How has your workload changed?

[downer]

I've got bigger online classes -- the minimum numbers for online classes have been waived. I'm also teaching more than I did last fall. But since everything is online, I'm not commuting and that saves a fair amount of time -- though some of that commuting time used to be spent usefully on public transport, so I got reading done then. I'm making a definite effort to have everything streamlined as much as possible this semester, while also being pretty sure that no matter how much I plan, something will happen to screw it up. But I'm trying to make sure my workload does not increase significantly.

How is your workload looking?

[sinenomine]

As far as teaching, not much of a change; I'm an experienced online instructor, so I haven't had much of a learning curve there. My administrative duties have changed to involve a lot more contact with faculty who need assistance with distance ed questions, and I expect I'll be asked to weigh in on issues affecting students who may struggle with a lot of online courses. But saving an hour a day in commuting is welcome, as is being able to get a lot of work done at my own pace and in my preferred early start to the day schedule.

[Danny]

My teaching load has increased due to becoming full time so it's hard to give an accurate picture.  I went from being on campus 5 days a week to just 1 day.  All of my courses are live streamed from my home and most of my office hours are also online.  The actual teaching is much harder for me, since so few students give any sort of feedback or interaction during the classes (mathematics).  Also, I have to deal with so many more technical problems and emails than normal.  However, I am happy that I'm spending so little time in the car and that, at least for this semester, almost everything is automatically graded by the online homework website.

Taking everything into account, I think my overall time spent per class is reduced.  But the teaching is harder and I would rather be back in-person.  One annoying side effect is that I no longer have my commute time for audiobooks.

[Parasaurolophus]

I definitely spend less time and effort on teaching, since a large chunk of the material is now pre-canned (two of my four fall courses, in fact, plus a few weeks in a third) and I only have to run short discussion sections live. Recording new material takes 30ish minutes to an hour, so with the discussion sections I'm saving between 1-2 hours per course per week, depending on pre-canning. Plus the commute and dead time between classes, which really adds up. This has also given me the excuse to shift most assessments to auto-graded quizzes and exams, which also saves tons of time, even if it seems less pedagogically sound.

On the whole, I'm working less. But I generally find the work less pleasant.

Edit: I should add that my new class at the satellite campus is full (because online, and thus no commute) despite the expectation having been that it would be a smaller class. That's too bad, because the admin was committed to running it no matter the size, and there's no benefit to me for having more students. I was told that satellite students are generally better prepared and more motivated (many of them are high schoolers taking university credit). Unfortunately, it doesn't have a single student from the satellite campus enrolled in it. Which makes all those meetings about tailoring it to the campus a total waste of time. On the plus side, I've decided that means I can just run the usual class, which means no new prep.

[ciao_yall]

The prep wasn't too terrible, except I decided to convert all my turn-in assignments to discussion posts and responses.

I think it's going to be a bit more work because I will have to grade discussion boards and responses which I didn't have to do before. I'm hoping I can make class time shorter though to make up for that, both for myself and my students. But they seem to be enjoying the Zoom classes, though it's only 2nd week.

Actually the discussion posts are going better than I had feared. I think the peer pressure is making their writing better and making them less likely to plagiarize. Will I keep it if we go back to the regular classroom? I don't know.

[emprof]

I've basically jettisoned my research agenda for the semester, because I'm putting 3 classes online for the first time. 2 are built around new textbooks (out of necessity, the old were out of print) and one is a wholly new prep. Plus I'm taking on a heavier service load for a year (half of our senior faculty are on leave and we have lots of retirement-related vacancies).

[Hegemony]

Because I head a department, massively more administrative work trying to cope with all the challenges of transferring everything online, planning ahead, figuring out what enrollments will be, etc. I haven't had a whole day off this entire summer.  And because our budget was cut drastically, due to our disastrous spring and anticipated further drops, I enlarged my summer course, because it makes money for the department.  And the students are having more problems — connectivity problems, housing problems, etc. — which means more correspondence with them as I try to keep them progressing and not having to drop out. So quite a significant increase in workload — and the workload was already heavy.

[mamselle]

Because I head a department, massively more administrative work trying to cope with all the challenges of transferring everything online, planning ahead, figuring out what enrollments will be, etc. I haven't had a whole day off this entire summer.  And because our budget was cut drastically, due to our disastrous spring and anticipated further drops, I enlarged my summer course, because it makes money for the department.  And the students are having more problems — connectivity problems, housing problems, etc. — which means more correspondence with them as I try to keep them progressing and not having to drop out. So quite a significant increase in workload — and the workload was already heavy.

Please feel free to join us on the <<courage fatigue>> thread.....sounds like you might be there already....

All good thoughts, in any case.

M.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Everything is more-or-less the same for me.  Covid has added a few headaches (managing zoom while teaching in the classroom, tech challenges), but my teaching load is the same and class prep hasn't been significantly affected.  I'm very swamped with teaching, but my semester is lopsided with intensive teaching in the first seven weeks, so once that ends things will be calmer.

[Vkw10]

My administrative workload skyrocketed with the pandemic. My teaching workload hasn't changed on paper, same course and same number of students as last fall, but the local version of hybrid teaching is much more difficult. Some students are in classroom and some are on Zoom, but I never know how many will choose which from day to day. I've finished the peer reviews and external reviews I committed to earlier in the year; I will be turning down reviews except for a very narrowly defined niche. Research is on hold.