FYC INSTRUCTOR POLICIES

Conditions of Employment
Below are the policies that guide the work of FYC instructors.

Contact Information




Office Hours
Provide your contact information, photo, and office hours to Sundus
Alsharif, salsharif@mail.usf.edu; this information is shared at
http://fyc.usf.edu/Lists/Staff/AllItems.aspx.


You are expected to post and hold regularly scheduled office hours each
week. If you teach one or two courses, post and hold three hours of
regularly scheduled office hours each week. If you teach three or more
courses, post and hold five office hours per week. Program staff will
check from time to time to ensure office hours are held as scheduled.

If for some reason you are unable to attend your scheduled office hours,
please let students know via Canvas email, post on your Canvas
announcement page; send an email to J immy Suarez, jdsuare3@usf.edu,
and copy Dr. Dianne Donnelly, ddonnelly@usf.edu. Ask J immy to post
a notice of office hour cancellation on your office door. You should
reschedule any student appointments that were scheduled during office
hours.

USF Email & FERPA

Use your USF email and Canvas whenever conducting USF business
and conducting correspondence with students, faculty, and university
committees. Be sure to check your USF email account and Canvas
notifications at least three times a week on different days and respond to
student inquiries within 72 hours or less. Do not email grades to
students unless you are emailing to a USF or Canvas email account.

FERPA: FERPA guidelines state that a student has a right to privacy
of his or her education record. As such, students records are
confidential. FERPA guidelines prohibit teachers from discussing the
status of a students record with parents or others. These guidelines
prohibit discussing a students grades with anyone other than the
student, posting grades on an office door, distributing graded papers to
anyone other than to the student who earned the grade, etc. These
FERPA guidelines can be found in the USF Student Records
Management Manual (pp.7-12). Learn more about FERPA here:
https://www.registrar.usf.edu/presentation/ferpa_quiz/62

Curriculum Teach our curriculum as described at the fyc.usf.edu site for First-Year
Composition. Be sure to follow the pace of the detailed schedule for the
model/section/course you are teaching. Be sure to abide by the project
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and peer review due dates and the grading weights associated with the
curriculum components.

If your schedule gets delayed by one week of class, please contact the
FYC program administrators so we can plan accordingly. As part of our
quality assurance measures, FYC will be checking document uploads,
peer reviews, and instructor feedback and grading as well as
graing/commenting on peer reviews at My Reviewers. You will be asked
to meet with FYC administrators if there are complaints, if you fall
behind schedule, if your feedback and/or grading needs further
oversight, and/or if you dont follow our curriculum as outlined at
http://fyc.usf.edu and on the detailed schedule.

Students complete a writing diagnostic (see detailed schedule for more
information) the first week of class to assess if students are writing
appropriately for college level. Please contact Dr. Dianne Donnelly
with any writing concerns.

Leave Per the current GAU contract Each employee shall be credited with
five (5) days of paid leave per semester appointment. (Full language in
Article 10, on p. 11 of the USF Collective Bargaining Agreement)

FYC would prefer that you do not take paid leave during days when you
teach; however, if you are ill or must take leave, it is our expectation
that you will have a qualified person cover your course(s). Also, you
are required to let the English department know when you are on leave
or are out due to illness. Let students know via Canvas email, post on
your Canvas announcement page, send an email to J immy Suarez, copy
Dr. Dianne Donnelly, and ask that J immy post a notice of class
cancellation on your classroom door. Be sure to provide your students
with an assignment to be completed prior to your next class.

Student Attendance &
Tardy Documentation









First Day Attendance: According to USFs policy, on the first day of
class, you must take attendance using the Canvas First Day Attendance
link. To account for late arrivals, please wait until the end of class to
finalize attendance. Students may only add/drop a course through Oasis.
Instructors do not have the ability to register students or increase their
class cap.





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Grading Attendance and tardies must be documented on Canvas on the day of
the event, and a Canvas notification will be automatically sent to
students. Additionally, instructors will tally the absences and tardies and
record these in the student-specific comment section of the midterm and
final e-grade submission record on Canvas. Students with more than two
absences or two tardies should be formally notified of these events on
the day of each event via email or Canvas and reminded of the
attendance/lateness policies.

Use My Reviewers to provide feedback and grade intermediate and final
drafts of Projects One, Two, and Three in ENC 1101 and 1102.
Likewise, provide feedback and grade students peer reviews of
intermediate drafts. Effective feedback and appropriate grading should
be completed on intermediate and final drafts, peer reviews, and
revision plans on My Reviewers according to the detailed schedule.
You'll see that the feedback/grading schedule factors one-week intervals
between the student document upload and the instructor
feedback/grading due date. You will be asked to meet with FYC
administrators if your feedback and/or grading needs further oversight
or your feedback and/or grading falls behind the timeframes noted on
the detailed schedule. All major assignments must be graded and posted
before mid-term.

At a minimum for intermediate and final drafts use the My Reviewers
document markup tools:
Five sticky notes per paper that correspond with notes made in
the textboxes for each of the rubric criteria.
Two or three Style & Grammar Community Comments, rubric
criteria text notes (two sentences) and rubric scoring,
Overall Comments that address 3 higher-order competencies
(Focus, Evidence, Organization),
Apply Focus, Evidence, and Organization Community
Comments as relevant to the draft.

In general, about a third of class grades can be A grades, a third B
grades, and a third C grades. Instructors who solely assign A grades or
have a grade distribution in the top or bottom five percent may be asked
to confer with FYC administrators.

Canvas should be used to record students grades. Update the Canvas
Gradebook at least twice a month. At midterm and finals, you need to
submit e-grades to the Registrars Office.

The grade of an I (Incomplete) will be given for only very compelling
reasons. Assignment of an I grade must be approved by the Associate
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Director or Director of Composition.
Professionalism The FYC program strongly suggests that instructors consistently strive
to maintain professional personae that positively reflect USF, the FYC
program, and its constituents. We also strongly encourage you to be
careful and professional in all of your professional online platforms. As
such, please do not friend students (on Facebook and similar social
networking sites) during the semester.


By signing and dating below, you agree to abide by all of the above policies.



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