Communications

TL;DR - Student representation in the School during the forthcoming semester will predominantly be conducted through a variety of digital means, detailed in bulletpoints below.

 

Hello,

 

You are receiving this email, which I promise will henceforth no longer read as though it was written by an automated programme, because you are a student enrolled in the School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh. This email was written to inform you of your student representation within the School and the forms this will aim to take in what will surely be a drastically different university environment.

 

The primary aims of student representatives are to collect feedback from the student body and liaise with the faculty to help resolve gripes and implement proposed enhancements, all to foster the optimal student learning experience. As you can imagine, owing to extraneous circumstances, the bulk of feedback will now have to be collected through digital means, and thus, I am writing to you outlining the variety of methods in which said feedback will be collected throughout the forthcoming academic year.

• Perhaps the most straightforward means of reaching the school representative is through email. I will always be glad to field emails pertaining to the affairs, operations, and organisations of the School of Mathematics, or indeed about your student experience in general, at my email - s1812365@ed.ac.uk
• Should you prefer to supply feedback with absolute anonymity (bearing in mind that no students who email me directly shall have their names divulged), this can be achieved with a Microsoft Form I have set up accessible here.
• I have also established a group within the Microsoft Teams infrastructure where students can contact representatives easily and efficiently, as well as finding easier access to a repository of relevant documents regarding student representation currently accessible through SharePoint. Owing to the constraints of the Teams software and a trepidation on my part to inundate the entire student body with undesired messages, this group will be strictly opt-in - simply send an email (once again at s1812365@ed.ac.uk) with a subject line indicating a desire to participate in it.
• Furthermore, I shall pen a brief digest at periodic intervals throughout the academic year detailing the work of your representatives and the work left to do. This document will be available through the aforementioned Teams group, but should you prefer to be appended to an email list for this (relatively infrequent) update on affairs and happenings, and contribute to keeping your representatives accountable, simply send an email indicating so.
• Should you have questions or concerns regarding the logistics of teaching in a social distant atmosphere, consult the FAQ's compiled by the School here, which will be kept up to date with the latest information.
• Finally, I intend to hold representation Q&A/feedback sessions, either by videocalling software or, social distancing guidelines permitting, in-person meetings; in these periodically held sessions, students can converse and interact with their representatives directly. More information will be made available regarding these at a later date.

Should you have any further suggestions for means of communication between the student body and their representatives, feel free to suggest them and I will investigate their feasibility and act towards implementing them.

 

At this juncture, it is worth stressing the vitality of feedback for representatives, especially with the student learning experience we are so driven to ameliorate in flux. Allow me also to express in advance my gratitude for any feedback received, as it truly is immeasurably invaluable. Once the academic year has commenced, programme representatives will be (s)elected from each year group to sit on the Student-Staff Liaison Committee and work with both myself and the faculty towards ensuring the optimal experience for each maths student in Edinburgh. 

 

For now, feel at absolute liberty to supply feedback regarding the forcibly innovative forthcoming academic year to me. I vow to do my utmost to act upon any such feedback appropriately and, to the best of my ability, fight towards the resolution of your complaints, the receipt of your praise, and the implementation of your suggestions. I live to serve as your representative, especially when such service is a pleasant distraction from the quarantined purgatory to which we have been collectively subjected, a cheerful note on which I shall conclude.

 

Regards, and sincerest gratitude for soldiering through this wall of text,

Your school representative for the academic year 2020/21,

Dáire Byrne

Dear all,

I hope you have been doing well and keeping safe. I am sorry that it has been so long since the School last wrote to you.

This message is to update you on information regarding progression into your second and third year of studies. I would like to share with you both the guiding principles the School will follow to take these decisions and the associated timeline. We can do so now since we have new guidelines approved by the College of Science and Engineering to deal with the situation we are all going through.

As you already know, there were no examinations for Semester 2 courses and there will be no resit examinations for Pre-Honours courses. This raises the important question of how the School will determine your mark on a given course and how it will decide your progression.

Let me start by discussing Semester 2 courses. All students will be assigned a pass/fail mark based on their coursework performance, with the possibility to discount coursework due to the strike or the lockdown effects if this helps. If your average coursework is above 40%, you will get a pass. If it is borderline, it will be discussed in the Pre-Honours Exam Board. If your average in any given course is too low to guarantee you achieved its learning outcomes, or your engagement was not enough for the School to take an appropriate decision, we will ask you to submit an alternative assessment. The latter will typically consist of a selection of questions, similar to the ones in the coursework that was set during the semester, all to be completed online. This alternative assessment will take place following July 16^th. Specific information on the alternative assessment will be provided by the Course Organiser of the relevant course, and we will be providing a Question & Answer session for each course. 

Given the principles just described and the lack of resit examinations for Semester 1 courses, the School has revisited the marks that were already approved for all Semester 1 courses in order to achieve some consistency between both semesters. In particular, all forced failed students (FF) will automatically pass and students having a good coursework average will also pass. Just as for Semester 2 courses, students who are still failing will be asked to submit an alternative assessment in the same time window described above. I would also like to stress that all Semester 1 Special Circumstances decisions will be revisited accordingly, following the same principles just described.

For students taking courses as ‘Exam-only’, there has been no reason to engage in the associated coursework. Hence, the previous comments do not apply directly. In these cases, the School will consider the available coursework information from the previous academic year for the same course and proceed as before. If there is not enough information for the School to take a proper decision, once more the student will be asked to take part in the alternative assessment for the course.

All comments so far refer to individual courses run by the School of Mathematics, either in Semester 1 or Semester 2. These are discussed in our Board of Examiners. What about your overall progression? This is discussed by our Progression Board. This takes into account the marks from the Board of Examiners together with the marks provided by other Boards of Examiners from other Schools if you have taken any course in another School. Given the exceptional situation we are all experiencing, the University has granted our Progression Board the possibility to award up to 40 Credits on Aggregate per student. These Credits on Aggregate can allow students to formally pass a course without having to submit any alternative assessment.  These are especially designed for external courses, even though the Progression Board has the discretion to act on some compulsory degree courses, based on the overall year academic performance by an individual student. The Progression Board will discuss each student separately and it will only be after this Board, that all students will be notified of their academic results, progression outcome and whether any alternative assessment is necessary. If the latter takes place, which we expect it will only affect to a small number of students, you will be properly informed and your progression will be re-evaluated in a second Progression Board later in the summer.

I would like to share some specific dates where the different processes outlined in this message will take place :

- the Semester 2 Board of Examiners will take place on July 8th

- the Progression Board for both Year 1 and Year 2, deciding which students progress and which still require some alternative assessment, will take place on July 16th

- if necessary, alternative assessment will take place following July 16^th, with the dates to be decided as soon as possible and certainly complete by the 21^st August.  

We publish the results a bit later than this, because they all have to be entered into EUCLID. You can find the School information here - https://teaching.maths.ed.ac.uk/main/undergraduate/studies/assessment/final-results.

Finally, I would like to reassure you the School is committed to your academic success during your studying years at the University of Edinburgh. We are soon going to be beginning having Q&A sessions with you throughout the summer. This is not only so that you know what will be happening from September for your next year, but also to help all your lecturers and tutors as they prepare, by us knowing what you find most important and valuable in each of your courses. 

We will begin this on Friday July 3rd at 2pm with an online meeting, where we can answer questions about anything in this message and start to discuss things about next year. This will be on Collaborate: you get to it by following this link https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/c471b2cca67c4ce2b223e65140d0b26e. You can also email studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk.

Best,

Iain

Dear all

I hope you are all keeping well. Particularly in this period coming up to the exams, which we know is stressful even in normal circumstances, please do use our studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk email account if you wish to contact the School, or to ask anything about support from the University. 

I wanted to write with a quick update about exams, and to make you aware of the chance to test out the online exam process next week with a dummy exam question.

Firstly, you should have received an email from timetabling about the principles they are adopting as they reschedule the exam timetable. The key points of that email are:

• No exam will be rescheduled earlier than its original date.  All exams which must move will move to a later date in the diet.  In order to facilitate this the exam diet will be extended by one week and will now run from Monday 27th April to Friday 29th May.  
• If you are taking any of the longer 48-hour exams from other Schools note that in some instances the 48-hour assessment periods overlap. However instances of these overlaps will be minimised as much as possible.
• The revised exam timetable may not be published to student calendars. If this is the case the University will instead circulate a link to the full timetable as soon as it is ready - please keep a watch for this.

So this means you should continue to prepare for your exams on the day you were expecting to take them, in the knowledge that it is the earliest the exam will be scheduled. 

Secondly I am sure you will be thinking about the process by which the online exams will run, and in particular what you will be expected to do in order to download the exam paper and to submit solutions to it. We have been working on this process, all of which will work through Learn, and are aiming to offer you the opportunity to try it out next week with a dummy question where you can download a paper and upload some solutions. This will give you a chance to see what the process looks like, to make a submission of your answers as a pdf and to get some feedback on the quality of that pdf and how readable it is for us to mark. Likewise it is also a chance for you to tell us if the process doesn’t work for you. 

So, please watch out for more information on the dummy exam early next week when we will send more details out. We are expecting to run the process beginning on Tuesday 21st April.

Finally, I have recorded a short message for you all here: https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/Update+on+online+exams/1_95e54q83?st=0&ed=62 

Best wishes

Stuart

 

Video transcript:

Hi everyone. I just wanted to send a quick message to you all at what I know will be a stressful time as you prepare for exams amidst the continuing COVID-19 crisis. I know you will be thinking about the practicalities of taking your exams online, and that is what my message today is about. We have been working on the process for releasing exams online through Learn and taking in submissions of your scanned solutions. The main thing is that there will be a chance for you to try this out next week. The plan is to run a dummy exam to give you a view of what it will be like during your actual online exams. It will be a chance for you to submit something and have some feedback on how readable that is for us to mark, and likewise to tell us if the process doesn’t work for you. So, please keep a watch for more communications about this next week, and please do try out the process when it comes. In the mean time, stay safe, and all of my good wishes for your upcoming exams.  

Dear all,

 I hope you are keeping well, and that everyone who is around you is healthy. If there is anything that you want to contact the School about, to see how we or the University can help, please do use our studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk email account.

 I am writing with a short update on information about the next few weeks. Much of this is just to indicate the work that is ongoing, rather than to be able to report specifically about what has been decided. 

 I also want to point out that the University will be on holiday today (Friday 10^th) and Monday (13^th) for all staff. Many people working in the University, and particularly those who work around teaching and learning have been working really hard to make the transitions to remote teaching and to be preparing for online examinations, often with extra caring responsibilities now too. So this is very welcome for them. I hope that it is OK that we will therefore not be answering non-emergency emails until Tuesday, although I’ll be keeping an eye on the studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk email account in case emergencies do appear.

1.  The FAQ’s for Honours students and for MSc students have been recently updated, and hopefully answer many of your questions. There is still work going on to do the same for pre-honours students and we expect to have those updated during next week. We’re sorry that we haven’t been able to go faster, but it is important that we get the right details out to you and this is a University-wide push.
2. We are intending to send you details in the next week or so about how to do the technical of online submission, and to stress-test this with you where you will have the opportunity to upload something in to the system. We’ll send plenty of details about this soon.

That is all that I wanted to write at the moment, since this email is really about things that are being done but not yet complete. We would like to run a Q&A session with you all after we put out the details about online submission. We had a very helpful Student-Staff Liaison Committee last week which helped a lot to improve the FAQs, and I think it would be really helpful to have another such a meeting, this time where everyone could attend if they wanted and were able.

I am happy for you to email me and please remember studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk is always available.

Best,

Iain

Dear all,

I am writing to give you some more detail about the process that the School of Mathematics will be following for your assessments, with the shift to online examinations. This follows the email that you should have received from Colm Harmon, the University’s Vice-Principal for Students.

I will present the process in the timeline that I think that you will be experiencing it.

1)     Coursework. For many courses, you will have already completed some coursework and be on the way to complete more coursework in the next days and weeks. As I wrote in my last email, it is important that you try to complete this as best you can. Several courses you are currently taking will have a large amount of coursework counting towards their final assessment (or indeed all of the final assessment in the case of projects or dissertations). We would like you to complete this. In most cases we have moved the deadlines for submitting this, but if you do find your personal circumstances mean that you would like to ask for a further short extension then please contact your Course Secretary and Course Organiser by email to request this.

2)     Coursework marks. For almost all of you we already have marks that will form part of your final results and classification. Following from you carrying out (1) above, we will also have new coursework marks. In the cases where these new marks make up the substantial part of the course and demonstrate that you have met all of the learning outcomes of the course,  this will give us a good indication of the final overall mark you would be expecting for the course. We will use all of these marks, each achieved before any examinations in this April-May examination diet, to calculate a provisional overall mark for you, based on the number of credits you will then have achieved. It is this that will be the baseline for classification, and it will already represent a lot of your performance so far.  In the steps that follow, we will not disadvantage you from this baseline.

 3)    Examination marks. There will be online examinations during the usual diet. Being a quantitative discipline, our examinations will take place at the time set, or very close to that time, and they will last for the normal duration plus one hour in order to allow you to upload solutions. As I wrote before, we will send more details soon about the technical process involved in doing this.

The mark that you get for each of these examinations will give us new data beyond that which we had in (2). We will use it as follows:

• If taking account of an examination mark improves your final mark for that course then that is the overall mark for that course that you will receive.
• If your completed coursework had been a significant enough percentage of the course assessment, so demonstrating the course's learning outcomes had been achieved, and the examination mark for that course would reduce your final mark for the course, then the examination mark will not be used to calculate your overall mark for the course: your final mark for the course will be that achieved in the coursework.
• For courses where the percentage of coursework is too small to allow demonstration of the learning outcomes  (e.g. a split of 80:20 or 95:5 in Exam:Coursework) we will check to ensure that your examination mark for the course does not reduce the baseline achieved in (2). If it does, then we shall discount all marks from this course when calculating your final classification.

 4) Overall result. With these three points in hand, we will then calculate a new overall result for you using the information in (2) together with the relevant overall course marks from (3).  Therefore, your examination results can only improve on your overall baseline. This means that the examinations are an opportunity to show more of your learning, and will be particularly helpful for people who wish to improve their performance from previous semesters.

5)  Timing of examinations. We have chosen to maintain the normal duration for you for the examinations as a compromise between two issues. The nature of our discipline, where computation and proof are critical, means that if we were to have long examinations (24h or 48h) then we would need to change substantially the type of examination we give you. Critically, most of you do not have experience of sitting such examinations – and how to succeed in them - and most of the staff in the School do not have experience in setting such examinations. We felt it would increase considerably worry and stress, for both students and staff, if we were to change the type of examinations we offer. With the normal time, the examinations we give will be essentially the same as you would have received had you been taking them physically in Edinburgh. We realise, and are sorry, that this means that the examinations will be at different times of the day for people in different parts of the world: we will be working with the examination timetabling team to see if there is any possibility for us to optimise the scheduling of the examinations, but that is an ongoing process which involves the whole University, not just the School.

 6) Learning Adjustments. If you have learning adjustments regarding examinations, these will be catered for. This is why we have written “normal duration for you” above, and we will be in touch with you in due course if the adjustments require support other than extra time.

 7)  Integrity. We are also aware that some people are concerned about the possibility for some students to collude on online examinations. Before each examination we will be asking you to accept and agree to an own work declaration (online) that indicates that you promise to complete the examination on your own, without outside help. We take this very seriously and we are sure you do too. If it turns out that we detect very unusual patterns in some scripts then we may ask for a viva or follow up in other ways.

8) Curves. In this it is important for you to know that we do not “grade against a curve”. This means that we do not have a specified number of students who should get above 70%, or between 60%-70%, etc. In this way, we hope that you are reassured that your results will be based on your own individual performance and not that of others.

9)  Special Circumstances. Because of the current situation, it is unnecessary for anyone to apply for special circumstances for the upcoming examinations diet. The times are not normal at the moment and the Board of Examiners will be looking at each individual case very carefully. If, however, you experience special circumstances during the completion of your current coursework as requested in (1) then you should either contact our Student Support Officers on studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk or apply for these to be considered as normal through the special circumstance process: see https://www.ed.ac.uk/staff/supporting-students/academic-procedures/special-circumstances.

We will be updating the School’s FAQ’s as quickly as we can to include this information and give further advice.

I hope that all of this makes it clear that the work you have already done will be used as the baseline for our action, and in taking the online examinations you are then able to improve but not worsen the results that you have already earned. I know that these are difficult times for everyone, and I thank everyone who has written to me already. I hope that you can all see that many of your concerns have been addressed, and while there are no perfect solutions here, we are doing our best to support you and reflect all the learning that you have done so far.

I do hope that you and all your loved ones are all well and staying safe and strong. I am happy for you to email me and please remember studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk is always available.

Best,

Iain

Dear Student,

I wanted to write today to outline definitively our approach to exams and other forms of final assessment. It is a long but important email with quite a lot of detail. Please read carefully, and also try to understand where we are coming from.

Let me start by saying thank you for your patience and your resilience in what is going on right now. We have turned the entire ecosystem of the University around in an incredibly short time to a remote model, and we did that because we believe at our core that you must have as normal an experience as possible. It might sound odd to say it that way, but everything we are doing and are about to do is shaped by our trying to balance what might be easier to do, and what might sound like the best thing, against what we feel is long term going to be the best outcome.   

Everything I am saying here will be followed up shortly by communications from your School - please bear with us while we do that but rest assured that they are preparing specific plans around your programme based on the principles we are outlining in this email. In relation to Centre for Open Learning (COL) programmes and English Language courses, students should refer to the advice provided by COL.

Principles we are working to: 

The intent of this email is to give clarity on our plans around examinations and final assessment, and we know some of you will disagree with them. Our thinking has at all times been driven by the need to (a) ensure things remain as normal as possible; (b) you launch yourself onto the next stage of your life, post Covid-19, as powerfully as possible; and (c) we try to make things as stress-free as is possible. You will hear of other approaches in other Universities. We are talking to all of our peers in the sector, but ultimately, we are doing what we feel is right.

We acknowledge that there are deeply held and well-reasoned arguments on a range of possible options to do with examinations - from no examination or assessment to a full exam season with resits and other options. These inputs have weighed heavily on our planning and decisions.  

We feel very strongly that it is essential that assessment should continue, albeit some of it in an adapted form.  

This will not ignore the extraordinary circumstances we are in - and everything we outline is about making things as calm, clear and supportive as possible. We know that it is likely that some students will fall ill over the coming period, and some students will be trying to study whilst dealing with difficult family circumstances. We know that technology is going to be a challenge. And we know even some logistics are hard - you are in all corners of the world at this stage. We also know that some of the academic and professional staff you have worked so closely with will face challenges too.

Examinations

As you know, you should not expect to attend any formal examinations in Edinburgh. All examinations and final assessments will be remote.

1. Pre-Honours students will not take any final examination with some exceptions mainly associated with accreditation requirements (in areas such as Law). You are already aware of particular requirements from your School - if you have any doubt you should contact your School to clarify. 

2. Honours and Postgraduate (PGT) students will take examinations or other forms of summative assessment.  

Examinations

All exams will run remotely. Remote exams will take place over the same period as the original semester 2 examination period.

In terms of format, many examinations will be replaced by take-home ('open-book') exams which will be available for completion over a specified 48-hour period and which must be uploaded by you for grading. You do not need to spend 48 hours working on your answer! An open-book paper will typically take approximately the same length of time as the original to complete; the extra time allows all students to complete comfortably no matter your personal circumstances or which time zone you are in.  

 In a small number of cases, an ‘open book’ examination is not appropriate (for example, in quantitative exams or for professional body reasons). Where this is the case, there will be a shorter time period available for you to complete the exam (“original length of exam + one hour”). The relevant School will explain to you the format of these exams in more detail.

We will stagger the scheduling of submission deadlines as far as possible and some deadlines may now be later than the timing of the original examination period in order to give you more time between exams, and to assist Schools in planning for the grading and return of marks.

Alternative forms of summative assessment

If your School is setting an alternative form of assessment in lieu of exams, they will let you know the format, deadlines and timescales for this.

 3. Your final exams (or other forms of final, summative assessment) will impact on your grades on a non-detrimental basis. This is critical. What this means is that: 

• For an individual course, many of you will already have completed one or more substantial, in-course assessments and had these marked. So, you will already have a significant amount of credit “in the bag” for these courses and an average grade for the course so far. The examination (or other form of summative assessment) cannot make your mark for the course so far go down. It can make it go up (this is an opportunity for you to improve your marks and fully demonstrate your learning), but it will not have any negative impact.
• However, for some courses, you won’t have done much (or any) in-course assessment this semester, so the final exam (or other form of assessment) will count for all or most of your marks. The Board of Examiners will therefore need to rely heavily on your “open book” exam/assessment results when deciding on the mark for your course. However, regardless of this, this same principle of “no detriment will apply. The Board will therefore, if necessary, discount these course marks from your degree classification if they are detrimental to your overall programme average. So again, there is no detriment to you from attempting the exam.

 To be specific, we will ensure your final academic year average is the same as, or higher than, the average you would have attained through assessment that has already been undertaken or, (as is the case with some continuous assessment), is currently in progress.

This ‘help not hinder’ approach is an important element of our plan. It is designed squarely to ensure that you can fully participate in the exam process, but also recognises that many things may be uncertain, and you might not be at your best.   

4. Given the above, you do not need to submit special circumstances for the final exam or summative assessment based on Covid-19 disruptions. If you are impacted such that you cannot take the examination, your School will work with available marks on the no-detriment basis set out above.  

5. Final year undergraduate students who are required to submit a dissertation should still submit their work, even if due to current circumstances it is not finished or up to the standard they had planned or hoped for. Your School will be in touch to advise you if the deadlines for submission have changed at all.  

Postgraduate taught students are expected to prepare for the dissertation phase of their studies following the completion of the taught phase. We recognise that for some of you it will be necessary to change the focus of your dissertation to reflect changed circumstances, and your School will be ready to support you with that.

6. If you are due to graduate this year, please be assured that you still will be able to do, with a named and classified award. We cannot yet commit to timescales, but we are very aware that you will want to get your results as soon as possible. Regrettably we have had to cancel this summer’s graduation ceremonies, but we will be making arrangements - for those who want - to attend a future ceremony in person or online. This does not mean you will not graduate from the University - we will make arrangements to ensure you graduate, even if the celebration of the graduation is regrettably deferred. We will also be able to issue degree certificates. We will celebrate your success in full, but unfortunately it is not possible to plan for that against our original schedule.

7. Finally, at this stage we do not intend to use a resit examination period. This is an area where we feel the additional stress is not something we want to impose. We hope the steps outlined above give a lot of comfort to you and if the exam cannot be taken, we will usually have coursework to date to base a degree classification or progression decision on. There may be instances where a School and the Board of Examiners feels that it is appropriate for a student - even at pre-Honours – to do an additional assessment over the summer period to address concerns around progression and classification. Your School will discuss this with you directly. If you also feel that you have not been able to demonstrate your learning, again your School will discuss this with you directly and potentially be able to arrange some form of assessment. There will not, however, be a defined resit examination period.

Marking and Results

Examination Boards have a great deal of experience in taking account of a range of extenuating circumstances. As noted, they will in particular be operating on a ‘help not hinder’ basis in assessing the formation of final grades. To repeat, you will not need to submit special circumstances relating to the impact of Covid-19 on your learning as these will be applied automatically by exam boards. You can still submit special circumstances for non-Covid-19 related reasons, however given the current crisis, supporting medical evidence will not be required.  

In order to allow for extensions to assessment and the staggered submission deadlines referenced above, and also in order to allow for staff sickness as a result of Covid-19, we may have to adjust the timelines for the release of results. We will confirm this as soon as possible.

Clinical/Accredited Programmes

Separate arrangements have been approved or may be required for some professionally accredited programmes such as Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Health Sciences, Veterinary Sciences and Engineering. The University has worked closely with professional bodies, but some have not made final decisions on their requirements. You will be notified about the specific alternative arrangements where they sit outside of the above principles.

Summary

Before I conclude, I want to say a few things on my behalf, on behalf of all your lecturers, and on behalf of the University broadly. This will all pass. And when it does, we are working to make sure you launch yourselves on the world in a way that reflects your talent and ability and gives you all the opportunities that we know a degree from Edinburgh brings. Post-Covid-19, we (society) will need you more than ever. You will be leading the rebuilding and the preparation for how we deal with shocks like this. You are living through history - and that is something you will use in your life for the better for a very long time. You are experiencing a lot - and will be stronger for it. Our approach is trying to make that happen. It will be bumpy - but I just ask you to remain calm, keep in touch with your School, keep us posted on your circumstances, and don’t worry. We will be working with you to make this as normal a process as possible. We just want you to succeed.

Things are changing constantly too. We believe this plan is stable and will work but we also know that things might have an impact (like infection rates amongst staff and students) - if so we will be in touch either to you all, or directly to impacted groups (e.g. within a particular School).   

We will also try to communicate more - I tweet at @colmharmon for example, and we will continue to communicate via email, our FAQs page and our social channels as often as possible to let you know how things are going.  

Good luck, and stay safe.

Best wishes, 

Colm 

Professor Colm Harmon

Vice-Principal Students 

Dear all,

First, I hope you are safe wherever you are. I know that many of you have left Edinburgh to be back with family and loved ones, and I hope this journey has gone well. I also know that all of you will have had to unexpectedly stop your social lives here and will be missing your friends and your surroundings. I want to reiterate to you that we have support here in the School and the University if there are people you would like to talk to: in the last month we have been joined by two new Student Support Officers and they are very experienced to discuss all sorts of issues with you that you might be experiencing. It is a very difficult time for everyone, but they are there to help. So please use the studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk email address.

I am going to give you quite a lot of information in this email about a number of things: a website where you can see everything that I write to you (so it is all collated in one place); remote teaching beginning on Monday.

1. We have created a website - https://teaching.maths.ed.ac.uk/main/covid-19 which will be updated regularly. In this you’ll find all my old messages to you about what is happening around the School’s response to the coronavirus; a list of Frequently Asked Questions; some advice about working from home, and also how to collaborate for any group that you may be doing. This page will change as we move through this, and we have a team of people working to make sure it is as helpful for you as it can be. If you have suggestions to improve it, please send them to studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk
2.  In an earlier email I have outlined generally how we will be approaching progression for you. We are currently running through all the students in these years to see if anyone needs to be contacted to discuss this, and I will update you as soon as we have done this. [Students on degrees joint with other Schools should check with the other School involved what they will be doing, as this advice at programme-level applies to degrees that are led by the School of Mathematics.] To remind you:
   • There will be no 1st or 2nd year exams in April & May this year. However, you should work on remaining coursework as best you can. You want to make sure that you have understood the material that you’ve been studying.
   • The examination board will consider your performance over your programme, just as I wrote in my last email
   • “This information includes your results from Semester 1 as well as any coursework that you have done during Semester 2. This does mean that you will not have a year average that includes full results from all courses, but as the results from Year 1 and Year 2 do not count towards your final classification, all you will need is to know that you have progressed. The vast majority of you are already in a very good place to progress based on this information and we will be confirming this at some point soon after the Semester has ended.

   • Students expecting to take a resit of a first- or second-year examination will be considered in the same way as students taking the course for the first time.  Their overall performance and most recent coursework for the course will be considered in deciding their progression outcome.

3. Finally, I wanted to remind you all that we will move to remote teaching from Monday. We’ve been working really hard to get everything ready for you and I hope that you will be able to take part and learn and enjoy from the remaining parts of your course. Do check your courses’ LEARN pages to see what is happening. There will surely be some teething problems, both at the University end and wherever you might be, but we’ll resolve these as quickly and as best we can

I will be asking your Personal Tutor to be in touch you next week, to see if there is anything that we can do for you, and don’t forget the studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk email. In the meantime, I hope you are all safe and well. I will be back in touch next week, and if you have questions, I’m always available too.

Best,

Iain

Dear all,

I am writing again with an update on your teaching and learning following the announcement that the University is moving to remote teaching next week.

 As always, the first priority is your health – both physical and mental – so please keep up-to-date with the advice that is available on the University’s webpage - https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/current-students - and particularly under “Wellbeing, Advice and Support services for students” as well as https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/health-and-hygiene. Let me also reiterate that the studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk is a place that you can email the School with _any_ questions or concerns and we will endeavour to answer quickly.

Moving on to remote teaching, I want first of all to make it clear that from next week all of our teaching and learning will be available remotely (and that our teaching is essentially paused this week as we transition to this). In particular this means that if you wish, you do not need to be in Edinburgh for this. You can leave the city and even the UK and will be able to continue remotely with your studies for the rest of this academic year. You do not need to ask for an interruption of studies to do this, but if you are on a visa to be studying in the UK you should continue to engage with the teaching as explained under the heading “Tier 4 sponsored students: evidencing engagement and attendance” onhttps://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/current-students. I hope this is clear to you and allows you to make the decisions that you, and your loved ones, think are best.

With this in hand, we have had to adjust some parts of our delivery and assessment. For you, as MSC STUDENTS, Y3-5 STUDENTS, Y1-Y2 STUDENTS, this looks like the following:

MSC STUDENTS:

• all of our examinations for the courses taught in Semester 2 (or year long courses) will be online. This means that you will be able to take part in these examinations wherever you are in the world. We have not yet settled on the exact nature of these examinations and we do know that this uncertainty is difficult for you. We are working as quickly as we can to decide on the nature of these, bearing in mind that there may be difference from course-to-course and that people will not all have free and easy access to excellent internet. We are discussing this in the School, and also helping to lead a national conversation amongst mathematics departments about what is the most effective and fair way to run these. As soon as we have decided – and I expect this will be in the next few weeks – we will inform you.
• we are cancellling all face-to-face assessed presentations attached to taught courses this semester, and if you had anything scheduled in one of your courses the course organiser will be in touch via LEARN to explain how the assessment for your course will be changed.
• in most cases we will be extending by a week any deadlines for work that was due to be done currently: details will be given to you by your course organiser over LEARN. In some cases, this may mean that some deadlines will move in to Week 12.
• the MSc summer work (e.g. dissertations) will still be taking place, but it will be possible for you to do this remotely from wherever you are. You may wish to return to Edinburgh for this, but you do not have to. The MSc Programme Directors/Project Coordinators will be in touch with you about this in due course. This does mean that there may be fewer projects with external partners than before, and that might be disappointing for you. I am sorry about this.
• For most courses we will open the discussion board Piazza (if it was not already there), which will allow you to share questions with your peers and also to staff involved with your course. Some have decided to deal with questions and discussion in other ways such as directly by email where a class may be smaller, that will be made clear on the LEARN page for the course. 

Y3-5 STUDENTS:

• all of our examinations for the courses taught in Semester 2 (or year long courses) will be online. This means that you will be able to take part in these examinations wherever you are in the world. We have not yet settled on the exact nature of these examinations and we do know that this uncertainty is difficult for you. We are working as quickly as we can to decide on the nature of these, bearing in mind that there may be difference from course-to-course and that people will not all have free and easy access to excellent internet. We are discussing this in the School, and also helping to lead a national conversation amongst mathematics departments about what is the most effective and fair way to run these. As soon as we have decided – and I expect this will be in the next few weeks – we will inform you.
• we are cancellling all face-to-face assessed presentations attached to taught courses this semester, and if you had anything scheduled in one of your courses the course organiser will be in touch via LEARN to explain how the assessment for your course will be changed. This in particular applies to the Y4 and Y5 projects and dissertations and the Senior Honours Conference that contained all of that activity.
• in most cases we will be extending by a week any deadlines for work that was due to be done currently: details will be given to you by your course organiser over LEARN. In some cases, this may mean that some deadlines will move in to Week 12.
• we are changing the nature of the Honours Course Fair, which tells you about next year’s courses, so that it can be delivered remotely too. We will send you details about it soon.
• For most courses we will open the discussion board Piazza (if it was not already there), which will allow you to share questions with your peers and also to staff involved with your course. Some have decided to deal with questions and discussion in other ways such as directly by email where a class may be smaller, that will be made clear on the LEARN page for the course. 

Y1-2 STUDENTS:

• you will have no examinations and we will be basing your progression on existing information as far as possible. This information includes your results from Semester 1 as well as any coursework that you have done during Semester 2. This does mean that you will not have a year average that includes full results from all courses, but as the results from Year 1 and Year 2 do not count towards your final classification, all you will need is to know that you have progressed. The vast majority of you are already in a very good place to progress based on this information and we will be confirming this at some point soon after the Semester has ended. We know that there will be some cases where either students have not passed their Semester 1 courses and not engaged with their coursework in Semester 2, and for which there are no appropriate special circumstances. In this case, we will be looking to find a simple alternative assessment in order to make sure that you can demonstratae that you can progress successfully to the next year. As I have written, this applies only to a small number of students, and we will be in contact individually with you about this.
• if you are in Year 2, we are changing the nature of the Honours Course Fair, which tells you about next year’s courses in Y3, so that it can be delivered remotely too. We will send you details about it soon.

The school is going to set up a webpage where we will keep copies of these emails together with Frequently Asked Questions, and I will email you soon with the address. In the meantime, please if there is anything you are unclear about, email studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk and as always you can contact me.

Dear all,

I am writing to you to follow up on the Principal’s message which you can see here https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2020/coronavirus-update-from-the-principal.

I know that it’s a worrying and very unusual time, across the whole world. As I wrote to you a few weeks ago “The coronavirus outbreak is a difficult time for anyone who has relatives or connections to areas where the virus is currently most active. So this is the time to help all our friends through this.” I want you to remember that there is lots of support for you in the School. We have already put in place the capacity for everyone who works in student support and in the mathematics teaching office to be able to work from home if this turns out to be necessary. So this means that as much as possible we will be contactable and able to help with everything that you need: if there is anything that you want to ask about you can. If you have questions about individual courses you are taking, do use the LEARN page to see the contact details of your course secretary and your course organiser. If you have student support queries, then we have the studentsupport@maths.ed.ac.uk which is continuously monitored and from which we can guide you and/or offer support. And, as always, I can be contacted.

As regards moving to remote teaching and examinations, I want to assure that we have been planning for some time. We are in a particularly good place because this is something where the School has a lot of expertise, thanks to our team who work in technology and teaching (one of the biggest in the UK!). I know that this could be particularly stressful for you, particularly if this is your final year or the only year of your programme, but it is our absolutely priority to make sure that everything around final assessment, degree classification and so on works well for you and in a timely fashion. Our Boards of Examiners are well set up to account of all of these things that happen (just as we will be taking account of courses affected by the industrial action), and everything we do will be to make sure that the process is fair and does not disadvantage you.

We will be making announcements about individual courses through the announcment function on LEARN (cced by email), so please check for this for each individual course. Following the Principal’s announcement you should, however, assume that there is no teaching next week unless you see otherwise on the LEARN page. Courses will resume on the 23^rd of March.

Finally, let me reiterate the government advice about self-isolating for seven days if you have any cold symptoms or fever, and also generally about maintaining good hygiene. You can find details and links at the University’s webpage https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/covid-19/health-and-hygiene\

Have a good weekend.

Iain

Coronavirus

The University has published information and guidance on the coronavirus outbreak at https://www.ed.ac.uk/health-safety/guidance/communicable-infectious-diseases/wuhan-coronavirus?dm_t=0,0,0,0,0. This is regularly updated. I am writing about this now because the School has students and staff from all over the world, and because there are no lectures next week.  

Our international diversity is one of our great strengths, with a great mix between students from nearby, from the UK, from Europe and from all of the rest of the world. It is one of the beautiful things about Mathematics that what we study unites us all, from all parts of the world and provides us with a common language. Our lectures, our workshops and our life in the University benefit from people sharing ideas, thoughts and culture shaped by each individuals’ background, and by contributing and by listening we all learn from each other and together. The coronavirus outbreak is a difficult time for anyone who has relatives or connections to areas where the virus is currently most active. So this is the time to help all our friends through this. I have many colleagues across East Asia, and particularly in China, and in talking with them I know how hard it is.

I also wanted to flag up the current guidance around travel, which is important for everyone. As a result of the UK government’s advice, the University has decided that there should be no travel to any part of mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau (see http://www.docs.csg.ed.ac.uk/Safety/news/Coronavirus_update_email_10022020.pdf). If it turns out that you have booked travel to China, please contact the airline and accommodation providers and request a refund. If you will be in a risk area (and the definition of a risk area changes), please make sure you follow the health advice – this is for your own and other’s good – and be aware that you may be unable to leave to return here if there is an escalation.

I have seen in the lectures and workshops that I take part in, the empathy and friendship we offer one another wherever we come from. This is characteristic of everyone in the School and I am very proud of it. As I say at the start of each year, we all need to work to make the world a better place and we can never stop. So thank you everyone!

Best,

Iain