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

[waterboy]

Thoughtful approach. Except the flu season doesn't end in February.

[marshwiggle]

A reporter from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was given an exclusive access to the president and administrators of Allegheny College, a LAC based in Allegheny Mountain, NW Pennsylvania, as it makes a decision on whether to open for in-class instruction this fall or not. The story is just posted:

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2020/05/31/Allegheny-college-Hilary-Link-COVID-19-fall-semester-reopen-online-Pennsylvania/stories/202005290088

Excerpts containing the college's reopening and safety measures:

Consensus grew around a plan to establish — as best the college could — that students starting classes are virus-free. It would require what amounted to a funnel. Student move-in — hundreds of them getting into dorms over three-days in August — needed to stretch to two weeks so families trying to social distance would have staggered arrival times and students could undergo repeat COVID-19 testing.

Under the plan worked out, arrivals will take a drive-thru test at the Robertson Athletic Complex — the school's football venue — then move into dorms and self-isolate for three to five days. They will be re-tested before the Aug. 31 start of classes.

Most — faculty included — saw merit in a shortened in-person semester, free of breaks during which students might leave and be exposed, Provost Ron Cole said.

Unless students are going to be locked in for the entire "term" and prevented from going home or even off campus, all of the precautions getting them on campus in the first place are kind of useless. And it's hard to imagine such a thing could be legally enforced.

[Caracal]

Unless students are going to be locked in for the entire "term" and prevented from going home or even off campus, all of the precautions getting them on campus in the first place are kind of useless. And it's hard to imagine such a thing could be legally enforced.

You're arguing that if you can't eliminate risks entirely, that means there's no point in trying to mitigate them, which doesn't make any sense. Nobody is suggesting that you can make a college campus a bio-secure environment. But it seems pretty self evident that having the entire student body go home for Thanksgiving is more likely to lead to an outbreak on campus then an occasional student going somewhere for the weekend.

Of course, this would only really make much difference for a school where lots of students don't live at home anyway, or live close enough so that they regularly go home on weekends, but the idea that creating a schedule that results in students staying put more could reduce the chance of outbreaks isn't nuts.

[spork]

I had a conversation with my wife yesterday about the possibility that the pandemic will end habitual ways of doing things that previously no one really thought much about. E.g., telemedicine replacing a lot of in-person appointments with physicians, LPNs, etc. Why continue to go through the aggravation of interrupting one's day to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick people, to talk to a doctor who is doing nothing but looking at lab test results? In my case, I doubt I will ever again hold regularly-scheduled office hours in my actual campus office.

But the crux of the conversation involved how one change can lead to a series of additional changes, resulting in a massive overhaul. I used the example of restaurant menus. Restaurants here are resuming dine-in service with single-use menus. I said "This is stupid and won't last; all these restaurants have websites, people can just use their phones to read the menu. Or just put a big blackboard on the wall." That led to the idea that, since the menus are online, and people can make reservations online, why not pre-order and pay for appetizers and entrees so that they are ready within five minutes of being seated? And if that happens, you probably don't need as many wait staff. You could in fact adopt the McDonald's model of customers taking their own food to their tables, just in a fancier environment. In fact I would prefer this given how many times I've seen servers placing plates on the table with their thumbs touching the food.

So now I'm wondering: if one of those higher-ed traditions like in-person office hours disappears except for occasional on-demand appointments, what else happens?

[marshwiggle]

So now I'm wondering: if one of those higher-ed traditions like in-person office hours disappears except for occasional on-demand appointments, what else happens?

For labs and tutorials that are just using software, synchronous labs are likely to disappear. Along with me not having to stand around for a zillion hours in labs, I don't have to worry about the tasks being absolutely able to be completed in 2 hours; I don't have to worry if some network problem takes the system down for 1/2 hour during a lab, etc.

[Cheerful]

You could in fact adopt the McDonald's model of customers taking their own food to their tables, just in a fancier environment. In fact I would prefer this given how many times I've seen servers placing plates on the table with their thumbs touching the food.

After that server just bussed another table (how many times have you seen wait staff grab multiple used glasses at once with fingers in glasses?).  In many restaurants, the wait staff serving food and the bus staff clearing dirty dishes are the same people.  Gross.

So now I'm wondering: if one of those higher-ed traditions like in-person office hours disappears except for occasional on-demand appointments, what else happens?

Great question.  Are you saying all in-person appointments or just office hours in case someone stops by?  I'm sad that many things I like about academe may disappear.  It was already happening with libraries -- admin arguing for "better uses" for that space.  There are benefits to browsing the book stacks (it's not the same online) and many students have never done that.

[spork]

[. . .]

Great question.  Are you saying all in-person appointments or just office hours in case someone stops by?  I'm sad that many things I like about academe may disappear.  It was already happening with libraries -- admin arguing for "better uses" for that space.  There are benefits to browsing the book stacks (it's not the same online) and many students have never done that.

I'm saying both, generally, in my case, for several reasons. First, in my decade of teaching on this campus, not a single undergraduate has just "stopped by" during office hours. And of those who make appointments, about twenty percent are no-shows. A large portion of the remainder were students who needed a paper form signed, and the university started using an e-doc workflow system last fall so the paper forms no longer exist. Office hours consisted of me sitting in my office alone doing stuff I could do at home, only because the university required it. All students now have Webex through the LMS and I'm immune compromised, so I'm not going to participate in the bureaucratic charade anymore.

Another example: business travel used to be a profit center for airlines, and companies used to send employees cross-country to attend face-to-face meetings. Will this happen as frequently as in the past? Doubtful. And airlines are eliminating service to secondary airports. So what is going to happen to those airports and the people who used to work at them? I can see conferences as the academic parallel here. My disciplinary association announced that it's annual meeting will be online. The event normally draws 10-15K attendees, with attendance paid for by their university employers. It's been a financial shell game -- disciplinary associations organize conferences to earn the revenue they need to operate, universities pay for the conferences by reimbursing faculty who attend. And now my university is prohibiting non-essential travel, because of budget cuts. For the coming fiscal year, faculty professional development funding will be reduced by more than half and conference travel on the university's dime will not be allowed. Few people are going to want to pay registration fees for online conferences.

[marshwiggle]

Another example: business travel used to be a profit center for airlines, and companies used to send employees cross-country to attend face-to-face meetings. Will this happen as frequently as in the past? Doubtful. And airlines are eliminating service to secondary airports. So what is going to happen to those airports and the people who used to work at them? I can see conferences as the academic parallel here. My disciplinary association announced that it's annual meeting will be online. The event normally draws 10-15K attendees, with attendance paid for by their university employers. It's been a financial shell game -- disciplinary associations organize conferences to earn the revenue they need to operate, universities pay for the conferences by reimbursing faculty who attend. And now my university is prohibiting non-essential travel, because of budget cuts. For the coming fiscal year, faculty professional development funding will be reduced by more than half and conference travel on the university's dime will not be allowed. Few people are going to want to pay registration fees for online conferences.

Along these lines, I rmember years ago the informal name for a conference was something like "Math-conference-in-a-warm-place". Similarly, I've heard of companies having their annual sales meeting (which people are supposed to attend) in places with great golf courses because that's what the bigwigs want to do. All of this has NOTHING to do with value to people in the organization, who have to pay for flights, rooms, etc. even if the employer pays "registration" fees.

[polly_mer]

Few people are going to want to pay registration fees for online conferences.

We had a virtual conference a couple weeks ago.  We had more registered attendees than normal (200 instead of 150) with much attributed to being so much cheaper at $100 instead of $900 + travel costs (many international).

The feedback so far has been we regular attendees missed the extensive informal discussions that are a hallmark of this conference and would like some mechanism for those interactions if we end up virtual again.

However, I doubt that the next virtual conference would be so cheap.  200*$100 is only $20k.  That doesn't go very far for all the additional staffers to ensure the sessions run smoothly.  We have sponsors, but again I doubt they'd give a lot of money when there are no booths and minimal other reminders to the attendees about their fine products and services.

[spork]

So now I'm wondering: if one of those higher-ed traditions like in-person office hours disappears except for occasional on-demand appointments, what else happens?

For labs and tutorials that are just using software, synchronous labs are likely to disappear. Along with me not having to stand around for a zillion hours in labs, I don't have to worry about the tasks being absolutely able to be completed in 2 hours; I don't have to worry if some network problem takes the system down for 1/2 hour during a lab, etc.

What will the adoption of software-based lab simulations mean for the use of space and equipment on the average campus? The need for lab TAs/instructors?

[marshwiggle]

So now I'm wondering: if one of those higher-ed traditions like in-person office hours disappears except for occasional on-demand appointments, what else happens?

For labs and tutorials that are just using software, synchronous labs are likely to disappear. Along with me not having to stand around for a zillion hours in labs, I don't have to worry about the tasks being absolutely able to be completed in 2 hours; I don't have to worry if some network problem takes the system down for 1/2 hour during a lab, etc.

What will the adoption of software-based lab simulations mean for the use of space and equipment on the average campus? The need for lab TAs/instructors?

Ironically, computer labs will potentially be the first to go. (It's ironic since they're the most universal and general purpose.) Physical discipline-specific labs will continue unless/until people in the discipline believe simulations are a reasonably complete alternative.

As for TAs, they will be needed unless/until autograding is the norm.

Instructors will be needed unless/until everything is purchased "canned" from a vendor.  Since academics are such a militantly independent bunch, I think it will be a while before labs beyond introductory courses will be accepted "off the shelf" from someone else. (Introductory courses already use all kinds of courseware, but that's because of the economics of scale.)

[polly_mer]

The American Chemical Society is still on record as physical labs being necessary for educating chemists and other chemical professions.

[Caracal]

I had a conversation with my wife yesterday about the possibility that the pandemic will end habitual ways of doing things that previously no one really thought much about. E.g., telemedicine replacing a lot of in-person appointments with physicians, LPNs, etc. Why continue to go through the aggravation of interrupting one's day to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick people, to talk to a doctor who is doing nothing but looking at lab test results? In my case, I doubt I will ever again hold regularly-scheduled office hours in my actual campus office.

Hmm, there are some thing telemedicine could do just as well and lots of other things it can't. Regularly scheduled check up appointments with certain kinds of specialists probably would work most of the time. However, there's a whole range of things that don't work well at all. If, in normal times, I'm sick, the whole point of going to the doctor is so that they can listen to my breathing, assess how sick I seem and figure out if anything else needs to be done or if I should just go home and lie on the couch. That can't be done well over video. Ditto for all kinds of other minor injuries and ailments.

The regularly scheduled office hours might be dying anyway, just because the idea of dropping in seems odd to most students now, given how easy it to set up an appointment with someone. I think that's too bad in a lot of ways, because I suspect it results in reduced communication. If your professor is just sitting in their office and you can just come by, I think that makes it easier to feel like you can talk to them about some concern without it feeling like a "big thing." In my upper level classes I require students to meet with me to get feedback on their drafts or proposal and it helps me get to know them better. It also is easier to talk about a paper with a student than it is to write a bunch of notes all over it.

[marshwiggle]

The American Chemical Society is still on record as physical labs being necessary for educating chemists and other chemical professions.

Do they have anything to say about things like chemistry minors, specifically? High school teachers, for instance, might only require a minor, and so I'm curious if there's any policy on that. (Does a high school chemistry teacher count as a chemical profession? What about a middle school science teacher?)

[marshwiggle]

I had a conversation with my wife yesterday about the possibility that the pandemic will end habitual ways of doing things that previously no one really thought much about. E.g., telemedicine replacing a lot of in-person appointments with physicians, LPNs, etc. Why continue to go through the aggravation of interrupting one's day to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick people, to talk to a doctor who is doing nothing but looking at lab test results? In my case, I doubt I will ever again hold regularly-scheduled office hours in my actual campus office.

Hmm, there are some thing telemedicine could do just as well and lots of other things it can't. Regularly scheduled check up appointments with certain kinds of specialists probably would work most of the time. However, there's a whole range of things that don't work well at all. If, in normal times, I'm sick, the whole point of going to the doctor is so that they can listen to my breathing, assess how sick I seem and figure out if anything else needs to be done or if I should just go home and lie on the couch. That can't be done well over video. Ditto for all kinds of other minor injuries and ailments.

I can get my heartrate and BP checked in the drugstore for free. I can go to a lab for tests and the results are sent to my doctor electronically. There are getting to be more and more things that can be done without me physically going to the office.