My community college is currently planning to offer all varieties of instruction - live classes, hybrids, and online classes. We had an online faculty meeting yesterday to detail the plans at this time. Most F2F classes, including mine, are being moved to hybrid and students will only attend one day each week. I am scheduled for 2 face to face classes and 4 online classes.
I have reached out to my division chair to initiate the process to move my F2F classes to synchronous online classes based on my age and a risk factor that put me in a vulnerable population. I think this would be better for my students as I can provide them with one consistent experience for the whole semester rather than one format starting out and then a move to remote learning.
D sent me a petition from her university’s faculty & staff where they are requesting that everyone who elects may remain in remote teaching & WFH until there is a vaccine. They are asking that faculty who choose to teach in person may do so, but no one should be forced to. Area K-12 schools have elected to remain on NTI, so many of their faculty & staff will not have child care. They have a new chancellor, so it will be interesting to see how he reacts.
All that said, my question is what’s up with others? Predictions on whether your school’s plan can be effectively implemented?
I work for a college of medicine within a mid-sized university.
Our health care learners are back and have a mix of online lectures and onsite clinicals.
The university is planning for students on campus for fall. Mix of in person and online classes PLANNED. Planned break between Thanksgiving and New Years.
Will this be effective? I honestly think it’s a toss up. Anything could happen. My confidence level admittedly is low.
D’s FIL teaches at a university that plans to do in person classes. He is 70, and he does not want to teach in person with things as they are. His courses could be easily taught online. He is hoping he will be able to do that. I know he doesn’t want to stop teaching.
I teach at a small LAC. The current plan is a mix of in person classes with several plans for rotating students (some online, some in the room) or rotating classrooms (meeting online one day and in person the other), or completely online. In person classes are being emphasized for first year students especially.
I opted to teach online, both for my own safety and that of a family member at high risk.
I teach at our state flagship. We’ll offer hybrid classes, some in-person, some online. I’ve expressed a preference for teaching online but it will be up to the Associate Dean to decide whether my preference will be honored. All classes will end by Thanksgiving, about a week earlier than normal.
I think the schools that are choosing to end live instruction by Thanksgiving are very smart. While we have some long term reasons for optimism, the next 6 months will likely be very rough per CDC predictions.
The wife of a local business owner, someone I know via a FB group, has had to seek out testing for herself, family, and their employees because one of the employees has a boyfriend who worked as a bartender at another establishment with someone who has turned out to be a community super spreader. The guy had been tested, but rather than quarantine until results were back, he worked and frequented a number of local restaurants and bars before finding out he was positive. I tell this story because I think there will be lots of college aged students who will be making the same kind of poor choices and it scares the daylights out of me how quickly one person will impact multiple classes with the ripple effect.
I teach at a mid-sized private university. We were given the choice whether to teach online, hybrid, or in-person, but we were also given an extremely restrictive health-and-safety protocol list of requirements for in-person instruction. As a result, the vast majority of faculty have decided to teach online. I do not know whether the administration will accept this. They seem afraid to admit to the customer base that the typical college experience is simply not on the table this fall, and they really need the R & B revenue. They haven’t even committed to going to distance learning by Thanksgiving (they said the decision will be made by Nov. 1–which forces faculty to plan an online semester, as you can’t prepare a syllabus if you don’t know if an entire month of classes will be lopped off with little warning). I think the administration is staring into the abyss and they are terrified. I don’t blame them, as I would also like to have a place to work when the dust settles.
My community college has a four stage plan.
1: All classes are fully online (asynchronous) or structured remote (synchronous) this summer and at least the beginning of the fall semester.
2: When the president and the board deem it safe enough (and they are more conservative about things than even our very conservative county government) limited numbers of of the structured remote classes will become hybrid classes and move to campus with very limited class sizes and restricted to courses that need hands-on instruction (nursing, auto mechanics, studio art, chem lab, etc.)
3: Ditto for presidential and board decision, with more of the structured remote classes becoming hybrid classes, and larger but still restricted class sizes. No more than one-half of the registered students will be in a class on campus at any given time.
4: All classes not specifically designed as online will be back on campus. - targeted for second semester.
Except for a minimal skeleton staff, faculty and staff will not be on campus until the second stage, and then will be there in staggered shifts. Everyone who can continue to work from home, is encouraged to keep doing that. Both faculty and students can elect to remain remote for health or personal reasons.
I teach ESL and GED prep in the continuing ed. division. I do not expect to be on campus until well into 2021. Now that we know we can do our job remotely, there simply is no good reason for us to be on campus before we’ve all been vaccinated. The space we would normally take up can be used for credit classes that need to be there and need more space for social distancing.
Mid-sized directional state U. We have a range of modes to choose from, with some limitations. Most will be online–sync or async, though we are encouraged to have a sync component and not be formerly async. there are also hybrid online but small class meeting, and a version of hiflex. A few will be normal f2f, but that’s mostly if necessary–performing arts, labs, etc.
I had to get okayed for my choice, but it seemed fairly easy to choose. For this semester, anyway.
Class sizes have been made bigger to save costs, so I will be teaching four sections of 25 each of freshman comp. Basically I will be commenting on and grading essays as a full-time job, besides the actual planning and teaching!
We are starting early and going remote-only after TG.
On campus safety plans look like a good attempt, but not enough for me. So I will stay away as long as possible.
I adjunct for mid-sized directional state. For one course, lectures will be synchronous online and I will attempt to do labs in person 1/2 of the class at a time. It’s cheating the students out of lab time, but I’m really opposed to online labs, which I think are tantamount to useless.
For the other course it still depends on how many students I get enrolled. Right now, I could hold in-person classes, but if enrollment goes up I won’t have the classroom space and will have to go with online. I will have in-person if I can because the material is just so difficult even in person that I can’t even imagine how it’s going to be in an online format.
By and large, the college seems to be letting the instructors decide how they are going to manage their courses. Most of the faculty seems to be opting for some online variant.
In our regular Zoom call this morning, our grad school DD reported that she has just finished re-designing the class she is to teach this fall for completely remote instruction. She was about to ask her advisor if she could do that when he suggested it himself. Undergraduates aren’t required to return to campus, and she would have had at least some of her students attending remotely anyway. This will make her life a lot easier.
I teach at a CC. No decisions about fall yet…administration is watching covid news and waiting to find out what K12 does. DH is admin at regional U and they are all over the board. F2F, hybrid, online only. F2F class will conclude at start of Thanksgiving break.
I believe there will be lots of last minute changes and ensuing chaos by the time mid September gets here though.
At a large public U. We were all able to choose our mode of teaching in our college. Most have chosen online. A few are going with hyflex, which is in person plus synchronous for those at home. A few small classes are in person. Hyflex would be my last choice as the technical issues are likely to be frustrating and I write on the board a lot.