Identify what is essential for summative assessments and what formats of assessments will be reasonable to grade (multiple-choice or short-answer exams, etc.). 
  • If you are changing the format of an exam from short answer to multiple choice, let students know and provide them with sample questions. 
  • Use Rubrics to grade more effectively and equitably. You can ask students to self-evaluate their submitted work using the rubrics. 
• Have students grade one another using Bruin Learn Peer Grading tool.

If you use something like a final paper in a course, consider adapting the assignment so that the grading workload is more manageable, such as having students write the outline of the final paper, indicating what evidence or data from the course they will use and how it is connected to  the paper’s thesis or argument. If you choose to do so, provide students with a strong example of  this approach, and with the rubric you will use to grade their work. 

If you use something like a presentation in a course, consider asking students to record and use a rubric to expedite grading.

Use tools integrated into BruinLearn so that they get automatically graded and become part of the gradebook.

• The following tools have assessment capabilities and are integrated into Bruin Learn: Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes and Surveys, Gradescope, iClicker, Hypothesis, and Perusall. 
• Set up weighted grades in Bruin Learn to help calculate final course grade from graded assessments in Bruin Learn.
• Import final Bruin Learn grades to MyUCLA Gradebook.

If you grade attendance, consider creating a Google form that can be shared with the teaching team, to capture students who might be absent, instead of searching for emails in your inbox. Also be aware of the policies concerning students being absent for COVID-related reasons.