Notice Board

The Faculty of Arts and Science has made the decision to convert its courses for 2020’s Summer session into online courses.

How the COVID-19 crisis will unfold over the coming weeks and months is difficult to predict, but it seems likely that some form of social distancing practice will remain in force throughout some, if not most of the summer months. We are making this decision now in order to give our faculty members more time to rethink their courses in an online environment, which will allow them to deliver higher quality, more fully realized online courses than would have been the case if we made the switch at the last minute. We also wanted to make the decision earlier to give students a chance to make plans for the summer months.

We are in the process of converting the vast majority of our planned summer offerings into online courses in their original time frames (Summer I, Summer II/III). In a few cases, we’ve had to move these around or change the courses from three-week to six-week courses in order to make them more feasible as online offerings. In most cases, if you enrolled in a summer course and it has become an online course, you have remained enrolled in it. If the new format or other changes to the course no longer make the course possible for or attractive to you, we encourage you to drop the course in order to free up a spot for another student. In a few cases, we’ve had to outright cancel courses where it is simply not possible to deliver the course material in an online format, such as science courses with labs or fieldwork as an essential component of the class. In cases where these cancellations may pose problems with program completion, please contact Arts & Science Advising to consider solutions.

We know from the last two summers that online courses are popular options for students, and we expect this to be the case in summer 2020 as well. We will be monitoring the enrolments in our online courses and looking to add additional online capacity based on demand. Please monitor uleth.ca/artsci/online-courses, Facebook @ulethbridgeartsci, Instagram @ulethbridgeartsci or Twitter @uoflartsci for announcements of new offerings.

Thank you for your patience with us as we deal with this unprecedented situation. This is an evolving situation, requiring constant adjustment, but we want you to know that we are committed to delivering the best quality educational experiences we can, whether those be online or in person.

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Harold Jansen, PhD
Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science
Professor of Political Science
University of Lethbridge