Ugh. I guess it’s just a risk to send a freshman. It’s going to be different. We can say “oh they should be flexible” but I’m pretty sure, if we had an incoming freshman, we would have him take a gap year. I don’t know if I would have said that two months ago but things seem to be getting more clear now. And I know- what will they do? I’m not even sure it matters. You only get four years of college (hopefully lol). If you give it a year, maybe there’s a better chance of normality and if it’s the same in fall 2021 then I guess they would have to go. Hopefully, by then, things are at least a little bit more under control even if the virus is still active.
It’s kind of how we are looking at S19’s college experience. He gets eight semesters. Already had one crummy one. Six more to go. Does he just want to stay the course? He won’t get sophomore year back if he goes. That’s it. Maybe the last two years will be a little better? Is it worth bagging next year and having a better chance at three good years on campus? I swear that, if his friends decided to gap, he’d do it. It might just take one or two…
@Knowsstuff but how do professors plan for an in person class and an online one simultaneously? Bowdoin came to the conclusion that it was too hard to do that well. Maybe it’s because they never teach online and don’t have anything at the ready so having online versions were going to take all hands on deck and will look different than the in person version. If S19 does take these classes, I’ll be interested to see what they are like.
I live in a college town, and it’s definitely something that is being discussed in a very serious way. We drove down the transmission rate by living like hermits, and if we keep it down our K-12 kids will be able to attend school with masks and social distancing 5 days a week. I know people on this thread know what a big deal that is, and can also understand what will happen if k-12 goes back online because college kids gotta party.
I don’t see the college dealing with it because they never do. It’s tough to drop the hammer on your customers.
That leaves it to the city government, and that probably gets ugly with a crack down and then couch burning. I talked to a city council member about it and he talked in circles, but did say he was well aware that he would be recalled in less than a week if k-12 closed because the city didn’t deal with parties.
I feel like we’re barreling down a road, the signs say “bridge out ahead”, but nobody is pumping the brake.
I don’t disagree that some courses need library access, but to stay with the school we are talking about, most students will be staying home as only frosh are on campus fall semester…so obviously those home based students wouldn’t be able to use the library either, at least in person.
I guess recorded classes and/or you just log into a live stream class. Ask questions etc. They definitely have the technology. They were making a plan for augmented reality classes with certain sectors of teaching for test pilots that they were working on in about 6 different sectors. Online is just not a big deal to them. . https://ai.umich.edu/
My son said it wasn’t the teaching that was bad but some tests just didn’t translate well. But that was with 3 days to prepare. Now that they had the summer I am hoping things are much better and actually improved. For schools like his, I think hybrid learning is here to stay.
DS19’s school arranged for students to have free access to the HathiTrust online international library that will give them access to books that are carried in their school’s library. According to the announcement
@ChemAM , sounds like your dad wants his cake and eat it to, gov’t should have no say , BUT protect said schools if Sh** hits the fan, interesting concept. No school in the US can open unless that location’s gov’t agrees to it. As far as I know no school is their own state , wellmmaybe Yale is their own city since they own most of New Haven.
The southern state my son’s school is in transitions to Phase 3 on July 1st. I believe that means indoor dining at 50% capacity and gatherings limited to 250 people. That would solve some dining hall and large lecture issues.
We are testing over 500000 people every day in the USA. That’s more than a month of tests in March.
The absolute numbers for a virus as communicable as this is not pertinent. Many many are asymptomatic. Many are young and vast majority aren’t getting gravely ill. It’s always been about managing hospital capacity and critical care. If they stay manageable we will be slowly working towards the normal spread of a virus this contagious.
As always it’s about protecting the most vulnerable. It’s not about virus bubbles that aren’t realistic. It’s about mitigation and management. Until there’s a vaccine that’s the only way to approach this imho. Trying to hide away won’t work. A vaccine might not ever arrive. Coronavirus like the common colds and SARS MERS have never been solved. Therapeutics for critical care and plasma therapies seem promising. As some experimental vaccines. Tbd.
Let the students back with smart mitigation. Open minds that the virus will show up. How to handle this and to protect vulnerable. Including the no contact and complete physical separations aka “teaching bubbles” in the classrooms themselves.
Also complete optionality for profs and students to choose 100 percent online and from home if they choose.
Lastly on online classes. If you’re a student outside of stem. It’s not a great option. The students don’t have that vibrant discussion that leads to understanding. The ability to listen and debate issues. And it’s also not the preferred learning style for many.
I think zoom meetings are really efficient. When it comes to breakthrough ideas and conversation it’s terrible.
I can see my stem student enjoying the asynchronous work online. It suits her natural preferences. However for many others I can see it being a real issue of educational quality. Not a spoiled kid. FWIW.
The New York metro area failed to manage hospital capacity. As I type, Texas and Arizona are failing to manage hospital capacity, in the sense that currently infected people will be too many. Florida is ominous, and California is moving up on the backstretch. We are failing.
D got another communication from her department today. One of the courses they were planning to do in person is going to be moved online because of limited lecture halls to allow for social distancing. Office hours and study groups for that class will still be in person. Looks like 3 of her 5 courses will be in person. She also felt that the department prioritized the correct classes to be in person. Students are still planning on watching the live lectures together in small groups for the online classes.
The college is re-opening course registration the second week in July for any students who wants/needs to change their schedule.
My D said she appreciated more clarity so people could make more informed decisions about coming back to campus or not. That said, everyone she knows is returning.
The other thing of note was that her department said that if there were any seniors that couldn’t come back to campus for live classes required for graduation that they would work with them to make sure they could still graduate on time.
@“Cardinal Fang” Actually NY Metro did manage hospital capacity by vastly increasing the number of beds available by hospital, by setting up field hospitals, using Javits and a naval ship as hospital space and securing enough ventilators for a worse case scenario which fortunately never happened. The key was the planning started early on, before the big surges happened. Not sure if that has happened in the states that are spiking now.
New York metro hospitals did amazingly well in a horrific situation. However, the hospitals were overwhelmed, they didn’t have enough doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists, people got worse care, and people died who wouldn’t have died if they had had enough staff.
I’m completely re-doing my classes for fall, because I don’t know when/if we will be in person, virtual and/or some number of my students will have to be synchronous or asynchronous learning bc of quarantine or ill. It is very challenging as my classes are “high touch” in the sense that I teach close-knit, seminars. It’s not figuring out zoom, it’s figuring out how to build community and engagement using a range of media, and being able to flip quickly from one media to another if things go south, while still teaching the content my students need. Meanwhile, my institution says we will do in-person within the confines of social distance. Only, to have necessary space to social distance a class of 25, we need a classroom that holds 50-75 students and there just aren’t many of those. There are no easy solutions.
It wasn’t widely reported, but NYC hospitals also were taking people off the vent in order to let them die, when it was felt ventilator use was futile. There most definitely was rationing of care to direct care to those most likely to benefit from it.
