Teaching Resources

Faculty members serving as advisers are expected to block out sufficient time to meet individually with each advisee. Faculty should be available for in-person start-of-year advising on the designated date. Incoming students will be assigned to advisors just prior to the start of the advising period. You can find a list of your advisees in one of two places: the degree audit website or the banner advising website. Students no longer require advisor approval in order to register for courses; it is thus doubly important for advisors to review schedules to ensure that students are following school policies and are completing degree requirements.

Yale makes use of Canvas, a cloud-based learning management system. Resources for Canvas are available at this site: https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/teaching/canvas-yale/instructional-tools. A site will be created for each course that a faculty member teaches, and you may access your Canvas sites through the faculty gateway or directly here: https://canvas.yale.edu/. Please post your syllabus at least one week prior to the start of classes to assist student in course selection. Divinity Library provides the following support of Canvas (LMS):

• Jude Morrissey assists with Course Reserves and advises on whether materials fall within Fair Use Guidelines: Jude.Morrissey@yale.edu

Course syllabi should be prepared according to the YDS Course Template, and submitted for approval through the Courseleaf course management system. Note that seminars should be capped at 15 students, and no classes or sections may be offered during the chapel and lunch hours (11:30 am-1:30 pm). Faculty working with teaching fellows should meet with them on a weekly basis.

Beginning the first week of classes, Dean Sterling has authorized faculty to “charge” lunch using their Yale I.D. cards in order to meet with students over lunch. Meeting with students is the only reason for which faculty can make use of this charging privilege, due to University regulations. Violation could turn this into a taxable benefit or result in the rescinding of this privilege. These funds are ordinarily given only to faculty members who are teaching full-time and are not on leave. The allowance is $175 per semester. This benefit is available only at the YDS refectory. If you run into technical difficulties, please see the Business Office for assistance.

Faculty should communicate clearly concerning expectations for academic integrity and plagiarism, and familiarize students with our policies. The Poorvu Center offers helpful resources.

Faculty should be aware of and follow School policies concerning auditors.

Faculty are encouraged to employ inclusive modes of pedagogy. A toolkit co-developed by YDS faculty and the Poorvu Center is available here.

If you need extensive training or urgent help with Canvas, please contact canvas@yale.edu.

Accommodations letters for students with disabilities sometimes contain an accommodation for Alternate Format or Accessible Format Course Materials. If you have a student with this accommodation, it is important to have all of the materials on your Canvas site suitable for screen readers. You can check your document’s readability by looking at the colored dial next to the file in Canvas. If you have inaccessible materials, please be in touch with Jordan Colbert at Student Accessibility Services (Jordan.colbert@yale.edu). Jordan has a group of student workers that can be set to work remediating your documents so that they are accessible to students with print-related disabilities. All you would have to do is allow the student worker onto your Canvas site, and then, when the semester is over, save the remediated document rather than the original for the next time you use the resource. Thank you for your help in making Yale accessible to all students. If there are questions or concerns, please be in communication with susan.olson@yale.edu.

Yale Library supports both print and electronic course reserves systems, which operate through the Canvas system. Detailed information about the course reserves system can be found here.