I admit it. I want remote "virtual" university to continue for another year.

[lightning]

I have colleagues who have not been on campus for the entire academic year, and they have been loving it, even though they won't admit that the pandemic has been the best thing that has ever happened to them. They are dreading back-to-normal. I have one colleague, with EU citizenship, who has been roaming the EU, while teaching remotely. His research is not dependent on a physical space. Most of us were not that extreme, but all of us enjoyed some variation of location flexibility, and I was no exception. The location flexibility has allowed me to take care of important personal and family things away from home, that I normally could not have done, if there was no pandemic.

Although there is a dearth of campus amenities, the few of us that use the campus facilities have free reign over a large kingdom. I used to complain about the lonely, abandoned spaceship sci-fi vibe, but now I'm enjoying the extra space.

All the admin vanity events & pet projects were nuked off the calendar. For any remaining pointless large meetings/convocations, it was easy to zone out. For any of the meetings that actually mattered (usually involving small groups of faculty and select students), we were happy that we didn't have to leave our homes and exert any commuting energy. Meetings seemed to be more efficient, probably because no one was expending commuting energy. Without the commute to campus, I gained an hour in my day. I've used the extra time away from commuting and pointless meetings, ceremonies and pet project events, to rest, do some personal things, go deep on a class prep, or for research—I have some really great projects that are seeing fruition this year, due to the pandemic killing off stupid stuff for 2020–2021. And I've done all of this without the usual stress.

I admit it. If the admins said we are doing virtual university for 2021–2022, I would only pretend to be disappointed.

[marshwiggle]

I hear you. And I do labs.

Much as I can't do exactly the same things with remote labs, it's really great to do everything asynchronously. Spending hours each week wandering around labs waiting to answer questions is tedious; being able to just look at email and discussion boards periodically to see if there are questions is much less intense. And, not having to squeeze in grading between lab times is also vastly superior.

I'm going to be able to stick with remote labs in the fall, but will be back to in-person in the winter.

[bio-nonymous]

Agreed! My teaching evals went up when I went to 100% online during the pandemic--what does that say about me! But seriously, I am making an effort to do hybrid courses since the asynchronous instruction was a big hit--the students liked having the flexibility (and I am sure appreciated 125-150% playback speed...). Plus, I also get more work done on some things in my home office than I ever could at my campus office (grant proposals, manuscript writing, etc.) And while I agree that for some things remote meetings are more efficient, the ability to develop camaraderie with colleagues via side conversations and interactions during breaks made our recent return to some in person meetings welcome...

[Sun_Worshiper]

I might agree with you, but my place has had hybrid teaching with faculty in the classroom and most students at home. It has been the worst of both the online and in-person teaching combined. I can't wait to get back to normal, which the university claims is coming in fall 2021.

[Parasaurolophus]

Same. Online teaching of discussion-based courses is awful, but it's worth it to me to avoid the commute and spend more time with the hatchling while he needs constant attention.

But also, we're slated to return in-person in the fall, and I seriously doubt I'll have had both doses of the vaccine by then, and my students may not have even had one yet. And with a hatchling at home and a partner with an auto-immune disease, I don't much like the sound of that.

[RatGuy]

I agree with the OP to a large degree -- I've had my office to myself for 20-21, and I'll have to share again in the fall. I never had to search for a parking spot. As tedious as Zoom meetings were, they often cut down on the most annoying and obnoxious personalities. I never had to wait in line at lunch. A few times I was able to use a spare classroom for makeup exams or extracurricular workshops. Fall 2020 I had to offer an online component, and I had more misconduct cases in that semester than I've had in the previous six years. My evals were the worst I've ever had (misconduct + "this class is so much harder than any of my other online classes why didn't the bastard just give me an A?"). But Spring 2021 I was able to teach fully in person while most of my cohort was remoting. Highest evals ever. Lowest stress ever. It's been wonderful.

[Ruralguy]

While acknowledging that I didn't mind some of the solitude, online really is a crappy way to teach, in my view. I am sure some of you do it quite well, and have somehow figured it out, but I'd rather be in person and am going to be. However, I think most committee meetings and talks with the Dean, etc. can probably remain Zoomified even if everyone is vaccinated. If I were a committee Chair, I'd say we will probably default to in person, but if anyone has issues with childcare or making it to class after the meeting, etc., we can talk about either sometimes or all the time Zooming.I can probably meet that way with advisees as well. If there is a flu outbreak, I'm probably going to mask up, teach in person, but only do Zoom meetings.

[Caracal]

But also, we're slated to return in-person in the fall, and I seriously doubt I'll have had both doses of the vaccine by then, and my students may not have even had one yet. And with a hatchling at home and a partner with an auto-immune disease, I don't much like the sound of that.

I assume you aren't in the US?

[Caracal]

While acknowledging that I didn't mind some of the solitude, online really is a crappy way to teach, in my view. I am sure some of you do it quite well, and have somehow figured it out, but I'd rather be in person and am going to be.

Agree. Obviously there are advantages at times, but I don't like it. Going in to work is a pain, of course, but it also is good for me. Teaching online is a weird and isolating experience and it messes with my sense of context.

[dr_codex]

I have very mixed feelings.

Don't miss the commute. Don't miss the hassle of scheduling and attending meetings. Don't miss the students constantly missing class.

But I do miss have at least a little separation of home and work, and I miss my students.

Zoom was better than online, and way better than teaching live in a mask to an audience far away.

I'd love to experiment with some hybrid courses, but it's been made pretty clear to us that the expectation is that we will all be in the same room.

[the_geneticist]

I like that I can spend more time with my cats and my gardens.  I like that meetings seem to run more efficiently.  But that's about it.

All of my classes are lab classes.  I had 0 money, 0 help, and 0 time to create online labs for 4 different courses.  I think I've done a great job, the students have said that they actually like the labs and some of the labs are actually a bit better with online resources.  But the molecular labs are just not anywhere near the same.  Our students are upset that they can't be in a lab using the equipment.  They aren't interested in analyzing data, they don't view any online tasks like using BLAST or designing primers as part of science.  They would be happy to squish up strawberries for DNA all day, even though it's not a research project.

I am also so done dealing with all of the cheating.  It was bad last year when we first switched to remote classes.  Now that I'm getting the freshmen who finished out high school all online, the cheating is off the charts common.  I am so tired of filing misconduct reports.  I want to go back to the labs so I can return to being grouchy about constantly telling students that goggles go on their face, not on top of their head.

[Aster]

Remote teaching has made me extremely lazy. It has made 8/10 of my colleagues even lazier, so much so that if I'm not doing most of our collaborative service work all by myself now, the work has been cancelled or deferred because nobody feels inclined to do anything except slap their dumb remote courses into a can and call it a week.

Our "remote" STEM laboratories are basically a write off to our students, since we cannot actually train them with actual working environments, actual equipment, actual facilities, actual anything. "Virtual labs" are not labs within my discipline, just a pretend version of a lab for a pretend world that doesn't exist. And no, I do not enjoy the mass marketing by the edu-business sector emailing me sales pitches about "online labs" each and every day that prey upon the more naive or lazy professors. About half of our adjuncts and our more deplorable TT professors (the mostly retirement-aged and nontraditional ones) think that remote laboratories are lovely since everything is so much less work for them to do. Boohoo, do your jobs.

I will be glad to "professional up" back again when Big Urban College mostly returns to normal in the Fall. I'll have to find some new adjunct professors to replace those who got too hooked on the remote teaching cocaine, but it will be worth it to have folks that I can depend on.

But yes, I've spent the last year playing a lot more video games, not wearing pants, not going to meetings, goofing around the house, and enjoying more diverse cooking and dining options. I will definitely miss being able to get the deluxe pretzel cheeseburger at Wendy's every week.

[Ruralguy]

I'm not one of these SLAC folks who lives to teach, but I definitely think that when I am teaching, I am going to do it well, and will try to only take short cuts when necessary.

[Puget]

Not me! We will be back to almost all in person next fall and I'm very eager for it. I've been teaching at least partly in person, but the other pieces have been missing. I miss chatting and talking science with my colleagues. I really miss interacting in person with my mentees in the lab-- that will start again in June, as well some in person human subjects research (suspension of which seriously set back our research program). I can't wait!

A lot of complaints here are about commutes. I learned my lesson after doing a long commute as a postdoc for 4 years, and vowed to live in walking distance of work since. I have a 1.5 mile walking commute which builds exercise and thinking time into my day. I know relocating closer to work isn't an option for lots of folks for various reasons, but it is worth considering ways to make this happen if you can.

[lilyb]

I want it all to go away--Zoom, half of students in class at a time, remote exams, and the paperless classroom.

Granted, I only live 10 minutes from campus, so a commute is not an issue. I am also fine with my completely online classes.

This half-and-half model, though, has made the simplest in-class activities incredibly complicated or undoable.