INSTRUCTOR PORTAL

Explain the following classroom rules to your students as soon as possible:

Syncsketch and Google Drive exercises must be submitted 1 hour before class. This ensures that you don't waste time at the beginning of the lesson waiting for them to deliver. If you want, you can allow them to upload a second update later as an extra.

Students who will not be able to attend class must notify the teacher before class begins (or on the first day of the course, if this will happen regularly).

If absent, students can still submit their work for teacher review. They will then watch the recording.

During class, students must keep their webcams on and pay attention when their classmates’ work is being reviewed

Demo recordings are not optional, but rather an integrated part of the program, and students are required to watch them before (or during) exercises.

The estimated duration of lessons varies depending on the number of students in the class, and you will be informed at the beginning of the course.

As a general rule, consider dedicating:

20 minutes per student on exercise review

40/60 minutes on theory 

10 minutes on greetings and chatting

Each lesson is different, and the students’ needs may change. Sometimes, within the same lesson, one exercise may be well executed, and the review takes less than the expected 20 minutes, while for another exercise, it may be necessary to open the Maya file to explain concepts or correct errors for the entire class or individual students. The time saved can therefore be used to enrich the lesson.

If your lessons are particularly long, consider including at least a 5-minute break in the middle of the lesson, to give everyone (including you) a chance to recharge and to improve the general level of attention.

Please notify the teaching board (Silvia, Simone, or Alessandro) as soon as possibleif you need to be absent for either prolonged or short-term reasons, request a substitute, postpone a lesson, or change the lesson time.

You will be required to complete a student evaluation form for each student twice during the teaching term (mid-term and end-of-term).

As part of these evaluations, you will assess the students’ performance, analyze their progress and class attendance, and identify any problems they may have.

The goal is to ensure that the students keep improving their performance and to take action if anything needs improvement.

The scores indicated by the teacher through the multiple choice answers (and therefore the final numerical result derived from them) will not be shared with the student but will only be visible to the school.

On the other hand, the written comment will be sent to the student in question.

The end-of-term comments will be collected in the “student history” and shared with the teacher who will meet the student in the following term. They may therefore be useful for teachers to get an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each student.

Please inform Silvia, Simone, or Alessandro as soon as possible if you encounter any serious issues with a student. This includes situations where a student:

• Has frequent absences

• Does not submit assignments, is significantly falling behind other students, raising doubts about their ability to successfully complete the course

• Does not respect classroom rules or has inappropriate behavior during lessons

• Additionally, even if the situation is not severe but you have concerns about a student's behavior or progress, please communicate it to the school.

All teachers at Vivo Animation school must be accredited as Autodesk Certified Instructors.

To begin the accreditation process, we will need your CV and a demo reel. Additionally, you will need to sign a form that we will send you to request your accreditation.

You will then need to follow a short training course (a one-hour video followed by a short quiz, nothing too demanding) focused on online teaching for adults

Once accredited, your certification will automatically renew if you teach at least one quarter per year at the school.

You do not need to worry about registering for courses on the Autodesk portal (as probably indicated in Autodesk emails), the school will take care of that.

Direct your students to the Technical Support channel on Discord for any issues regarding Maya, Animbot, Vivo Shelf, the Rigs, and the Student Portal.

The technical support channel is shared with all teachers and students of the school, so it is more likely that students will get a faster response, and more importantly, teachers are freed from repetitive troubleshooting.

Since many issues are common, the channel functions as a valuable resource where everyone can learn from past solutions.

It is important to remind students not to get stuck when they encounter a technical issue but to first try to find a solution with a Google search. If after 15 minutes max they have not solved the problem, they should write on the Technical Support channel trying to explain their problem as clearly as possible, better if with the help of screenshots or videos.

Every class has a dedicated Discord channel, shared between the teacher and their students. Use this channel for internal class communications, questions, and clarifications regarding lessons or assignments, and for reporting absences or delays.

Encourage and support student interaction outside the classroom by utilizing the class voice channel as a platform for tackling exercises together and providing peer-to-peer support. The voice channel is there for them.

You can write on the instructor's (# docenti) chat for any communication or questions, and to keep us informed on the course’s progress.

The Discord server is a space designed for all the school's current and former students, and instructors. It's a welcoming space where everyone is encouraged to share their passions, experiences, projects, advice, and anything else that sparks their enthusiasm. 

Classes will all take place on Zoom. At the beginning of the semester, you will be assigned an instructor’s account (e.g., docenti2.vivo@gmail.com) that you will use to log in to Zoom.

Lessons will be automatically recorded to the cloud. On the first day, check to make sure the recording has started. Normally, there won’t be any problems.

Once the Zoom meeting is over, the automatic transfer system set up by Simone takes care of everything else: the recordings will be transferred from the Zoom cloud to Google Drive, where they are assigned the class name and date, and the recording is placed in the corresponding class folder.

At that point, both the teacher and the students will receive an email with the link and confirmation that the recording is available.

(PS: The recording is always sent at the 20th minute of every hour, so for example, if you finish class at 7:30 pm, the students will receive it at 8:20 pm)

If for some reason the recording does not appear in the folder, write on the #docenti chat.

As a Vivo Animation School instructor, you will be assigned a personal Autodesk Maya license.

At every term's beginning, you will receive a new coupon code to claim your Animbot license.

Follow the instructions in the email to receive the keycode and validate the license. 

If there is any update, always install the most recent version. 

Contact Silvia or write on the #docenti chat if you have any issues.

Syncsketch is used in Vivo Animation School for every review of the students’ exercises, and it allows smooth, lag-free screen sharing, as opposed to Zoom’s screen sharing which always misses a few frames.