(COVID-19): Campus Health Updates

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4/1/2020 - Daily COVID-19 Graduate Division Update 

 

Happy April Fool’s Day! For those of you for whom this is not a tradition, in the US, on the first day of April, people prank each other. How do you prank people while physically distancing you might ask? To that I say to you check out what I found this morning in my front yard, courtesy of a professor who I will not out but whose entire family snuck out of their house in the dead of night for this prank.

 

And so I give to you some commentary from the Good Place.

Hopefully, this brightens your day as it did mine. And even more hopefully this has entertained and not horrified my neighbors. Please share any good pranks you have ever done or seen. I loved the Zoom fails many of you sent me yesterday!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Are you experiencing technical difficulties?

Dealing with the “Cable Guy”

We are now getting reports of ISPs telling both faculty and students there is NO upgrade for instructors. So, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Maybe hang up and try another person? Also, if you haven’t tried it already, do try speedtest.net and if you are getting substantially slower speeds than you should be (plugged into your router, not by wifi) you have a good case to complain. 

Plugged into our router you say? How the heck do we do that? Yes, I know many of you have laptops with no ability to plug into ethernet (that’s the fat phone jack looking thing). We are looking into whether we can source these in bulk for those who really need them. Stay tuned for more information.

VPN

To accommodate the increased need for remote access to the campus network, we now have multiple VPN servers for different purposes, and we are continuing to order and deploy more hardware.  Meanwhile, to help us make the best use of the resources we have, please choose your connection to the campus carefully.

For many, there is no need to use the VPN at all: Canvas, Zoom, and email (Gmail or Office 365) don’t require the VPN.  If you use subscriptions licensed by the UCI Libraries, please use vpn.uci.edu with Group UCIFull.  You can also use the WebVPN: go to https://vpn.uci.edu and choose WebVPN as the GROUP.

If you try to access a UCI resource without the VPN and cannot make a connection, try these in order:

1. Use the Cisco AnyConnect application (the “Software VPN”), enter vpn2.uci.edu in the Ready to Connect field, then choose Default-UCI as the Group.
   
2. If you cannot get a connection on vpn2, enter vpn.uci.edu in the Ready to Connect field, then choose Default-UCI as the Group.
   
3. If you cannot get a connection with Default-UCI, enter vpn.uci.edu in the Ready to Connect field, then choose UCIFull as the Group.
   

If you are already using vpn.uci.edu please disconnect and try vpn2.uci.edu.

The various VPN choices and their applicability are documented at https://www.oit.uci.edu/help/vpn/ which will be updated with any new instructions.

Teaching, Working, and Learning While Remote

From Dr. Matthew Bietz in the Department of Informatics who is an expert in video conferencing (for real, that’s a thing!):

Interactivity is easier if we can see each other. In my dissertation research (1) I studied videoconferencing and the role of seeing and hearing others when we work at a distance. One of the hardest things to do when in a video call is to pay attention and stay engaged. It's easy to be distracted by life happening around us, by the TV in the other room, by our kids and pets, by Instagram, etc. etc. etc. Turning on video helps in two really important ways. First, when we know we can be seen, it removes some of the temptation to be doing other things and not paying attention. Second, turning on video helps other people stay engaged. For anyone who is speaking, it is much more comforting talking to people they can see rather than talking to a screen full of black squares. Also, when a presenter can see how the audience is reacting, it's easier to adjust their presentation on the fly. That feedback loop is an important part of "grounding" in conversation (2) - the process through which we build shared understanding. Getting that engagement and interaction in a Zoom class will be easier when everyone turns on their webcam.

(1) Matthew J. Bietz. 2008. Effects of communication media on the interpretation of critical feedback. In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 467–476. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1460563.1460637

(2) Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (p. 127–149). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10096-006

The Council of Graduate Schools and the ACUE have a webinar in three weeks that may be of interest to many of you: Preparing Graduate Students for Effective Undergraduate Teaching: Advantages of Evidence-Based Online Modules

Thursday, April 23, 2020 from 2:00-3:00 PM EST

From their site: Graduate students carry important teaching responsibilities in discussion sections, labs, and sometimes their own courses. This webinar introduces you to two new online short courses in effective teaching practices designed specifically for graduate students and offered by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). The 4- to 6-week online courses, "Promoting Active Learning" and "Promoting Active Online Learning" are offered during Summer 2020 and are open to individual graduate students or groups of students from a single institution. Graduate deans, directors of graduate studies and faculty members are encouraged to participate in the webinar to learn more about the courses. Register here. 

And for some more expertise on distance collaboration, check out this workshop in two weeks:

Building an “A” Team: Elevate your research team’s effectiveness through virtual collaboration

With the rapid shift to online communication, ensure that your research has the skills and resources to keep your research moving and build new collaboration.

We invite you and your team to participate in a virtual workshop on April 15, 2020 at 10:00am. The workshop will be led the by the Team Scholarship Accelerator Lab, facilitated by team science and virtual collaboration experts Maritza Salazar Campo, PhD and Gary Olson, PhD.

This is online an interactive workshop in which teams will gain insight into team science initiation, operations, and evaluation. Teams will leave with tools to improve team dynamics and communications.

The objective of the workshop is to assist teams in setting a precedent for communication for innovation. Workshop participants will learn four evidence-based principles of effective communication in science teams and learn how to use these principles to foster knowledge sharing and integration across disciplinary boundaries.

For any questions, please contact: Diana Stephens at dvigil1@uci.edu

Registration is required. 

Travel Disruption Funding

Many of you have inquired about what to do when you received a travel advance for travel that is now cancelled but not refunded. Never fear, processes and procedures are what the UC does best! We now have one to make sure we can deal with things. This has all been sent to the departments, and most of the work is theirs, but in case you need it, here is the procedure for dealing with travel advances:

• The department arranger will create a KFS Travel Reimbursement document in the student’s name, to reimburse the student’s out of pocket expense(s).
  
• Backup documentation is required. 
  
  • The original airfare confirmation showing the air booking and the form of payment, as well as lodging or conference fees, ground transportation if applicable
    
  • Confirmation that the air booking was cancelled and if there was a partial refund or air credit.  Same procedure if there are lodging or conference fees, or ground transportation fees.
    
  • Signed Non-Employee certification form.
    
  • Use COVID-19 project code
    
• Department exceptional approval is required in the Route Log.
  
• It is the traveler’s ethical responsibility to use the ticket for the next University business trip.
  
• The department will be responsible for tracking and using the credit for the next UCI business trip.
  
• If a traveler has been reimbursed for pre-trip travel expenses and the traveler receives a refund from the airlines/lodging/conference fees, the traveler will write a check to UC Regents.  The refund amount will be deposited in the department account number.
  
• Do not submit a claim to Risk Services for the student.
  
• If the trip is unable to be completed in the future we will evaluate a write-off on a case by case basis and follow the COVID-19 procedures. 
  

In Closing:

If there is one thing that I have learned these past few weeks it is to be humble in the face of something small, invisible, and by a lot of measures weak (I mean really, an alcohol swab can take it out) that can cripple our lives in such dramatic ways.

So, on this April Fool’s Day, I share with you a quote from the Bard himself:

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

• William Shakespeare
  

And so let us be foolish together as only a people who have chosen an Anteater as a mascot can be.

Sending you all my hopes for an April that is better than March.

On behalf of Graduate Division,

Gillian

Gillian Hayes

Kleist Professor of Informatics

Vice Provost for Graduate Education

Dean of the Graduate Division