Semester 1 Communications

Dear all,

Welcome to the School of Mathematics! I am Iain Gordon, the Head of School and I’m looking forward to meeting you when you arrive, as is everyone in the School. I hope you are excited about everything that is about to start for you in Edinburgh. 

I’m writing about a few mathematical things that you might find helpful to know. This follows up on the email that you should have received on Friday from Colm Harmon, the University’s Vice Principal for Students.

What to expect in Semester 1,

Covid measures: Scotland recently moved to ‘Beyond Level 0’ covid restrictions. This means there are still rules about public health measures, including mask wearing, test-and-trace, and so on, but also many fewer restrictions about mixing with other people than earlier in the year. You can see more details from the Scottish government here: https://www.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/. When you come to the University you will see that we have excellent safety measures in place, as well as availability of the University’s own PCR testing system, TestEd: https://www.ed.ac.uk/tested-covid.

I’d also like to point out that anyone over 16 can get vaccinated at a drop-in clinic, including at locations close to both the George Square campus and the King’s Buildings campus, see: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/health-safety-travel/vaccinations

Coming to Edinburgh: The University is expecting all students to come to Edinburgh for Semester 1 to take part in on-campus teaching. This is explained in the email from Colm Harmon that I mentioned above. We hope that you will be able to come to the School for the beginning of teaching, but we will be providing both on-campus and online teaching systematically until the end of Week 2’s teaching (1^st October) in case you need to quarantine or arriving a little late for another reason. You can apply for an exception to coming to Edinburgh if it is legally impossible for you to get here – please look at the email from Colm or go to this webpage https://www.ed.ac.uk/students/welcome/coming-to-edinburgh to see more about this. We will be concentrating more of our efforts towards on-campus activity after Week 2. If, separate from the exceptions process, you can’t come to be in Edinburgh and ready to attend teaching sessions by the 1^st October, then it is important to contact the University at Late.Arrivals@ed.ac.uk to discuss your circumstances.

Semester 1 teaching: We have been working in the School for several months to plan for this coming semester. We are doing this in a way that will provide lots of synchronous activity for every course we offer, some parts of which will be on-campus with other parts delivered digitally online.  We’ve arranged this using the Scottish Government’s developing covid guidelines, as well as learning from the experiences of staff and students in the last year. 

Depending on the lectures you choose, some or all of your courses will be with the School. With one exception, all the School’s courses in Semester 1 will have their tutorials on-campus in the centre of Edinburgh with something available online for people who find they have to self-isolate (or have been granted an exception by the University not to be in Edinburgh). They will also have scheduled synchronous activities based on lecture material, delivered live and online by members of staff of the School: sometimes this will be an actual live online lecture, sometimes this will be an interactive lecture (a so-called ‘flipped classroom’) based on reading that you’ll have done or videos that we will have created for you, etc. Exactly what it will be will vary from course to course, but it will all be timetabled for you. 

The one exception is our course called Fundamentals of Algebra and Calculus which we will offer entirely online. This course was designed as an online course four years ago by the School’s Technology Enhanced Mathematical Sciences Education team to support the transition from School to University Mathematics. It’s been a great success and will be available to you if you would like it. 

We will decide exactly how Semester 2 will work with lectures based on feedback from you and the course lecturers, and of course the Scottish Government’s guidelines. We’ll tell you more details as soon as we can. 

Working together: University is social, and mathematics is too, so we want to provide different ways that you can meet each other and make friends, work with each other, and even unwind.  We’ve got a dozen undergraduates from third year taking internships this summer to help us to build a better community, both in person and online. We’ll be doing this working together with the School’s own MathSoc too. You’ll be hearing more about this from our Student Support Officers, including details about MathsClans and MathsBase.

With ‘Beyond Level 0’ on campus in Semester 1, there will also be a great deal of study space available.

IT that you need: We’ve made a list of the IT kit, https://teaching.maths.ed.ac.uk/main/it-device-guidance,  that you’ll need for the coming year. If you don’t have some of things mentioned there, don’t worry – we can loan this to you! We’ll send out an email soon with the details of how to make a request. 

I hope you have a great month until we see you!

Best wishes,

Iain

Dear all,

Welcome to the School of Mathematics! I am Iain Gordon, the Head of School and I’m looking forward to meeting you when you arrive, as is everyone involved in your MSc programme. I hope you are excited about everything that is about to start for you in Edinburgh. 

I’m writing about a few mathematical things that you might find helpful to know. This follows up on the email that you should have received on Friday from Colm Harmon, the University’s Vice Principal for Students.

What to expect in Semester 1,

Covid measures: Scotland recently moved to ‘Beyond Level 0’ covid restrictions. This means there are still rules about public health measures, including mask wearing, test-and-trace, and so on, but also many fewer restrictions about mixing with other people than earlier in the year. You can see more details from the Scottish government here: https://www.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/. When you come to the University you will see that we have excellent safety measures in place, as well as availability of the University’s own PCR testing system, TestEd: https://www.ed.ac.uk/tested-covid.

I’d also like to point out that anyone over 16 can get vaccinated at a drop-in clinic, including at locations close to both the George Square campus and the King’s Buildings campus, see: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/health-safety-travel/vaccinations

Coming to Edinburgh: The University is expecting all students to come to Edinburgh for Semester 1 to take part in on-campus teaching. This is explained in the email from Colm Harmon that I mentioned above. We hope that you will be able to come to the School for the beginning of teaching, but we will be providing both on-campus and online teaching systematically until the end of Week 2’s teaching (1^st October) in case you need to quarantine or arriving a little late for another reason. You can apply for an exception to coming to Edinburgh if it is legally impossible for you to get here – please look at the email from Colm or go to this webpage https://www.ed.ac.uk/students/welcome/coming-to-edinburgh to see more about this. We will be concentrating more of our efforts towards on-campus activity after Week 2. If, separate from the exceptions process, you can’t come to be in Edinburgh and ready to attend teaching sessions by the 1^st October, then it is important to contact the University at Late.Arrivals@ed.ac.uk to discuss your circumstances.

Semester 1 teaching: We have been working for several months to plan for this coming semester. We are doing this in a way that will provide lots of synchronous activity for every course we offer, some parts of which will be on-campus with other parts delivered digitally online.  We’ve arranged this using the Scottish Government’s developing covid guidelines, as well as learning from last year. We know that almost all students wanted to have clearly timetabled activity for each course, beyond tutorials, and we will be providing that. We expect all our courses to be running their tutorials on-campus in JCMB with something available online for people who find they have to self-isolate (or have been granted an exception by the University not to be in Edinburgh). All courses in Semester 1 will also have scheduled synchronous activities based on lecture material, delivered live and online by members of staff of the School: sometimes this will be an actual live online lecture, sometimes this will be an interactive lecture (a so-called ‘flipped classroom’) based on reading that you’ll have done or videos that we will have created for you, etc. Exactly what it will be will vary from course to course, but it will all be timetabled for you. 

We will decide exactly how Semester 2 will work with lectures based on feedback from you and the course lecturers, and of course the Scottish Government’s guidelines. We’ll tell you more details as soon as we can. 

Working together: University is social, and mathematics is too, so we want to provide different ways that you can meet each other and make friends, work with each other, and even unwind.  We’ve got a dozen students taking internships this summer to help us to build a better community, both in person and online. We’ll be doing this working together with the School’s own student society, MathSoc. In addition we will be doing more to introduce you to our alumni, provide career advice, and show you opportunities for applying what you learn in business and industry.

With ‘Beyond Level 0’ on campus in Semester 1, there will also be a great deal of study space available.

IT that you need: We’ve made a list of the IT kit, https://teaching.maths.ed.ac.uk/main/it-device-guidance,  that you’ll need for the coming year. If you don’t have some of things mentioned there, don’t worry – we can loan this to you! We’ll send out an email soon with the details of how to make a request. 

I hope you have a great month until we see you!

Best wishes,

Iain

Dear all,

I am writing to you to update you about teaching in the School of Mathematics next semester.

What to expect in Semester 1,

Covid measures: Scotland recently moved to ‘Beyond Level 0’ covid restrictions. This means there are still rules about public health measures, including mask wearing, test-and-trace, and so on, but also many fewer restrictions about mixing with other people. You can see more details from the Scottish government here: https://www.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/. When you return to the School you will see that we have excellent safety measures in place, as well as availability of the University’s own PCR testing system, TestEd: https://www.ed.ac.uk/tested-covid. 

I’d also like to point out that anyone over 16 can get vaccinated at a drop in clinic, including at locations close to both the George Square campus and the King’s Buildings campus, see: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/health-safety-travel/vaccinations

Coming to Edinburgh: The University is expecting students to return to Edinburgh for Semester 1 to take part in on-campus teaching. This is explained in detail in the recent email sent on Friday to you by Colm Harmon, the Vice Principal for Students. We hope that you will be able to come to the School for the beginning of teaching, but we will be providing both on-campus and online teaching systematically until the end of Week 2’s teaching (1^st October) in case you need to quarantine or arriving a little late for another reason. You can apply for an exception to returning to Edinburgh if it is legally impossible for you to get here – please look at the email from Colm or go to this webpage https://www.ed.ac.uk/students/welcome/coming-to-edinburgh to see more about this. We will be concentrating more of our efforts towards on-campus activity after Week 2. If, separate from the exceptions process, you can’t return to be in Edinburgh and ready to attend teaching sessions by the 1^st October, it is important to contact the University on Late.Arrivals@ed.ac.uk to discuss your circumstances.

Semester 1 teaching: We have been working for several months to plan for this coming semester. We are doing this in a way that will provide lots of synchronous activity for every course we offer, some parts of which will be on-campus with other parts delivered digitally online.  We’ve arranged this using the Scottish Government’s developing covid guidelines, as well as learning from last year. We know that almost all students wanted to have clearly timetabled activity for each course, beyond tutorials, and we will be providing that. We expect all our courses to be running their tutorials on-campus in JCMB with something available online for people who find they have to self-isolate (or have been granted an exception by the University not to be in Edinburgh). All courses in Semester 1 will also have scheduled synchronous activities based on lecture material, delivered live and online by members of staff of the School: sometimes this will be an actual live online lecture, sometimes this will be an interactive lecture (a so-called ‘flipped classroom’) based on reading that you’ll have done or videos that we will have created for you, etc. Exactly what it will be will vary from course to course, but it will all be timetabled for you. 

We will decide exactly how Semester 2 will work with lectures based on feedback from you and the course lecturers, and of course the Scottish Government’s guidelines. We’ll tell you more details as soon as we can. 

Working together: Last year we had hoped that we could build successful communities for all the students in the School, but although things like Piazza were a success we all thought we could do better in general. University is social, and mathematics is too, so we want to provide different ways that you can meet each other and make friends, work with each other, and even unwind.  We’ve got a dozen undergraduates from third year taking internships this summer to help to build a better community, both in person and online. We’ll be doing this working together with MathSoc too. 

With ‘Beyond Level 0’ on campus in Semester 1, there will be a very great deal more study space available too.

IT that you need: We’ve made a list of the IT kit (https://teaching.maths.ed.ac.uk/main/it-device-guidance) that you’ll need for the coming year. This doesn’t really vary from last year and I suspect that you already have everything that you need. If not, we’re able to loan this to you – we’ll send out an email soon with the details of how to make a request. 

Course results from 20/21.

Following all the exams and coursework from the first half of the year, we are just now in the process of bringing all the data together for you to see, just as we did after the December exams. Once this is ready for release we will send a short email so you can access the summary for each of the individual courses we run. This is something new that we are doing, but it’s really a good thing for you to see.

I hope you have a great month until we see you!

Best,

Iain