Adjunct Faculty

• There are standard UNK policies that MUST be included in every syllabus and they must reflect the most up to date policies. Be sure to check the Course Policies and Resources page at the beginning of each semester to ensure your syllabus is up to date.
• You can also use our Syllabus Recommendations page to see details that we suggest you include in each syllabus. Please also check with your department to find out if there are other required content that need to be included as well.

• Basics of Online Teaching (BOT) presented specifically for UNK instructors. This online professional development provides useful information about online teaching, however, there are basic teaching tips and strategies that are also applicable to face-to-face courses.
  • Register for BOT
• Learning Designers – UNK has full-time staff who are available to help you set up your Canvas courses so they are easy for students to navigate and they encourage student engagement. You can email them questions and set up an appointment to talk through ideas or questions you have about how to make your course user-friendly.
• Magna Digital Library – this is a collection of articles and videos covering a vast range of topics associated with teaching in higher education. As a staff member at UNK, you have access to this collection of resources. You will have to create an account with your Loper Email in order to have access.
• Monday Morning Mentors – Short 20-minute clips that are emailed out from the Center for Teaching Excellence every Monday morning. You can even print out a certificate showing that you completed each one as a handy way to keep track of sessions you have watched.
• Keep Teaching – this is a UNK-specific space that is housed within Canvas. The Learning Designers, ITS, and the Center for Teaching Excellence post helpful UNK-specific tools and links within this space. You can access this directly from your Canvas dashboard or go directly to the resource page.

Being an affiliate has its benefits. You and your students have access to a variety of software that are accessed through the UNK website. When you see a program you want access to, simply click on “Launch.”

Browse the list

Have you ever wondered how the university system is organized? See who makes up the current leadership team.

• The College Deans are listed on the linked page, and they oversee each college (College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business & Technology, and College of Education).
• Each college is organized into departments with a Chair who manages faculty within them and helps keep everyone informed of the goings on and needs of the whole department.
• Each degree program typically will also have a coordinator who keeps track of all the specific needs of that program.

• Near the end of the semester, your students will have the opportunity to evaluate their experiences in your class. This feedback can help you and your department make decisions about how future classes are organized. For you, personally, this is also a way to receive formal feedback from your students so you know if the pacing and content were appropriate or well-received by them.
• When you are in your Canvas Dashboard, click on Profile at the top, left. Click again on Profile in the options which should open your actual profile page. Then you should see Course Evaluations as an option on the left side. You can find your evaluations by semester or course type.
• It is helpful to look through your course evaluations and take note of student comments. Be prepared when you do this that there may be negative comments, so it is important to read these with an open mind. Course evaluations are sometimes students’ only way to give feedback about their courses.
• Do not take the feedback personally, but watch for reoccurring themes such as if several students mention that they have trouble contacting you or that instructions are hard to understand. When you see these types of comments, it gives you the opportunity to improve things for the next term. In the first example given above, sometimes just clarifying that you only check email once a day since you have another job, may be enough to help students know they need to give you more time to respond. In the second example, ask a peer (or a department mentor) to read through your instructions for assignments to get suggestions on how to help students know what you are asking them to do.

You will receive several emails from UNK alerting you to actions that need to be completed throughout the semester. To make things a little more simple, we recommend checking out the Academic Calendar to see the specific deadlines for a given semester.

The following items are all completed through MyBlue and are required every semester:

• Correction Roster – “Attendance” - generally done in weeks 3 or 4. This is how we formally report students who have not attended or who stopped attending class. This is important for students who have financial aid or who may have meant to drop a class but forgot to formally complete the process. They will not receive a refund if you indicate that they were participating/attending. Please do not just mark everyone as having attended.
• 6-week Grades – also called “Early Term Grading” on the academic calendar. These are important to let students know how they are doing early enough in the semester to make changes either to their study habits or to their class schedule. If you are teaching a full-semester course, please make sure students have a few graded assignments in the first 5 weeks so you can provide this feedback by the 6th week.
• Lowest Possible Grades – you will only be shown a roster for Lowest Possible Grades if you have students who have applied to graduate at the end of the semester. When you get the email letting you know the lowest possible grades are open, go to MyBlue and click on Rosters; if you have students in this situation, the class will pop up and show that it is Available. If none are available, you will not be able to access your rosters.
  • This grade lets the student know that if they were to stop turning in work on that day, the lowest grade they would receive would be... This is a useful tool for our students as they make their final push towards completing their degree. For those who are watching their GPA, this can remind them not to get ‘senioritis’ and to stay on track.
• Final Grades – Although there is a range of dates for final grades to be posted, the earlier you can complete this, the better.

• Do I have access to a faculty mentor in the department? – it is helpful to know who you can ask for help when you need it.
• If you are teaching online only
  • Who can I contact if I have technology issues?
• If you are teaching on campus
  • How do I access buildings/classrooms (key or key card/door codes, etc.)
  • Who do I contact for classroom support in our building(s)?
• When will I have access to Canvas? (Both face-to-face and online courses have a Canvas site associated with them where students can access content and monitor their grades.
• Is there information available about how the course was taught previously?
• When do course evaluations go out to students? *You will want to encourage your students to complete their evaluations, so it is helpful to know when they go live.
• Is there any expectation or invitation for me to attend department meetings?
  • If you are interested in knowing what is happening within the department, ask your chair if you can zoom in to monthly meetings. This may be useful at least once a semester so you know who the rest of the faculty is.