Ok, I am not objective on this topic, but I would argue that a well-designed and executed online course is usually a better experience for students than that of a “meh” face to face course (lecture-style “sage on the stage” model).
I work at a University and helping faculty develop great online courses is exactly my job (Instructional Designer). I can imagine that the experience at my University is similar to what is going on at many of our peer institutions. Spring semester was complete triage mode - just getting through it, to the best of their capability.
Since spring classes ended in May, we have been involved in a very intensive process of educating our instructors about best practices and technological possibilities to best support course objectives. In addition to pedagogy, they are getting hands on training on all facets of the tools they might use. There has been extensive discussion and brainstorming around crafting a meaningful learning experience for their students.
I would argue that this is more professional development around teaching than many have ever had. I am confident that for many of them, the online courses they teach in the fall are going to be substantially better than what they muddled through in the spring, and in some cases, better than the f2f courses they have taught for the last 20 years.
Online education and/or removing the campus experience has been the 800 pound gorilla in the room of higher education for awhile. Schools have tried to deal with it by adding more and more amenities and experiences to campus. I was talking with a friend pre-COVID about online classes taking over, and he mentioned that his school has studied it and the cost is $5-10k a year. That’s assuming there is no massive campus to upkeep.
That $10k per year number keeps popping into my head when I see big numbers like $56k a year for online classes. If COVID lasts into the 2021 school year things are going to get interesting…
@sylvan8798 But the faculty and staff can be protected from close student contact, and the chance of transmission between students and faculty/staff would become close to zero. For example, plexiglass in classrooms separating the professor from the students. I don’t know what other colleges are doing, but at Amherst, all faculty and staff (even staff who typically need to be on-campus to do their jobs) are being given the choice of returning. I think, honestly, with all the protective measures on campuses to protect faculty and staff this semester, members of the faculty and staff are much more likely to contract the virus outside of the college.
I alternate between being optimistic and pessimistic about the fall. Right now, I think that the best-case scenario for most schools is one where a few students are able to attend a few classes f2f for a few months. The bulk of the classes in the fall and perhaps all of the classes in the winter and spring will be online. Even in the most optimistic scenario, most classes will need to be online for the near term.
Students and teachers should use their college open forum time to ask questions about how online in fall will be improved over what was seen a last spring (unless you were satisfied). These questions are important especially at schools that have little or no experience with online education. How will large classes be handled, how about the smaller ones? Office hours? Discussion groups? How will papers be marked and feedback returned to students? Which classes will be synchronous, and why? Will all classes be recorded and available for later viewing?
If the majority of the questions at your school’s open forum are not about class content delivery but rather about tuition costs, sports, and parties, then you may want to worry, or take a gap, or consider a transfer.
Have no faculty or staff contracted the virus already, with no students present? They certainly have at Princeton, and I bet at many other schools too. College students are far from the only source of this disease. It is not clear how much of an additional risk factor students on campus present to faculty and staff if proper precautions are maintained.
@ChemAM I get that and I’ve been arguing that as well but maybe community spread can happen quickly and maybe it’s not going to happen from being on campus. Student who unknowingly has the virus goes to town for coffee or ice cream and infects someone there. That person is faculty or lives with a professor and, there you go, community spread.
The thing is that we know there will be some spread. I think Bowdoin is taking that to the n-th degree and assuming there will be cases that they will need to deal with and are only comfortable with that possibility with fewer kids on campus, maybe to lessen the virus spread or at least to be able to handle the cases if/when they happen.
I’m so curious how fall will look on campuses and what happens with the spread. For schools doing a lot of testing (Bowdoin testing everyone two times a week), they will catch cases. It won’t be a matter of kids getting symptoms and then deciding for themselves to go get a test. They will find those kids with the tests and quarantine them. For schools with less testing, kids will be likely walking around with it. I think the consensus here is that kids will not be wearing masks and social distancing enough to stop the virus from spreading (at least a little bit before contact tracing kicks in). Campuses not bringing kids back (or few kids back) are apparently being realistic about this, assuming virus spread and facing the hard facts about whether they can handle it.
One thing interesting I saw: Middlebury is undecided over whether they will periodically test students after the initial rounds of quarantine. Also, the only facility they specifically mentioned they are using for quarantine/isolation is the Munford House, which has 27 rooms. In a school with 2300 students, wouldn’t they need more facilities? Do they have more facilities and did I just miss it? Do they think they can keep the infection rate low enough such that only 1% of students have COVID-19 at any given time?
@ChemAM In Bowdoin’s report, they also cited something like 25 rooms set aside for quarantine. That was probably one of their light bulb moments that having everyone back might be hard.
For everyone out there, I’d like to hear about other schools and testing. How often will they be testing at each of your kids’ schools?
@homerdog That does seem a bit low; maybe it was a small amount for Bowdoin and Middlebury just because there isn’t much housing to begin with? Maybe at a school like Amherst where there is a plethora of off-campus housing and hotels due to the presence of UMass, there will be much more quarantine housing.
Amherst hasn’t announced how much testing they will be conducting yet.
It would seem that in many college towns the students will be tested more than those living and working in town. Yes, there is a very real risk that students coming back to campus could bring Covid with them, but once they are tested a couple times and are negative, if they do contract it they very well may be getting it from outside sources, not the other way around. So at Midd, the students get tested on day 1 and day 7 and aren’t allowed off campus in that time frame(for the first test not even allowing out of their room until it comes back negative) So then if a student contracts Covid on day 21, it is not likely to be from another student.
There’s been a lot of reaction on the alumni chat board to what Wesleyan has announced so far and Middletown residents are being encouraged to give campus a wide berth. People are just assuming there will be a lot of asymptomatic students walking around at any given moment. The big question is whether students will likewise be discouraged from visiting Main Street. If so, that would be a cruel irony given how much time and effort has gone into turning Middletown into an attractive college town.
Fortunately, mask wearing is still pretty high both on and off the hill.
My guess is that Middlebury realizes that once the virus is active to the point they need more than 27 beds the campus is close to closed with everything moving online.
Good news from Fauci - not sure if this takes pressure off schools and make them want to NOT take the risk of having students back (if there is an end in sight):
Fauci says he is ‘cautiously optimistic’ that vaccine will be available by early 2021
In his opening statement, Fauci told members of Congress he was “cautiously optimistic” that an effective vaccine will be available to the American public by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
The government is providing extensive financial support to 14 vaccine candidates.
“Although you can never guarantee at all the safety and efficacy of a vaccine until you test in the field, we feel cautiously optimistic based on the concerted effort and the fact that we are taking financial risks to be able to be ahead of the game so that when … we get favorable candidates with good results, we will be able to make them available to the American public” within a year of when officials began researching a vaccine in mid-January, Fauci said.