UMBC has moved entirely to online instruction for Spring 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ve watched some of the online computer science lectures and am concerned about the quality of the material given how little time the professors had to react to the move to all on-line. Also, the critical office hours with the professors and TAs are pretty much non-existent now. Help on projects, etc. is critical for comp sci majors, and they are no longer providing the level of support needed.
Most local universities (Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Univ. of Maryland, Towson) have moved to an option to have the students move to a pass/fail grade for all their classes this semester rather than a letter grade due to move to online teaching. UMBC has decided to only do this for GED classes; this is a terrible choice given the lower quality of instruction caused by now all on-line classes. It’s bad enough to go through a lower quality educational experience, but to have your GPA suffer as well is inexcusable.
Something to consider when making the UMBC/UMD choice so many people make. UMBC should really re-think their grading system for the spring semester and fall in line with the other quality institutions in the Baltimore/Washington area.