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

[Cheerful]

New York community college wants to unload empty dorms to pay off debt from construction of dorms that are now empty:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/23/new-york-community-college-seeks-sell-dorms.
Dependence on auxiliary revenue is not a good thing.

Community colleges trying to be 4-year colleges and building dorms and stuff are not good things.

[apl68]

New York community college wants to unload empty dorms to pay off debt from construction of dorms that are now empty:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/23/new-york-community-college-seeks-sell-dorms.
Dependence on auxiliary revenue is not a good thing.

Community colleges trying to be 4-year colleges and building dorms and stuff are not good things.

Polly recently mentioned on another thread that some CCs have been building dorms to attract students from a wide area to specialized technical programs in which they have a particular strength.  Don't know whether that's what the school above was trying to do.  At any rate, it doesn't seem to have worked for them.

[spork]

Consortium of community colleges to offer shared online courses:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/05/27/community-colleges-launch-consortium-share-online-classes.

The phrase "address human capital issues" can also mean "reduce instructional labor costs," and the courses most suitable to scaling online are those that count as gen ed requirements at four-year institutions -- not courses in fields like automotive repair or dental hygiene.

[Caracal]

Consortium of community colleges to offer shared online courses:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/05/27/community-colleges-launch-consortium-share-online-classes.

The phrase "address human capital issues" can also mean "reduce instructional labor costs," and the courses most suitable to scaling online are those that count as gen ed requirements at four-year institutions -- not courses in fields like automotive repair or dental hygiene.

It seems abundantly clear that students don't want this stuff.

[spork]

Make remote work permanent?

'A Mass Exodus': Inflexible Remote-Work Policies Could Bring Major Staff Turnover (The Chronicle, paywalled)

[spork]

Maine community colleges are starting a training program for remote workers in rural areas. Note the underlying assumption about access to broadband internet.

And OPM 2U is buying edX. An operation that went from nothing to a valuation of $800 million in a decade.

[Aster]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements. The covid pandemic is really taking a wrecking ball to all of that. I don't think that our institution will recover positively from the experience. Too many of our employees are getting used to turtling up at home and only performing the barest minimum of work duties.

[marshwiggle]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements.

Is there evidence that students have had much less satisfactory interaction with instructors during this time? On here a lot of evidence seems to support a bimodal result; many students have done well remotely, while others have done badly, with less students in the middle than normal.
If the group who did well is large, there may be a lot of students who were completely satisfied with the remote level of engagement.

[mamselle]

Maine community colleges are starting a training program for remote workers in rural areas. Note the underlying assumption about access to broadband internet.

And OPM 2U is buying edX. An operation that went from nothing to a valuation of $800 million in a decade.

The 《on dit》with edX is that permission costs weren't thought through. So all those ready-to-go courses may have to be pulled or re-done.

Permissions for a non-profit are much lower than a for-profit organization...

Oops.

M.

[Aster]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements.

Is there evidence that students have had much less satisfactory interaction with instructors during this time? On here a lot of evidence seems to support a bimodal result; many students have done well remotely, while others have done badly, with less students in the middle than normal.
If the group who did well is large, there may be a lot of students who were completely satisfied with the remote level of engagement.

No. It is the almost complete opposite. Reducing professor access directly correlates with reducing student interaction. I've fielded more complaints about other professors in the last year than I have in the previous 5 years combined. Our administration has received so many complaints that way back last Spring, they directly specified that even if our classes stayed fully remote this Fall, every professor would still be required to work on campus every day, and be physically available to meet with students. That was pre-delta, of course. The nastier covid variant has thrown a wrench into things. I'm half expecting that my few traditional classes will be reverted back to fully remote within the next few weeks.

As to "doing well remotely", I would not think that we can reasonably meter that in the current environment where so many professors and courses have been dialing down their assessments and curriculum to better accommodate students in these trying times. I have to ask around pretty hard to find any professors at my institution (or even in the greater metropolitan area) who haven't eased up on their student expectations over the past year. Many of us have temporarily eased up quite a lot. Those of us that teach higher level courses with re-requisites will be paying for it later with extensive remedial student support, but we knew that at the start.

[Caracal]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements. The covid pandemic is really taking a wrecking ball to all of that. I don't think that our institution will recover positively from the experience. Too many of our employees are getting used to turtling up at home and only performing the barest minimum of work duties.

Do professors in STEM have more students coming to office hours? I plan to have office hours in person next semester, but its pretty rare for students to show up at them unannounced. I sometimes have a student  who enjoys coming by office hours fairly regularly, but most students make appointments. I found virtual meetings with students fine. You lose a lot more in a classroom setting online than you do in a one on one meeting.

[onthefringe]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements. The covid pandemic is really taking a wrecking ball to all of that. I don't think that our institution will recover positively from the experience. Too many of our employees are getting used to turtling up at home and only performing the barest minimum of work duties.

Do professors in STEM have more students coming to office hours? I plan to have office hours in person next semester, but its pretty rare for students to show up at them unannounced. I sometimes have a student  who enjoys coming by office hours fairly regularly, but most students make appointments. I found virtual meetings with students fine. You lose a lot more in a classroom setting online than you do in a one on one meeting.

Maybe? Especially when we teach classes that can be problem based. Most of my classes have some sort of weekly assignments, and if I position my office hours in the two days before they are due, I get so many takers that I usually (pre pandemic) schedule them in a conference room with a whiteboard instead of my actual office, so I can work through common questions with small groups of people.

I would say that in most of my classes about 25-30% of students attend office hours on a regular basis (class sizes ranging from 40-90). And frequently during an active in person office hour, small groups of students will peer-coach one another when they have different questions and are waiting for me to get around to them.

This semester, I actually found an open classroom to have some in-person office hours, the rest will be Zoom.

[Aster]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements. The covid pandemic is really taking a wrecking ball to all of that. I don't think that our institution will recover positively from the experience. Too many of our employees are getting used to turtling up at home and only performing the barest minimum of work duties.

Do professors in STEM have more students coming to office hours? I plan to have office hours in person next semester, but its pretty rare for students to show up at them unannounced. I sometimes have a student  who enjoys coming by office hours fairly regularly, but most students make appointments. I found virtual meetings with students fine. You lose a lot more in a classroom setting online than you do in a one on one meeting.

In STEM? I'm not sure. Maybe?

There are just so many variables that can and do affect the frequency of office hour visitation by students. Type of institution. Selectivity of the institution. Whether or not the institution is mostly residential or mostly commuter. Student demographic breakdown of the institution. Discipline of the course. Level of the course. Curriculum model of the course. Duration of the course. Term of the course. Cohort level of the student. Class size. Distance from classroom to the professor's office. Distance from student dormitories/parking lots to professor's office. Interior space and appearance of the professor's office. Whether or not the professor's door is physically open or closed during office hours. Gender of the professor. Appearance of the professor. Age of the professor. Demeanor of the professor. Specific day/time scheduling of office hours. Frequency of office hours offered per week. The list of confounding factors goes on and on.

Through long observation at multiple universities, I can confidently state that there can be professors who teach identical courses at the same institution, with even identical curriculum plans, but some professors will almost never have students that drop in to chat, while others will have an endless stream queued out the door.

So yeah, students might use office hours a lot. Or they might not.

[mleok]

Big Urban College just announced that professors will now have the choice to hold office hours fully online (through videoconferencing) for this Fall.

I now expect a mass exodus of professors who won't even come in to work for part/all of the week. We operated like this last year and it was really bad. Requiring mandatory on-campus office hours is one of the few tools in Big Urban College's toolbox to actually get many professors to engage with their colleagues, engage with their students, and carry out their service requirements. The covid pandemic is really taking a wrecking ball to all of that. I don't think that our institution will recover positively from the experience. Too many of our employees are getting used to turtling up at home and only performing the barest minimum of work duties.

Do professors in STEM have more students coming to office hours? I plan to have office hours in person next semester, but its pretty rare for students to show up at them unannounced. I sometimes have a student  who enjoys coming by office hours fairly regularly, but most students make appointments. I found virtual meetings with students fine. You lose a lot more in a classroom setting online than you do in a one on one meeting.

My students in STEM come to office hours without making an appointment. I just give them a Zoom personal meeting room address and the time my office hours are held, and they show up unannouced during that window. My Zoom personal meeting room is set up so that participants are automatically placed in a waiting room and I have to admit them manually, which allows me to discuss more student specific issues if necessary.

[Hibush]

One response to the crisis will surprise nobody.
The Wall Street Journal rankings just came out, and they found that the top of the rankings will not be restructured at all.

"Why are the rankings so stable at the top? In part because the world outside those university walls is so unstable. Schools with the spending power to cope with the falling revenues and rising costs many have experienced as a result of the pandemic fare well in the rankings. Of the top 20 schools overall, all but two also rank in the top 20 for academic resources."

The academic resources parameter reflects the academic spending per student, which is between $50 and $100 thousand per year for this group of schools.