Hello, my name is Kevin Carman. I'm the Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of ÁùºÏ±¦µä, Reno. We're anxious to welcome you back on campus. And we want you to know that we're taking several measures to assure your safety while you're on campus. Around campus, you're going to see a lot of things going on to help assure your safety.
All of our rooms are being deep cleaned on a regular basis. You'll see paw prints on campus. And follow the paw prints in the direction that they're going and it'll help keep you safe as well. Also around campus, you'll see at various desks and locations over 400 plexiglas barriers to help protect you and the people working behind those plexiglass.
One of the things that we're going to be doing this fall is teaching classes differently than we have in the past. And we call that our HyFlex modality which minimizes the number of students in classrooms while also maximizing interactions with your faculty members. So HyFlex is a way that we can ensure social distancing with our in-class students. So we have half of them are at home watching live via Zoom and half of them are in class in-person. We affectionately call them the roomies and the zoomies.
The students in the classroom can see the students on Zoom which is located their photos are around the powerpoint slide. The students in the classroom can hear the students speak when they speak on Zoom. It's broadcast throughout the classroom. And they can also have the ability to ask questions. They know to raise their hand and this little blue hand that shows up if they have a question. And then I can ask them directly. We have the speakers all linked to the room so we can all hear them. And then they can lower their hand when their question's over. Students on Zoom tend to be more engaged. So they're talking a lot They're often starting the conversations. So that students in the classroom react. And the students in-class, of course, have the normal in-person experience, but the students at home are getting that same thing.
You know being able to stay home if they need to or want to and then in some cases have to because of social distancing. If it's a large class, it'll be 50-50 rotate each day. Come one day, stay home one day so that you can ensure that you don't get a class overloaded. For our class, we have enough space for everyone to come if they choose. So it's kind of up to them in this class.
In my HyFlex classroom, involves about half the class being on Zoom and the other half the class being in the classroom. Waiting for them when they enter the room, is a large bottle of hand sanitizer. Which you know, they take a pump and they they spread it on their hands. And then the side of the bottle of sanitizer is a large bag of wet wipes. There's a huge bag which the university provides. They grab a wipe off and wipe down their whole desk. Basically if they do it when they first come in, it's ensuring that their desk is clean before they sit down. The University's put nice paw prints on their desks, so you know exactly which seats you're allowed to sit on. And these paw print seats are ensured to be six feet away from each other. So they all just have to find a paw print seat.
Students are required to wear their face mask throughout class – the whole time. And even on campus, walking around so they have to come in with it on. Have it on the whole time and then leave with it on. I believe from the HyFlex approach, it provides options to students. It also provides options to professors. It gives students a choice. And I do office hours after class and they can stay on Zoom and ask me questions in office hours. So they don't feel like they need to come in to get help from me in office hours either.
I do have brief conversations after classes with students who come up. Usually if it's a longer conversation, I have a place on Canvas where they can sign up for a Zoom call. We have conversations, I'm able to pinpoint challenges that they're facing.
I'm just humbled and thankful to be here at the University of ÁùºÏ±¦µä, Reno because they're allowing this HyFlex classes to happen. And it's a very safe, clean environment. We've been following all protocol with our masks and our clean cleaning supplies. So we feel really safe and I'm thankful we're able to do it. The HyFlex classroom has been a good positive experience so far.
We're really excited to have you back on campus, to see you here this fall. We know it's going to be different. It will be different. But if we're all in this together, we'll be fine. We'll have a great semester and look forward to an even better spring coming up. So go Pack!
