By now schools need to have done a dry run in all of their different types of classrooms so they know what mic/PA system for each place and what IT is needed.
The American Anthropological Association has just issued a statement about fall instruction:
https://www.americananthro.org/StayInformed/NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=25764
They are calling for online instruction to be the default method this fall. I hope that other professional organizations will issue similar statements to pressure administrations to convert all instruction to online. Unyoke instruction from issues of physical presence on campus now.
I’d be fine with teaching online but having in-person socially distanced office hours and study sessions in an empty classroom with interested students. Or freshmen could be on campus and have in-person study halls in classrooms in pods with volunteer faculty advisors (I’d be willing to be one). If an outbreak happens and campus has to close, then oh well.
We’re about to see the school administration face of with the professors. Unless the professors are organized and all refuse we know how this ends.
@NJSue I think it’s interesting that you see the danger coming from the classroom. I don’t see that so much if everyone in the classroom has to wear masks and distance. (Although I think that will make discussions harder than on zoom).
I see the danger coming from the kids coming from all different parts of the country, and from the residential part of the experience (virus aerosolized by shared toilets, shared air through HVAC, kids not wearing masks when in small groups, etc).
@AlwaysMoving ,there is an article in the Chronicle, “Can Faculty Be Forced Back on Campus?”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-Faculty-Be-Forced-Back-on/248981
The author, Arlene Kantner, argues that administrators would have a hard time forcing faculty back if push comes to shove:
I agree. I don’t really understand the worry about a college classroom. Almost all colleges requiring masks and profs won’t be anywhere near the students.
@melvin123, class can’t occur as usual in classrooms because we don’t have enough physical space to abide by social distancing rules. The entire schedule will have to be redone, students reassigned to different sections, and classes late at night and on Saturdays. Then, when the inevitable outbreak occurs and the campus has to close, all instruction has to go online anyways. All these fantasies about having in-person socially distanced classes are just that, fantasies. It can’t happen unless half the students are online and off campus anyway.
I am not worried about infection personally, I am worried about the disruption of instruction that will occur if it is closely tied to physical presence during a time of pandemic. I am worried about faculty workload if we have to teach the same class both in-person and online (double the work). I am mostly worried about continuity and consistency of instruction and I see online as the only way to guarantee those things for students in fall 2020.
PS when I talked about office hours in an “empty classroom” above, I meant an unassigned classroom. I would be willing to meet a small group of students in a regular classroom designed to hold 25 for a supplementary study session. But I want my classes and assignments to be online so that an in-person component is not necessary for academic progress.
The flip side is with new rules/precautions in person can happen and the accommodation is no longer necessary. I don’t know which side will “win”, but I do know to get the popcorn. 
Agreed.
One of our kids was at UK in Lexington and she stayed year-round once she began living off-campus.
Most leases ran August to August.
She did not take summer classes, but she worked & enjoyed her summer with friends.
The big lecture classroom at Ohio State is in Independence Hall which seats 727. If you needed a facility to use at 25% capacity St. John Arena could be utilized. It’s capacity is more than 13,000, so 25% would be 3,250. It’s a four sided arena, so you could seat lectures in one section at a time and still have enough capacity to maintain the current Independence Hall classes as scheduled.
Out of curiosity, do the faculty members expect to teach online in perpetuity? If a vaccine, which may be years, away is only 70% effective and contraindicated for older adults? Would you just never return to in person teaching?
@BuckeyeMWDSG oh my. What would be the point of that? If professors can’t hold conversations with their students, then don’t bother. Lectures can just be watched online. There would be no good reason to run a class with 150 kids in a room for 727. Past the first two rows, the professor won’t even be able to see the kids facial expressions or hear them if they talk through masks.
When I was a grad student there, I shared a house with several other grad students a couple of blocks from campus - close enough that we could bike over if we didn’t want to drive. At that time, at least, it was very common for entire houses off campus to be privately rented to small groups of grad students - most people in my program did the same thing. On campus housing generally wasn’t an option for us. I don’t know if that’s that still the case many years later or still the case during COVID, though.
Purdue just announced the creation of a Covid specific health center. They’ll handle staffing a call center with case managers, all the testing, contact tracing, and quarantining. The existing health center will just be for “regular” sick visits. They also clarified where quarantine housing will be located (the old graduate apartment style housing complex).
President Daniels was back on social media telling students they will have to agree to covid testing, flu vaccine, quarantining if told, etc… if they are coming back to campus (in addition to all the other stuff related to mask wearing, distancing, hand washing). He ended again with if you don’t think you can do that, don’t come back and take your courses on line. There is enough being offered online to keep everyone on track to graduate in 8 semesters.
Online courses will be at summer tuition which is less than regular tuition and of course no R&B so it’s at a discount.
D continues to double down that she’s going back. She’s contracted for a single with a private bath and has 3 of her 5 courses in person (for now). D’s mentally prepared (I think) to be back at the dining room table for the semester but for now, she can’t chose the online option because the three in person courses are required for her major and NOT being offered online and because she co-ops, she won’t have the option to take them next semester. Those courses will go online only if the university decides to shut down. At the rate we’re going, that’s what I am expecting to happen at some point during the semester.
@homerdog Every student has an ipad, so they could use that as a hand held video/mic if they were called on to respond. The big lectures used to have a ‘clicker’ system which students used to respond en mass, but now they all have ipads so perhaps those have been replaced with an app. Traditionally, that is the only facility on campus for a large lecture (the intro. science classes everyone needs like Bio, Physics) and students have smaller 25 people sections for the ‘recitation’ sessions of those big lectures most days of the week.
Yes, that was the reason I am hoping for same arrangement this fall - but it still is one thing where aid was already disbursed and another where they have time to recalculate. We'll see.
No. Actually, as I have said before, most faculty do not want to teach online and in a perfect world, would not. However, until social distancing can be relaxed without threat of renewed outbreaks that require sudden closures of facilities, online teaching is the best of a bad lot of options from a pedagogical point of view. I am not talking about personal risk to faculty here.
Anyway, many people who are not academics will be working from home for months. Online work is the new norm for many jobs until the pandemic is under control.
I’m starting to wonder if we should be rooting more for therapeutics than vaccines. If we had something that could help with symptoms early and keep Covid from progressing, that could get us back in classrooms faster. I’m all for a vaccine too but people will find a way to say that they won’t take it. Fauci just said he needs a vaccine that’s 75% effective and something like 70% of people have to take it for herd immunity.
Do you all think schools can require faculty, staff, and students to get the vaccine? Our kids have to other vaccines to go to school!
@homerdog yes, most colleges and universities already require proof of the standard slate of vaccines (MMR, etc.) before allowing students to enroll in classes.
There may never be an effective vaccine for Covid, but as long as outbreaks requiring closures are still occurring, to my great regret, I think online instruction for all is the best option. My opinion has been formed by watching what’s going on in FL, TX, AZ etc. right now. The reopenings are having to be closed up again. It’s July and we can’t know what will happen in Sept. but we need to plan our classes. Maybe in the spring we can return to normal.
Short answer: some older faculty are never going back to traditional class rooms. Many will meet with individual students as NJSue describes upthread.
Roycroftmom, I appreciate how you keep adding historical perspective to the covid threads. The modern internet changes a lot.
This pandemic, and predictions we may be living with waves of pandemic in the near future, probably just accelerates a lot of higher education trends. It’s not something faculty can just power through to get back to fall 2019 normal. There are going to be huge repercussions for colleges and universities. We are fortunate to have the possibility of on-line instruction, and need to be creative, and adapt to pandemic realities. It’s possible very positive changes may come from this experience.
imho