Last updated: 5.5.2016

Adjunct Guidelines

Adjunct Hiring Process

After the candidate is nominated, the program chair will review the CV and interview the candidate. Program faculty might interview the candidate if applicable. The program chair then submits the candidate's CV and Recommendation for Adjunct Faculty Position form to the School Personnel Committee for review and approval. The recommendation is accepted with the majority of the SPC approval. For evaluation of teaching and reappointment process please see below.

Syllabi

All syllabi must follow the NYIT template accessible at Faculty Forms & Resources. In addition, the Department of Teacher Education requires the following information to be included:

1. Conceptual Framework

• Diversity
  Our commitment to diversity is evident in all we do. Our candidates learn to recognize the individual needs of diverse P–12 student populations and to create and customize educational experiences necessary for success in the 21st century global environment.
• Technology
  Our commitment to technology integration is woven seamlessly through our beliefs and actions. Technology is an integral part of our curriculum, pedagogy and delivery systems. Our candidates learn to make meaningful connections between technologies and their applications for all learners.
• Field Relations
  Our commitment to collaboration with schools, agencies, community organizations, businesses, and policymakers enriches our programs, our candidates, our partners, and the educational community.

You can download the template with the conceptual framework.

2. Instructor's Availability

In the syllabus, please let students know a realistic time frame in which you will respond to questions. Within forty-eight hours is the school guideline. Of course, if you know that you will be temporarily out of Internet contact for longer, let the students know by placing an announcement. If there are certain times they are more likely to get a quick answer, let them know that as well.

3. Assignment Return Time Frame

Please state in the syllabus the approximate time frame for getting assignments back. Our guideline is within two weeks. This allows students to use feedback from their first assignments to improve subsequent submissions as well as performance on possible tests on the material.

Please send your final syllabus that you have loaded to the course to the program chairperson before the semester begins.

Teach for Online Campus

A. Before the Semester Starts

Instructor Certification

All those adjunct faculty teaching online must take the NYIT Online Instructor Certification course offered through Technology Based Learning Systems. The Blackboard Certification Training schedule is available from TBLS.

Requesting an Online Shell

All requests for the creation of courses must be entered into the OLC Course request database by the appropriate chair. The deadlines for submission are sent to all chairs and deans. You will need to supply the following information to the chair:

• The textbook information (this information will automatically be posted on the OLC website: http://tblsnt3.nyit.edu:591/OLCBooks/
• If the course is a new course or you want the course cloned from an existing course (please specify which course/semester)

The courses will be created from the course request database and made available to faculty within two weeks after the close of the database.

Building Your Course

• For presentation movies on the basics for building a course, please see: http://tbls.nyit.edu/faculty/
• And tutorials: nyit.edu/academic_affairs/faculty_tutorials

You can start building your course as soon as you have access (of course, preparation of course material can start before then and saved until you have access to load content). The Online Campus will not make your course available to the students if you don't have a new, updated syllabus accessible in the course.

Before a course is made available to students each course MUST have an updated syllabus. The syllabus must include the correct dates of the course and any synchronous activities that will require the students to be online at a specific time. The dates of all courses must follow the NYIT academic calendar. Any changes from the official calendar must be approved by the dean and sent to the Registrar's office.

Opening Course to Students

Fully online courses can only be opened by the Online Campus personnel once they check that an updated syllabus has been loaded and that the syllabus includes necessary components.

Blended/Enhanced course: The instructor must open the course to the students by doing the following: On the Course Management Control Panel, click "Customization", select "Properties", under #2 Set Availability, choose "Make Course Available."

B. Beginning of the Semester

Drop/Withdrawal Policy

Until the end of the second week of school, students can drop a course without instructor permission and with no ramifications in terms of grade. Students wishing to withdraw starting the third week of school must send an email to the instructor from their NYIT email account. You should then forward the email to the chair and provide the chair the following information:

• The student (include name and ID #) has requested a withdrawal. Include the email request from the student sent from the student's NYIT account
• The last date the student logged in
• A student may withdraw and receive a W grade until the week of final exams. During the week of finals, students may no longer withdraw and must be graded based upon work completed. Students who stop attending (based upon the online attendance policy) without officially withdrawing from class may be assigned a grade of UW. This non-punitive grade, while not calculated into the GPA, may impact financial aid eligibility.

A student who drops a class (without a replacement) the first week receives 75% of tuition back. A student who drops (without a replacement) the second week receives 50% of tuition back. A student who withdraws the third week receives 25% of tuition back. After the end of the third week, the student receives no refund.

Online Final Attendance Submission

After the second week of class, you will be asked to submit a "Final Attendance Roster" through NYIT connect. From the Faculty Menu in NYIT select "Final Attendance". If a student has never logged in at all, they should be listed as "never attended". Keep a copy of this record that you sent to the registrar. A copy of your final attendance must be sent to the administrative assistant for your program.

C. During the Semester

Logging On

You are required to log on at least three times/week. Please realize that as the Fall semester starts on a Wednesday, the "week" runs from Wednesday to Tuesday. Spring semester usually starts on Tuesday and thus the "week" runs Tuesday to Monday. The Online Campus keeps track of your log-ons and a spreadsheet is sent each week to all Deans with the names of instructors who are considered "non-compliant" (logged in fewer than three times).

Academic integrity and plagiarism policies

Each student enrolled in a course at NYIT agrees that, by taking such course, he or she consents to the submission of all required papers for textual similarity review to any commercial service engaged by NYIT to detect plagiarism. Each student also agrees that all papers submitted to any such service may be included as source documents in the service's database, solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. With "Safe Assign" built into Blackboard we now have a very easily accessible tool to detect plagiarism. It is the instructor's prerogative to set options so that the student can see the result before assignment submission and change assignment accordingly.

If a faculty member determines that a student has committed academic dishonesty by plagiarism, cheating or in any other manner, the faculty has the academic right to 1) fail the student for the paper, assignment, project and/or exam, and/or 2) fail the student for the course and/or 3) bring the student up on disciplinary charges, pursuant to Article VI, Academic Conduct Proceedings, of the Student Code of Conduct. The complete Academic Integrity Policy may be found at nyit.edu/policies.

Using the NYIT Library

All faculty members have virtual access to our library. When accessing the library from outside of NYIT, you may be prompted at some points for log in information. This is the same log in you use to access NYIT email. You can go to the library by:

1. Go to the NYIT homepage at nyit.edu, on the bottom of the page select Library.
2. Or go directly to the library by clicking nyit.edu/library/.

Once in the library, please note there are excellent tutorials on doing research which you can access by clicking "Research Assistances."

NYIT Journal Locator

NYIT journal locator allows you to find full-text journal articles within NYIT collection. Students have access to the journal locator as well. The URL is: http://goo.gl/J0rDJo.

You can also go to nyit.edu/library, click "Find Resources", and then click "NYIT Journal Locator".

D. End of Semester Practices

TaskStream

• Faculty Account
  TaskStream is an e-portfolio system. All Department of Teacher Education students (except for MSIT trainer program) are required to use TaskStream to submit their keystone assignments and field observation hours. Faculty are assigned with faculty key code to use TaskStream. Please click here to see the instruction and the key code.
• Student Account
  Please have students contact admins to get the code to enroll TaskStream if you teach the first course of your program (except for MSIT Trainer program). Please click here to see codes for all programs.
• Student Submit Work to TaskStream
  Please share the instructions with your students of how to submit their work to TaskStream.
• Grade Submission
  All grades must be submitted within 48 hours of the final (or the last official day of the semester). They are submitted by accessing Final Grading in the Faculty menu on NYIT Connect. A copy of your final grades must be sent to the administrative assistant for your program.
• Incomplete Grades Policy
  Incomplete is a grade given at the discretion of the instructor when a student who has completed at least two-thirds of the course work and is unable to complete the requirements of the course because of uncontrollable and unforeseen circumstances. The student must convey these circumstances in writing to the instructor prior to the final day of the course. If the instructor decides to award the grade of incomplete, the student will be given a time frame for completing the work. According to the registrar, a grade of incomplete must be resolved by the end of the following semester but you may make an earlier deadline to allow for grading and submission of paperwork. If work is not submitted by the deadline, the grade turns into an F and cannot be changed.
• Student Issues
  Please contact the program chair immediately if you encounter any student issues.

E. After the Semester

Record Retention

Please save the following for your own records and forward them to me by hard copy or electronically for each course you teach within 2 weeks of the end of the semester:

1. A copy of the grade sheet that you submitted to the registrar.
2. A copy of all grades from the course. This can be done in two ways;
   1. Save the gradebook as an excel spreadsheet
      1. Go to the gradebook page
      2. Pull down the "work offline" menu on the right
      3. Choose download
      4. Leave all the defaults
      5. Save as an excel spread sheet
      6. Once it's saved you can make changes on the excel spreadsheet.
   2. Blackboard grade report
      1. Go into gradebook, from the "Report Menu", select create report. Name your report – class and semester and make sure in #4 to click selected columns. This will generate in PDF form separate grade lists for each student
3. Attendance report from the course.
   1. On your opening page, under Course Management, select Evaluation, Reports
   2. Choose the 4th option: Overall Summary of User Activity. Make sure to set the appropriate time frame using the calendars. (The default is just for the day you try to run the report – not setting new parameters can lead to a report showing lots of zeros!) Run the report and save as a pdf. (For those using school computers – this may work better on Firefox than Internet Explorer)

Grade Appeal

The full grade appeal procedure is available at the link below:

• nyit.edu/academic_affairs/faculty_forms_resources

A student must contact the instructor by the end of the second week of the semester following the awarding of the contested grade. Please contact me as far as the outcome of your discussion with the student: If the student is still not satisfied after clarifying the matter with you, the student then has the right to appeal the grade to the department chair, the Dean and finally the NYIT Grade Appeal Committee.

Change of Grade

If a student receives a grade of "incomplete," they have until the end of following semester to complete the work. Once they do, please complete a Change of Grade form and send it to me with a grade sheet (can be the entire class or just that student) and attendance record for that student. To produce these reports, follow the guidelines for the end of the semester.

Change of Grade forms are also submitted in the event that an error is made or an agreement has been made to change a grade based on a grade appeal process.

Technology Usage

Technology that can support your teaching.

Google Drive
As a NYIT member, you get a professional-grade Google account. You have 30 GB storage across Gmail and Google Drive, no advertising, enhanced security features, and can access to Google Classroom.

1. Go to nyit.edu.
2. Click My NYIT. Log in with your NYIT username and password.
3. Click NYIT Apps Drive.

If you need to share a file with huge size with your students (such as video files), you can upload the file to Google Drive (click on the upload button next to Create button) and share the URL of the file with your students. Click here to see the tutorial of how to use Google Drive to share files.

Screencast
ScreenCast Matic is a free screen capture tool that allows users to record up to 15 minutes video, with or without web cam. If you need to edit video clips or annotate video/images, please subscribe to the professional version ($15 per year) and get reimbursement from your program chair. You can annotate PowerPoint slides, web pages, ebooks, software, or anything on the screen. We encourage faculty to create video clips to go over learning materials. If you teach the online program, please create instructional video clips using ScreenCast to engage your students. You can also record yourself through the web cam.

We strongly recommend that you record several video clips to communicate with students using web cam recording. Students need to be familiar with their professors so please use this opportunity to help students know you.

Zoom
Zoom allows you to have a live meeting with up to 25 people at once. This can be planned in advance or done spontaneously. All NYIT faculty have accounts. To use Zoom, go to http://zoom.us/.

1. click "Login"
2. click Login with Google"
3. enter your NYIT email address but do NOT enter your password, click "sign in"
4. You will be redirected to an NYIT authentication page. Log in with your username and password and you will then be redirected to Zoom

Meetings can be up to 45 minutes with your current account. If you'd like to have longer meetings, Dr. Fran Glazer (fglazer@nyit.edu) can set you up for a pro account.

Zoom enables you to host synchronize session or communicate with students in real-time format.

TurnitIn
Turnitin is the originality checking and plagiarism prevention tool that is embedded in Blackboard platform. You can use Turnitin to check students' writing and require students to properly cite resources. The Turnitin tutorial is available at: nyit.edu/academic_affairs/faculty_tutorials

Technology You Should Encourage Students to Use
We encourage faculty to model the use of technology and pedagogical practices. In addition to reading materials, writing assignment/reflection and exchange ideas using discussion board, please consider to have students work on technology integrated projects. Following are the technology you should encourage students to use:

• Google Drive: students have access to Google Education Apps and 30GB storage room. You can ask them to upload and share files with huge size to Google Drive. Blackboard has limited space so please encourage students to use Google Drive. Google Drive also provides many tools you should have students explore, including presentation tool, spreadsheet tool, and Google Form.
• Screencast: ScreenCast Matic is a free screen capture tool that allows users to record up to 15 minutes video, with or without web cam. You can have students use ScreenCast to annotate their presentation, and record themselves through web cam.
• Voicethread: Voicethread is a web-based tool that enables users to upload images, video or documents, or record audio, video. Users can invite other users to record comments in multiple formats. (How to use Voicethread: http://docs.voicethread.com/)
• Prezi: Prezi is a web-based multimedia presentation tool. It provides dynamic animation effects. (Tutorial: https://prezi.com/support/)

Department of Teacher Education Community

We encourage faculty to like the department Facebook page: http://goo.gl/QteV15.

Information and news about the department is posted regularly to engage people in the community. Please invite your students to like the page to increase their sense of community.

You can share your pedagogical practices and use of technology with the faculty using this page: http://goo.gl/Gw6070.

Online Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness

The OLC office and the Registrar use the hits in BlackBoard to determine attendance. Email CANNOT be used. The majority of your interaction with students should occur within Blackboard.

All faculty are required to sign into their courses three times per reporting period. The reporting periods are from Wednesday 12:01 a.m. till Tuesday 11:59:59 p.m. (see policy below). Email activity will NOT be counted.

Faculty using the online testing features of BlackBoard are encouraged to break their tests down into 15 minute segments. This will help students using AOL.

All grades are due at the same time as face to face classes.

All Incompletes must be entered into the course request database.

In light of the special nature of online instruction and the role of technology in the mission of NYIT, the OLC Institutional Review Committee has developed the following policy that responds to an ongoing and acute need of assessment of quality in online delivery of NYIT courses.

1. The quality of teaching in an online environment is directly correlated to the ratio of faculty to student "hits" and number of days logged in by faculty. The ratio is the minimum criterion of quality.
2. The minimum acceptable standard of faculty log-on is three times per week for the standard semester and four times per week for the shorter cycles. There may be good reason for this to vary, but such variance needs to be documented and explained by the instructor to the academic chair. Preliminary analysis of a number lower than the minimum above, however, should automatically trigger a call for consultation by the chair.
3. Interactive density is an indicator that will be factored in determining teaching quality in an online environment at NYIT. This number should also be applied carefully. Faculty hits to faculty log-ins is a prime indicator, but should be analyzed within the context of the interactive density ratio, since different ratios could legitimately reflect different effective styles of responding to classes. However, when the ratio exceeds 80-1, this also should trigger consultation between the academic chair and the instructor.
4. The above indicators should be addresses on a weekly basis, with the flow of inquiry moving from the director of OLC (via the weekly report), to the academic chair, to the dean of the school, and to the vice president of academic affairs. Consultations at all levels should be documented and kept on file.
5. A reportable absence in an online environment that is equivalent to a reportable absence in a ground based class will be defined as an incidence of no faculty log-ins within any 7 day period. The academic chair should fill out regular absence reports based on weekly reports of zero hits by any faculty teaching in an online environment.
6. Absences should also incorporate reports in semester summaries showing repeated gaps of more than four days without faculty interaction.
7. Repeated absences and low interaction should have consequences that are equal to consequences for absences in ground based courses.
8. Viable consequences include the following, in ascending order of severity:
   1. A note from the OLC director saying that numbers are bad for the week, to be put in the instructor's personal file.
   2. Referral to the academic chair for disciplinary action when the low performance is repeated.
   3. Referral to the dean of the faculty member's school, when there is a third incidence.
   4. The dean, vice provost and the vice president of academic affairs will determine appropriate sanctions at this point. These could include removal of certification to teach on online course, requirements set for retraining to allow continuation or reinstatement of authorization to teach online courses, and possible impact on promotion and tenure.
9. Online artifacts should be included in the faulty teaching portfolio:
   1. Syllabus
      1. Course description
      2. Intellectual property statement
      3. Grading policy
      4. Attendance (Participation Policy, including this document)
      5. Examination environment
      6. Synchronous Activities
      7. Textbook and special software requirements
      8. Others as specified in Faculty Handbook
   2. Activity designed to deliver instruction (i.e. E-lecture, PowerPoint) and associated outcomes.
   3. Description of assessment used to determine if the outcomes were met.
   4. Samples of student work
   5. Grade distribution for the assessment
   6. Student assessments
   7. Narrative description of how the course is conducted
   8. Chair's report and peer visitation, including the OLC numbers
   9. Class enrollment
10. Hybrid courses (which will be defined in a separate document) will have exams offered according to the regular exam schedule for the term.

Process of Reappointment

The chair will observe adjunct's teaching the first year of being appointed. If the teaching evaluation is satisfactory, then the observation does not have to be continued in the following years. The chairs will use students' evaluation and feedback to conduct a formative evaluation. The chair will submit an annual adjunct reappointment request form to the SPC before the end of April. The SPC shall review the reappointment requests. Once the majority of SPC approves the adjunct will receive the reappointment.

Department of Teacher Education Adjunct Teaching Award

Any full-time faculty can recommend an adjunct for the teaching award. The committee (the dean and program chairs) will discuss the candidates during spring, and determine the award recipient. The award will be announced and presented in the end of year Celebration.

Resources

Download the Adjunct Observation Form

Download the Reappointment Request Form

Download the Equipment Rental Form

Department of Teacher Education Equipment Rental Policy
You can check out equipment for instructional purposes, or check out a set of iPads for your students if you teach a face-to-face session. Please check with the Assistant to the Dean, Ms. Staci Kirschner (516.686.7706, skirschn@nyit.edu) for availability of equipment and details of rental policy.

Center of Teaching and Learning Archived Presentations
nyit.edu/ctl/resources

General Information for Adjunct Faculty
nyit.edu/academic_affairs/faculty_forms_resources

Faculty Blackboard Guide
http://tbls.nyit.edu/faculty/

Weekly Teaching Note
Fran Glazer, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, has many tips for enhancing the online classroom: nyit.edu/ctl/blog.

Academic Calendar
For a detailed academic calendar, see: nyit.edu/registrar/academic_calendar/

Ongoing Faculty Support
Center for Teaching and Learning runs workshops throughout the year and will provide individual consultation. Check out their events at: nyit.edu/ctl/programming

Blackboard Support
Technology Based Learning Systems (TBLS) provides drop-in sessions and individual support, at: nyit.edu/academic_affairs/technology_based_learning_systems