In-Person Classes / All-Online Assignments for Spring 2021 Semester?

[larryc]

I would just teach an online class. When students came to the first class session I'd say "Lovely day--who wants to go for a walk? Because that is all we are going to do in person. But I like walks, and we can talk about class content if you like."

[AvidReader]

mleok, I wonder if I have been blurring definitions of hybrid (and hy-flex)? I think you initially responded to my hy-flex comment, and my university uses that term (confusingly) to mean two completely different things (the two options I described in my original post). I think of each of my courses (classified as hy-flex) as two sections of the same hybrid prep. So my students do about 50% of their "class" activities in person and do online work (asynchronously, in my case) for the other 50%. This semester, they watch online the lectures I would have given in an in-person class, do an online activity using the taught techniques, come to class, discuss the activity, ask questions, do a new and more complicated activity where I can give them more immediate feedback, debrief, and then go away and start the cycle over (and each section is two days off from its other half). If this makes more sense, I'm sorry I wasn't clearer, too.

However, if you're referring to having half the class online watching the in-person students and straining to hear what is going on, I completely agree with you. Many of my colleagues are teaching classes like that (also classified as hy-flex at my institution), and I have subbed for some, and I find it really hard to juggle live and online teaching concurrently, and the audio/video issues are sometimes really time-consuming. It works, but I don't like it. I do let individual students attend remotely if they are quarantining/sick, because my university has not only strict and semi-arbitrary attendance policies but a very thorough list of reasons to quarantine, and these are otherwise really difficult to balance. Usually it's just one student attending, which is a really different dynamic and works okay most of the time.

Larryc, the strolls with students sound glorious, especially right now. May I take your class and go on walks with you?

AR.