With students, faculty, and staff now following social-distancing guidelines to stop the spread of COVID-19, the experts at UITS have some tips for maximizing your remote situation.
Let’s go, Hoosiers! We got this.
- For faculty, the Keep Teaching website offers a variety of resources, including help with Canvas, Kaltura, Zoom, and other technologies as well as tips and best practices for teaching online. Your campus teaching and learning center also provides resources to move your classes online.
- For students, the Keep Learning siteprovides information about the most commonly used technological tools in online courses. It also offers tips on how to:
- Prioritize your health
- Stay engaged with your courses
- Familiarize yourself with key tools such as Canvas and Zoom
- For staff working, instructors teaching, and students learning remotely, the Keep Working site provides information on technology issues to consider.
- Take advantage of IU’s self-help tools like the Knowledge Base, Getting Started Guide for Faculty, Getting Started Guide for Students, and Getting Started Guide for Staff.
- Find Support Center information for all campuses while in-person teaching is suspended.
- Unless you need to connect to a service that requires virtual private networking (VPN), you don’t need to use it for most IU services like email or external systems like Canvas and Zoom.
- If you have a slow internet connection and are near an IU campus, take advantage of free, 24-hour lot hot spots that allow for social distancing while keeping faculty, staff, students – and the public – connected.
- All CrimsonCard offices are now operating online and by appointment only. IU Bloomington and IUPUI faculty, staff, and students: If you are an essential IU employee who needs a new CrimsonCard ID in order to fulfill your job duties, or a student who needs to access meal points/plans or CrimsonCash, please call 317-274-0400 or email crimsoncard@iu.edu to schedule a time to get a temporary card. Regional campus faculty, staff, and students: Please review CrimsonCard COVID-19 updates for your campus.
- Stay on top of everything IU is doing to protect the IU community at the IU coronavirus website. This site is updated multiple times daily.
- Finally, here are the Support Center’s answers to the most frequent questions they get:
What can I do to stay in touch with my co-workers?
Some units have their own communication solutions for staying in touch such as Slack, but UITS recommends installing Skype for Business, part of the Office 365 suite, on your local computer.
My laptop that I was provided is asking for elevation, what do I do?
Your laptop is asking for credentials for an Admin to approve the change or installation. If you own this device, you’ll need to enter your local account username and password. If this machine is owned or managed by your department, you must contact your IT Pro who will be able to assist you.
Can I connect to my computer at work?
Yes! Faculty and staff can connect to their workstations remotely. You will first need to connect to the IU network through the VPN. Once you are on IU’s network, you can use a program to connect to your computer. Excellent instructions for this can be found here. You will need to know your workstation’s computer name. Your IT Pro can help with that if you don’t know it.
How can I check my email?
You can either install Outlook, a part of the Office 365 suite, on your computer or visit mail.iu.edu for faculty and staff Exchange accounts, or gmail.iu.edu for Gmail at IU student accounts.
How can I change my passphrase or reset it if I forget it?
Excellent instructions for assistance with your passphrase are located here: https://kb.iu.edu/d/ataz
This IU page isn’t displaying properly – what can I do?
This is a very common issue. If you are seeing a weird error in your browser that you shouldn’t be seeing, try clearing your cache and cookies for your browser, or trying to access that page in a browser you don’t typically use.
- (OK, we snuck this one in as a non-tech bonus.) Other tips to stay productive and healthy while working from home:
- Have a dedicated workspace.
- Pay attention to your physical surroundings. They affect your mental ability to focus on work.
- Keep work time separate from home time.
- Avoid distractions.
- Keep healthy habits like good sleep and exercise.
