Presence Policy

Online Presence and Participation

In Creative Technologies, your active and consistent engagement is essential for a successful and connected learning experience in this course—for you and for your classmates. It helps build a dynamic community and allows your instructors to get to know you, and to better support your learning. Throughout the duration of each course in Creative Technologies, we expect you to visit course websites regularly, maintain a regular, daily practice of coursework, respond to messages from instructors and TAs, attend all synchronous course meetings, camera-on, and with audio capability. Your presence in our community means engaging robustly with the course content, your instructors, course guests, and with your classmates..

Here’s what that looks like in detail:

Presence in synchronous Zoom sessions

Our time together on Zoom is limited and precious. Your presence is essential and mandatory. It includes:

Prompt Attendance: Arrive on time to ensure you are present for important announcements and activities.

Video Participation: Turn your camera on. Although instructor policies may vary, in Creative Technologies, as in other University of California programs and majors, “attendance” means being present, visible, and engaged. It is our community value that both speakers and listeners, in all real-time/synchronous course activities, be mutually visible, and multi-modally responsive to one another. For your privacy and comfort, you can use a virtual background and the “hide self-view” feature.

Mic-Ready: Be prepared to unmute and contribute verbally when requested.

Share Screen: Screensharing is essential for remote presentations, collaboration, and feedback. Be prepared to share your screen when requested.

Active Engagement: Contribute to discussions, ask questions, and respond to polls and interactive prompts.

Presence in asynchronous activities

Your engagement outside of synchronous sessions is also vital. This includes:

Discussions: Participate thoughtfully and post timely responses in asynchronous discussion forums.

Communication with Instructors: Respond to emails or course announcements in a timely manner (within 24 hours).

Assignments: Submit all assignments, quizzes, projects, critiques, and reviews on time.

Support and follow-up

Instructors in Creative Technologies will take one of a variety of actions when they notice a pattern of non-attendance or low engagement — they might begin by offering you specific support or communication to help establish how the pattern might be changed. Or they might ask Program Manager & Advisor Emily Spitz to check in with you. Your success in this course is important to us, and we want to help ensure that you have what you need.

However, we expect and encourage students to be the primary source of their own success and thriving—and that means maintaining your own practice of reflecting on your work, your progress, and asking yourself—how am I doing? What support do I need? When students seek support from Creative Technologies, staff and faculty are ready to meet with you and work together on a plan for your success.