Covid-19 Response: Evidence of How Higher Ed Can Be Completely Restructured?

[mahagonny]

I teach lab science classes. These involve hands on skills that cannot be replicated through any sort of virtual lab. You also need specialized equipment, so no lab in your kitchen. There really is no satisfactory alternative to labs like these.

Right, so what do people in situations like these do? Mine is somewhat like that. If we just give away passing grades & credits we're not giving them an education. If we fail them we're not being fair to them. If we give them 'inc' then when/how does it get completed?

[Caracal]

Imagine how much cheaper it would be if all classes were taught online.

How can it get cheaper than an instructor showing up in the classroom, delivering a lecture, and interacting with the students in person?

Interesting how people jump to online instruction as the only potential change to higher ed.

Is it really necessary to convene all classes in a physical space on campus twice or thrice a week in 50- or 75-minute increments between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm M-F?

That's never been necessary, and alternatives do exist, but the students want to meet in 50 and 75 minute increments between 8 and 5 M-F. Traditional college students don't want to take a class at 8 pm or on Sunday.

"Traditional" is no longer the majority.

Actually it turns out my non traditional students don't want to do that either. People trying to finish a college degree don't usually have 9-5 jobs anyway and if they have kids and family obligations, 8 pm isn't usually a more convenient time for them. Our evening classes always seem to have very low enrollments.

[polly_mer]

I teach lab science classes. These involve hands on skills that cannot be replicated through any sort of virtual lab. You also need specialized equipment, so no lab in your kitchen. There really is no satisfactory alternative to labs like these.

Right, so what do people in situations like these do? Mine is somewhat like that. If we just give away passing grades & credits we're not giving them an education. If we fail them we're not being fair to them. If we give them 'inc' then when/how does it get completed?

An incomplete gets finished when the institution reopens.  Being set back a term for specific courses falls into the category of "life is unfair", but is the best option for a real education.

[mahagonny]

I teach lab science classes. These involve hands on skills that cannot be replicated through any sort of virtual lab. You also need specialized equipment, so no lab in your kitchen. There really is no satisfactory alternative to labs like these.

Right, so what do people in situations like these do? Mine is somewhat like that. If we just give away passing grades & credits we're not giving them an education. If we fail them we're not being fair to them. If we give them 'inc' then when/how does it get completed?

An incomplete gets finished when the institution reopens.  Being set back a term for specific courses falls into the category of "life is unfair", but is the best option for a real education.

Sure, we all know how incomplete grades work, but this is different. If the student has not received the full serving of beans and rice, there was nothing to digest. The incomplete is not supposed to mean the learning didn't happen because you didn't get your training. It means your part of the arrangement (the student's work) has been delayed but there's reason to believe it will be finished in the near future. As I've always understood things anyway.
I'll do whatever the college and department guide me towards. I can't imagine they could tolerate a slew of incomplete grades in the fall though. Imagine how things play out if the same professor isn't interested in being rehired at that time?

[nescafe]

I'm wondering to what extent the types of courses that will owing to their nature will be the least successful online will come to be viewed as an inconvenient expense and targeted for special investigation as to their necessity.

This. Only I think that there will also be some disciplines that will be targetted this way regardless of the robustness of their online response, using this "metric" as a pretext.

[Aster]

It's sort of like a hurricane event, only affecting a lot more areas and a lot more colleges.

Schools are closed for a time, contact hours and curricula get kinda hozed, and money will get tight. Many students will receive a reduced educational experience, but it won't be so reduced as to be viewed as catastrophic. Plus, most students if given the choice will opt for the easiest and fastest experience. And they'll take whatever forced campus closure and treat it like a holiday. They'll take time off early and show up late after the campus has already reopened.

The faculty are not exactly displeased, however.

No, they're not. And not in a good way. Some of them behave just as badly (or worse) than students.

I have already observed far too many faculty-cancelled classes this week, far more than what happens even during peak flu season.

I'm also seeing many signs on doors saying that office hours are cancelled all week. Just a blanket statement. And when I say they're not having office hours, what I mean is that the faculty are just not even coming to campus. Our administration has not approved that.

We have no confirmed coranovirus cases in our county.  And flu season is mostly over. 

I feel that either faculty are either behaving ridiculous, or faculty are taking advantage of the situation to get out of doing their work.

[Hibush]

I'm not sure we're going to get the same or better outcomes. Online courses typically have a much higher drop-out rate, because the engagement is so impersonal, no matter what is tried to mitigate it. And there are so many things that can't be taught successfully online: lab courses, engineering where you have to do hands-on teamwork, theatre arts, dance, orchestra, clinical practice, and many other things. Some things you could teach wholly online to motivated students. That has always been true, just as motivated, capable students can learn a whole field of education from books. But why do we have universities instead of letting everyone just read books? A lot of it is the structured engagement and interaction that comes from learning in face-to-face groups.

I have no doubt that there are already bean-counting administrators who are yearning to cut everything down to the minimum and get it all online. We've already heard of the automated online courses at for-profit universities, where the instructors just deliver pre-prepared uniform "content" to students. I guess if that's what you call education, then we can restructure higher ed that way, sure.

Our students, especially international ones, are asking for refunds. They didn't go through all the hassle and expense of moving to the United States to stay in their rented rooms and take classes from their computers.

The demand for refunds may restructure higher education in that there are a fair number of schools that would not have the means to open in the fall if they refunded tuition and housing payment for the spring.

[Wahoo Redux]

It's sort of like a hurricane event, only affecting a lot more areas and a lot more colleges.

Schools are closed for a time, contact hours and curricula get kinda hozed, and money will get tight. Many students will receive a reduced educational experience, but it won't be so reduced as to be viewed as catastrophic. Plus, most students if given the choice will opt for the easiest and fastest experience. And they'll take whatever forced campus closure and treat it like a holiday. They'll take time off early and show up late after the campus has already reopened.

The faculty are not exactly displeased, however.

No, they're not. And not in a good way. Some of them behave just as badly (or worse) than students.

I have already observed far too many faculty-cancelled classes this week, far more than what happens even during peak flu season.

I'm also seeing many signs on doors saying that office hours are cancelled all week. Just a blanket statement. And when I say they're not having office hours, what I mean is that the faculty are just not even coming to campus. Our administration has not approved that.

We have no confirmed coranovirus cases in our county.  And flu season is mostly over. 

I feel that either faculty are either behaving ridiculous, or faculty are taking advantage of the situation to get out of doing their work.

I will admit that we were, well, a little giddy with the prospect of an extended spring break and "teaching" in our pajamas in front of Netflix...

But then the reality of the trying to make our classes worthwhile, what to cut, what to keep, how to keep the students involved, etc. set in.  Not that it is too hard to design online lesson-plans...

...but I have actually been prepping for a particular gen ed class that I teach about every 3rd semester, buying books, reading new stuff, thinking about the class...

...and then in another class I was teaching new material based on the recommendation of a professor, partly so I would learn something new...

...and now we've got a ton of uncertainty and confusion about the rest of the semester.

Plus classes were going well and I seemed to be connecting with students this semester.

I like to think of myself jaded and dismissive, sarcastically navigating the tides of higher education to pay for my writing habit, and now I find myself kind of bummed and anxious. 

Stupid friggin' virus.

[Diogenes]

COVID-19 is "Disruptive"









Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

[mahagonny]

I was actually beginning to look forward to ten more free hours in my week, with the commute gone, though teaching will be harder. And grading will be harder because students will have more excuses. We are being urged by the chair to be strict. No one may 'walk in' to the session late. We lay down the law. But you know how that goes. We are being supported, but when the rubber hits the road, it might be one big friggin' mess.
I'm definitely taking a 'business use of the home' deduction next year.

Then there's this: https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/

Don't ask me!

Can't we charge them for using our computer? They charge us for parking in their lot.

[Aster]

Then there's this: https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/

This is an exceptionally intelligent and comprehensive guide. I am sharing this with my colleagues immediately. Thank you for posting this.

[Wahoo Redux]

Can't we charge them for using our computer? They charge us for parking in their lot.

Brilliant.

[nonntt]

The pandemic is causing a serious economic slowdown. This will affect state tax revenues and thus state budgets significantly, as we saw in 2008. The drop in oil prices will further hurt budgets in states that depend on oil revenue. A lot of public university funding still hasn't recovered from the last crash. And the bear market will mean that there's less money coming from the endowment, if your university has one to speak of.

So prepare for another round of cutting off limbs and removing vital organs. If your university administration and/or state legislature decide that online classes are just as effective as in-person, there's no reason not to turn over all inessential learning to Khan Academy or something similar. If your university is primarily interested in teaching history as a general education requirement, there's no reason to maintain a history department (or math or physics or English or anything else, really) if you can strike a system-wide deal with some online education service provider. Your students and colleagues will never have to deal with a live historian (or physicist, or mathematician) again.

Smart department heads will try to lock in new TT hires before the lines get cut. Smart provosts will suspend searches before the department heads get any wise ideas.

I'm not trying to be alarmist, but it hasn't been all that long since we saw similar economic circumstances, and we saw what the results were, and I see no reason to think that the response this time will be any different. "Cut humanities and other liberal arts" will remain the preferred strategy for balancing budgets until there's nothing there left to cut (a point we may reach this time around).

[mamselle]

Lab science strategies in this situation sound interesting:

   https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/13/harvard-coronavirus-research-interruptions/

Not surprising, in some ways, but the shift of emphasis is thought-provoking..

M.

[mahagonny]

The pandemic is causing a serious economic slowdown. This will affect state tax revenues and thus state budgets significantly, as we saw in 2008. The drop in oil prices will further hurt budgets in states that depend on oil revenue. A lot of public university funding still hasn't recovered from the last crash. And the bear market will mean that there's less money coming from the endowment, if your university has one to speak of.

So prepare for another round of cutting off limbs and removing vital organs. If your university administration and/or state legislature decide that online classes are just as effective as in-person, there's no reason not to turn over all inessential learning to Khan Academy or something similar. If your university is primarily interested in teaching history as a general education requirement, there's no reason to maintain a history department (or math or physics or English or anything else, really) if you can strike a system-wide deal with some online education service provider. Your students and colleagues will never have to deal with a live historian (or physicist, or mathematician) again.

Smart department heads will try to lock in new TT hires before the lines get cut. Smart provosts will suspend searches before the department heads get any wise ideas.

I'm not trying to be alarmist, but it hasn't been all that long since we saw similar economic circumstances, and we saw what the results were, and I see no reason to think that the response this time will be any different. "Cut humanities and other liberal arts" will remain the preferred strategy for balancing budgets until there's nothing there left to cut (a point we may reach this time around).

Gasoline, home heating oil and kerosene could get cheaper. Diesel fuel, less cost to transport grocery items across the country?