Preparing for Coronavirus?

[Anselm]

My mid-sized university is opening in the fall, and we've discovered that they have no testing plan for students, faculty, or staff. None what so ever.

Someone (not an employee) should write a letter to the local newspaper.  Maybe public shame can get them to do the right thing.

My own school started doing temperature checks at the door for the small number of people who needed to come to campus for hands on work.   So far they have said nothing about nasal swabs.  They have announced that they are proceeding with taking applications from "students and student-athletes" which I guess is their way of saying we will have sports in the fall and winter.  I also take note of how the athletes are put in a separate category which is no surprise to me.

[the_geneticist]

My mid-sized university is opening in the fall, and we've discovered that they have no testing plan for students, faculty, or staff. None what so ever.

My university is planning testing.  What's not clear is is we even have the capability to do so.  You have to have a Bio-Safety Level 3 lab to process the samples (because SARS-CoV-2 is a human pathogen), a disposal plan for the used samples, and a plan for how to protect patient privacy.  It's not a trivial plan.  Most places simply don't have the infrastructure (e.g. an autoclave that you are allowed to put human biomedical samples in).
The qPCR is not hard to do, but you have to do it carefully, precisely and accurately every single time.  And the "medical grade" reagents cost about 10X more than the standard "research grade".
It would be easier to use a proven antibody test, but most folks are not willing to have a blood draw forced on them.

[Stockmann]

My own school started doing temperature checks at the door for the small number of people who needed to come to campus for hands on work.   So far they have said nothing about nasal swabs.

Same here.
The thing about opening colleges and universities is that, while there is growing empirical evidence that outbreaks in schools are comparatively easy to prevent because children seem to be less contagious than adults, that wouldn't apply, at least definitely to the same degree, when your youngest students are in their late teens. Classroom teaching, particularly large lectures, would seem to be the most ideal conditions for contagion, second only to indoors choir practice.

[marshwiggle]

My own school started doing temperature checks at the door for the small number of people who needed to come to campus for hands on work.   So far they have said nothing about nasal swabs.

Same here.
The thing about opening colleges and universities is that, while there is growing empirical evidence that outbreaks in schools are comparatively easy to prevent because children seem to be less contagious than adults, that wouldn't apply, at least definitely to the same degree, when your youngest students are in their late teens. Classroom teaching, particularly large lectures, would seem to be the most ideal conditions for contagion, second only to indoors choir practice.

My money is on hallways, washrooms, etc., especially between classes, and in residences in the morning before classes. I can't imagine any serious amount of compliance with distancing in those places, at least not beyond a few days.

[Stockmann]

But contact is brief in such places. If people are stuck together for an hour or more in a poorly ventilated classroom, the potential accumulated viral load would surely be much higher.

[Caracal]

My own school started doing temperature checks at the door for the small number of people who needed to come to campus for hands on work.   So far they have said nothing about nasal swabs.

Same here.
The thing about opening colleges and universities is that, while there is growing empirical evidence that outbreaks in schools are comparatively easy to prevent because children seem to be less contagious than adults, that wouldn't apply, at least definitely to the same degree, when your youngest students are in their late teens. Classroom teaching, particularly large lectures, would seem to be the most ideal conditions for contagion, second only to indoors choir practice.

My money is on hallways, washrooms, etc., especially between classes, and in residences in the morning before classes. I can't imagine any serious amount of compliance with distancing in those places, at least not beyond a few days.

Yeah, Stockmann is right. Anywhere where people don't spend much time is pretty low risk. The most ideal places for contagion are pretty clearly prisons, meatpacking plants and nursing homes. A decently ventilated classroom still could potentially be a risk of course.

Really, the most important thing determining that risk is likely to be what is happening outside of the college. If there's just a lot of transmission going on, the risk of classes is going to be too high no matter what measures you take.

[Vkw10]

The student center ballroom is being converted to a computer lab. Since many classes will have A-B schedules, university anticipates students needing a place to work between classes. The ballroom lab will take some pressure off library and other open labs.

The library is always full during week, so I dread seeing it in the fall. I foresee myself going in Friday evening or Saturday morning, when it's less crowded.

[mamselle]

Early mornings are safest, since no-one's been inside breathing and the ventilation system has had all night to clear the air, if it's going to be able to do that.

Also, request items you need the day before, so you don't have to stay there waiting, just pick them up and go.

Reduce time and interactive exposure in all the ways you can think of.

M.

[AmLitHist]

We got the official word (though not the actual updated schedule) for our campus yesterday.

Classes that were scheduled F2F will be converted to either hybrid (mainly ones that need on-campus time and work, such as art and lab sciences) or Live Virtual Lectures (LVL, a/k/a synchronous video classes) via Blackboard Collaborate.

Among the constraints admin was working with:
  --At least one class period (90 minutes) between class meetings in any given room, so housekeeping can sanitize
  --Classes not across the hall from each other at the same time, to avoid large crowds in the halls between/after classes
  --No more than 150 students on campus at any given time (we average 4000-5000 students in recent semesters on our campus)
  --Physically measuring rooms and inventorying furniture and fixtures to allow social distancing
  --Reduced class caps (we're usually capped at 25 on most; I'd imagine those will drop to 10 or maybe 12)

Thank the deities I'm not a chair anymore:  I was really good at schedule building, but I wouldn't want to be the one working on this.  And I completely get why it's taken this long to announce plans. Although I've been somewhat antsy and complained about it here a bit, I've tried to keep a lid on it:  ideally, if it were up to me, we'd be 100% online and asynchronous, but I know that's just not realistic, especially for new students in the fall.  Our CC population comes in with extensive readiness deficits, and we'd eliminate opportunities for a good chunk of them if we announced we weren't having any high-touch F2F availability.  (As it is, some of the dev ed classes will be F2F along with the lab-heavy classes.)

So, the good news, in order of how happy each makes me:
  1.  I don't have to go another 10 rounds with our HR nimrods to get some kind of accommodation.
  2.  I don't have to be on campus, at all, until January (if then).
  3.  I can continue to do what I do best:  teach online.

I'm not wild about the LVL part, but I'm not going to argue; I guess this old dog can learn a new trick.  My previous F2F Comp II class should make (it's at 9 now); I kind of hope the F2F Early American lit doesn't, just because I'm leery of how it's going to work in a synchronous format (I've taught it many times fully online/asynchronously). 

Overall, very good news, and I can live with it pretty happily.  I hope others here are getting/will soon get similar decisions.

[downer]

Does seem like a good result, AmLitHist.

It does seem about time that faculty knew what to plan for regarding fall classes.

Given today's news about the record high for US cases, I suspect that the plans for "hybrid" classes may have very minimal classroom components.

[nebo113]

What precautions are being taken for the maintenance workers who are sanitizing the campus, I wonder.

[nebo113]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/At-One-Flagship-Coronavirus/249054?fbclid=IwAR3Z4wB_myTNv_mKwhuljPfkVmJM1riKzuvs7dNnMdPApsqJtZz9lX37lbE

[marshwiggle]

I'm not wild about the LVL part, but I'm not going to argue; I guess this old dog can learn a new trick.  My previous F2F Comp II class should make (it's at 9 now); I kind of hope the F2F Early American lit doesn't, just because I'm leery of how it's going to work in a synchronous format (I've taught it many times fully online/asynchronously). 

This sounds odd; if the class has been taught "fully" online in the past, why wouldn't they just have the existing online format in the Fall, instead of a FrankenF2F version?

FrankenF2F makes sense for things which have never been online before, since they presumably haven't had the same effort put in to completely adapt them. But courses that have already adapted should already be, in principle, as good as F2F.

[marshwiggle]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/At-One-Flagship-Coronavirus/249054?fbclid=IwAR3Z4wB_myTNv_mKwhuljPfkVmJM1riKzuvs7dNnMdPApsqJtZz9lX37lbE

From the article:

Such an outbreak underscores a harsh reality for colleges as they plan for the fall semester: They can do only so much to control student behavior, especially when students leave the campus.

I may need to go to an opthalmologist to get treated for that blinding flash of the obvious.

[Caracal]

I'm not wild about the LVL part, but I'm not going to argue; I guess this old dog can learn a new trick.  My previous F2F Comp II class should make (it's at 9 now); I kind of hope the F2F Early American lit doesn't, just because I'm leery of how it's going to work in a synchronous format (I've taught it many times fully online/asynchronously). 

This sounds odd; if the class has been taught "fully" online in the past, why wouldn't they just have the existing online format in the Fall, instead of a FrankenF2F version?

FrankenF2F makes sense for things which have never been online before, since they presumably haven't had the same effort put in to completely adapt them. But courses that have already adapted should already be, in principle, as good as F2F.

Just because a class has been taught fully online in the past doesn't mean that all the students are going to do well in an online format or that the instructor is going to be good at teaching it online. That's the logic gap in this argument you keep making.

In AmListHit's case, since you have taught the class online before and want to teach it online again, it does seem a bit strange to force you into a different format.