What plan does your school have to deal with faculty getting ill?

[downer]

Presumably in the next month or so, quite a few faculty will fall ill, some seriously enough that they won't be able to teach or grade. That could be with coronavirus, mental breakdown, or other maladies. There's a pretty good chance that more faculty than usual will be getting ill.

Now that all classes are online, will this be more or less of a problem than usual? Does your school have any plans in place for this?

None of the places I teach has any plan.

[the_geneticist]

Bwahahah! 
A plan?
Even an unofficial, here are some ideas, sort of plan?

Nope.

Our dean has even said, "Faculty can still teach when they are sick". 

[OneMoreYear]

In my department, all faculty teaching Spring and Summer courses are asked to identify a "back-up" faculty member to add in to our LMS (give them co-faculty status in the course shell), in case we are sick and cannot teach.  The back-up would not definitively be responsible for taking over the course in its entirety if the original faculty member became sick, but could help as a stopgap measures. I have back-ups for my current courses and am serving as back-ups for colleagues. But we are a collegial bunch and often co-teach and guest lecture for each other.

[Parasaurolophus]

Don't get sick.

[ergative]

We've all identified back-up staff to take over our administrative responsibilities. Teaching is done until August, so that's not likely to be a problem.

[waterboy]

Apparently I'm backup department head. I pity the department should that come to pass.

[Caracal]

Presumably in the next month or so, quite a few faculty will fall ill, some seriously enough that they won't be able to teach or grade. That could be with coronavirus, mental breakdown, or other maladies. There's a pretty good chance that more faculty than usual will be getting ill.

Now that all classes are online, will this be more or less of a problem than usual? Does your school have any plans in place for this?

None of the places I teach has any plan.

I'm not going to get into quantifying risks, but isn't this just a somewhat heightened version of the normal situation any term? Some people might get sick, for most of them it will be relatively mild and there won't be any need for additional action. They can skip a couple lectures and figure out how to make it up in the same way they always would. For a minority, it could be more severe and keep them from being able to get much done for a couple weeks.  And for a smaller number it could be truly bad leading to a long term recovery or worse, no recovery. But, people do get really sick, or occasionally have to bow out of teaching for the rest of the semester in other times and departments just find ways to manage, I'm not sure some new plan would be called for.

[downer]

True. Probably more work having a whole contingency plan in place than just winging it as needed.

But there is some potential for mass illness. And so there could be a real problem then. If those exponential curves keep on going, that could be within the next month.

[Caracal]

True. Probably more work having a whole contingency plan in place than just winging it as needed.

But there is some potential for mass illness. And so there could be a real problem then. If those exponential curves keep on going, that could be within the next month.

If things get that bad then I'm sure grades could be delayed. Obviously that might have some knock on effects, but we aren't running a nuclear reactor.

[downer]

Trickier to delay when you have graduating seniors. But something could be worked out, yeah.

[Caracal]

Trickier to delay when you have graduating seniors. But something could be worked out, yeah.

We were told when we went  online to make sure we had enough  graded early so that if the semester  had to end prematurely  it would  be possible  to give students  a grade.

[downer]

Trickier to delay when you have graduating seniors. But something could be worked out, yeah.

We were told when we went  online to make sure we had enough  graded early so that if the semester  had to end prematurely  it would  be possible  to give students  a grade.

Interesting. I haven't heard of any other schools making such a recommendation.

[onthefringe]

My department required that 1) faculty activate their canvas course and 2) get their gradebook up to date and 3) put their plan for distance education for the rest of the semester on canvas, and 4) Add the chair and vice chair to their canvas site as instructors.

Now we hope nobody gets sick...

[Caracal]

My department required that 1) faculty activate their canvas course and 2) get their gradebook up to date and 3) put their plan for distance education for the rest of the semester on canvas, and 4) Add the chair and vice chair to their canvas site as instructors.

Now we hope nobody gets sick...

We didn't get that kind of explicit instruction but in effect I think that has happened. I'm assuming that while it would be a violation for my chair to just muck around in my Canvas course, he could get access to it if he needed it. In many ways, it would be much simpler for someone to take over a course now than in normal circumstances. Usually I have a few piles of blue books in my office, now everything is on the CMS. You also don't have the issue of having to find people to physically go teach classes, which would make the work of sharing someone's course load a lot easier.

[mamselle]

But as we're seeing, "online" still doesn't mean "one size" or "one approach" fits all.

I'm finding as many different ways to use online resources as in-person ones....so that classes or lessons that I teach are still going to be personalized and have a certain level of organization (well, I hope) that would have to be plumbed to be understood and presented coherently by someone else.

So, yes, the technical connections might make it "easier" to pick up some of the materials and context, etc., more easily, but I'm not sure I'd be able to figure out someone elses shell, what's where if they're using, say, YouTube for these videos and saved whiteboard computations or an Excel spreadsheet for those problem sets.

Putting the syllabus and course organization materials ought to yield some kind of overview, but I still wonder.

M.