When do you think universities will open?

[googlepoodle]

I would think they would be definitely be working to a September deadlines for the new academic year.
But do we think any sooner? I am professional services staff and currently working from home.

But the lectures are only a part of teaching. It's obviously trivial to record lectures but it's not so trivial to run interactive tutorials face to face & then run them in a different format online.

Also, as previous posters have explained, well designed online courses don't just use the same format and materials as face to face teaching e.g. instead of putting material into 45 min lectures it may be better to break it up differently for online teaching.

In my subject area it probably isn't as much as double effort to do it on line and face to face. However, the online tutorials and marking of work digitally are incredibly time consuming.

BTW a point that has not been raised above is that academics are lecturers and researchers, and many of us are not just working flat out on teaching, but also on Covid relevant research. Those who want universities to fail and lectured to lose their jobs due to their own DC's experiences during the strike period are ignoring the role that universities play in research into vaccines, treatments, slowing the spread of disease, optimising use of resources and supply chains etc. (In own university less than 5% of classes were actually impacted during the recent strike action.)

Also, as previous posters have explained, well designed online courses don't just use the same format and materials as face to face teaching e.g. instead of putting material into 45 min lectures it may be better to break it up differently for online teaching.

I totally agree with this. I did my first degree with the OU, which I would put in the category of 'well designed online course'. The learning was done in 'chunks' and was very interactive. There was certainly no expectation that we would sit at home passively listening to a 45-minute lecture.

Why is it double effort to do on line and face to face? My sons at Bristol already for 3 years had have every face to face lecture recorded - the lecture just presses a button at start of each lecture and then students can watch it as many times as they like later.

Because most of the teaching in my department is not lecture-based; it is teaching 1-2 hour tutorials with around 15 students in each. Recording a lecture is easy--it's the rest that is difficult to get right. There are also the issues outside of teaching, which includes changing assessments and how to deal with students being unable to physically access the library. Unless you're already set up for online teaching, it's a challenge to have to introduce it from scratch. My university will provide training on the software, but that doesn't resolve the pedagogical issues.

You really can't just push a button and everything will be sorted.

I spend a lot of my time teaching my students skills - analysis, interviews, some with fragile populations, I do fieldwork (it's rare for my discipline so THANKFULLY I haven't had to deal with cancelled field courses!), design skills, as well as computer skills.
Even the computer skills would be taught completely differently online and in person.
Like many students and parents and the general public, Xenia seems to think university is just lectures.
I would love to have an OU-style battery of materials at my fingertips but I don't - I have the box of artefacts that I take to my 3rd year seminar and ask them all to comment, decipher, work out how they'd reproduce them, and, you know, physically handle them. I have a set of simple meta-analyses that I ask them to reproduce while interacting with each one and their notes. I have a brainstorming session where they physically stand up in front of a group of physical people (very different to doing it online) and present something they thought of 5 minutes earlier.

I am sure research will continue I to covid, science etc but that really doesn’t help all the lecturers who teach music, drama, geography etc all which need face to face etc

Surely those courses should be offering discounts to students

Where's the saving to the university that enables them to offer a discount? As has already been explained, fees often don't cover the full cost anyway. I can't think of any savings for my school, and the university has had to spend on tech, training etc.

I don’t know - but is they can’t provide a particular curriculum eg drama how can they charge for it?

For those saying their DC will defer. I'm afraid that's v much up to the universities. Some (eg Durham) v rarely defer after offers have been accepted. I'm guessing that rather than face an avalanche of costly deferrals unis will politely decline Novotel students to reapply thereby calling their bluffs

Novotel?! Where did that come from?

Novotel = and ask

If schools are back by September, surely unis could be too?

If you think Social Distancing is bad with uni students, try it with 5yos

I think you are right about places like Durham not allowing deferrals but I am sure some students will ring around and see what they can get elsewhere. We can hardly blame them - I think unis should be doing a lot more to reassure the new intake about how it will work as soon as possible, else they will be losing some students who were already worried about the cost.

If you think Social Distancing is bad with uni students, try it with 5yos

My students are mainly responsible (at least, when they are in my classes; I don't think even your 5 year olds can beat a drunk and horny fresher!) but they are much more likely to pass on CV to me.

Oh absolutely, Newgirls. By all means try. But unis will not be deferring in any great numbers as suggested by the number of parents here saying their DC will do so. I'm just warning against assumptions!
My DC are through the system tho DD will be starting a Masters (ironically in a field directly related to Covid 19). She's v much like to be in direct contact with some of the folk at the forefront of research rather than remotely. But there's no guarantee sadly

5 - 10,000 five year olds don't usually gather together in one place.

In my institution the staff are expected to become tech savvy and ready to deliver some or all teaching online. The institution is looking at January start dates for some UG courses and Masters courses with the Summer term (usually for exams) used for teaching.

Anticipating a drop in student numbers, Sabbaticals have been abolished (unless tied to actual funding) and new posts put on hold.

Postgraduate teaching opportunities have also vanished so teaching loads for established teaching staff are yet to be calculated.

A lot will ride on the CAP.

@lionheart no!

But even 3 clambering m/slobbering/crying around/in you Is worse than a uni student would do to a tutor.

I hope

@worstofbothworlds, unless you join their “socialising”

FWIW I am a working primary teacher and have 2 student kidults

Thanks for answering. I can see that tutorials on zoom might be harder than in person but most of the rest of industry is trying that kind of thing even for court hearings. Surely you just do exactly what is done now with same materials except that people dial in on skype or on a joint voice only telephone call?

Surely you just do exactly what is done now with same materials except that people dial in on skype or on a joint voice only telephone call?

Yes of course, but that's a temporary fix and I'm sure you'd agree not an ideal one at all. Don't forget all students being taught online now are current students. It'd be a very different, and for many, difficult experience if you're a brand new student newly left home and nervous and don't know anything. But we're all doing our best to make do and crisis manage.

Can anyone imagine how a lockdown life would have been pre-internet?

You can't teach experimental techniques, hand round rocks, or artefacts, or teach students how to handle manuscripts, or how to give speech therapy to someone who's had a stroke, or how to assess range of motion in a hip, or freeze and slice a specimen, or dissect a rat's brain, or demonstrate art technique on a student's work.

Some of these have been handled by the OU or by museums etc. - using things like 3D images but you can't get those tomorrow in the same way that I can walk into a seminar with some objects I keep in my office and get them to classify them.

And today I had a tutorial with one student teaching her how to do some computer techniques. It was so clunky - having to keep on sharing different screens - and that wasn't even with her showing me what she'd been doing. Typically in an analysis lab I'd have 15 students (or 45 students, 3 to a screen) going over their work and calling me over and I'd flit from screen to screen getting them to show me how they were doing it while I gave them tips. It would take probably 3-4 times as long to get the same number of students to walk me through what they were doing and then me show them how to improve it, as in a computer lab. And that's just the possible - not the impossible. That's why the OU has always had summer schools.

I think unis should be doing a lot more to reassure the new intake about how it will work as soon as possible, else they will be losing some students who were already worried about the cost.
Unfortunately, they don't have a crystal ball, anymore than we do.

I would really love to know too.
I want to know if I'll be expected to be on campus teaching when I'm still at risk from my students and it's also flu season.

Yes, I think my assumptions were for my law degree (lots of post grad law is even almost entirely on line if you choose that option and has been for years for some) and arts degrees rather than laboratory stuff. It is certainly a whole new world.

I know they don’t have a crystal ball but equally can’t expect students to pay for a course they won’t get at usual standard