Trying to prep for 20/21

[AlwaysColdHands]

Arghhhh!!
We seem to be gearing up for two scenarios:

1. Blended, with reduced f2f, prioritised for year 1, but expectation that all students will come onto campus at some point (staggered times, small groups etc etc). Logistical nightmare to say the least, all delegated down to academics to propose solutions.

1. Wholly online in case of further lockdown

So I may need to transform an undergrad module into an online version with bells and whistles AND got to take on a new postgrad course. How to do this with no school and nursery ???? Dreading the summer and feeling so stressed about September..........who’s in the same boat? 😥
Misery loves company and all that.....

@GCAcademic

We have been told we won’t know this the start of September what teaching rooms will be available to us, and therefore how long our seminars will be, how many times we might have to repeat them, etc. So I have no idea whether I’ll be able to teach a two hour seminar as usual, or will only have an hour, with other material to be delivered asynchronously. So, presumably, we have to spend the summer preparing material that could well end up being ditched. We are, in any case, being encouraged to deliver our modules asynchronously now, despite the fact that the university has announced that teaching will be face to face. Apparently we should record and upload our lectures and seminars to this end. How on earth do you record a seminar that doesn’t take place?

Can you record the seminars, GCAcademic? I was under the impression we couldn't record things that students are on (voices/video) without express permission? Or will you need to upload the seminar discussion points or activity/answer key? Hmm.

@Mumteedum

I'm feeling more nervous reading what others are doing. Ours is pressure to do as much face to face as poss.

Our sessions are 3 hours long.

Our classes will have half in and half out so smaller groups of 15 but we'll be there for considerable time.

I'm so confused and exhausted too.

Ours are 2-3 hours we've been told to break into lecture and seminar content. It means overhauling the entire course as most are practical workshop style sessions.

I do worry about the non-engagers.

Can you record the seminars, GCAcademic? I was under the impression we couldn't record things that students are on (voices/video) without express permission? Or will you need to upload the seminar discussion points or activity/answer key? Hmm.

Oh they’re not asking us to record seminars that are actually taking place. No, that would rank too low on the scale of institutional stupidity (I agree that students would not like this and would refuse permission). They’re telling us, instead of running a face to face seminar, to somehow record a seminar and make it available asynchronously. Don’t ask me how this is supposed to work. I honestly think that some of these people are so far removed from the realities of teaching that they don’t even understand what a seminar is.

Anyway, DH and his colleagues have just had an email telling them to ditch all the plans they had made so far and await further instructions as the university had a steer from the OfS, who apparently don’t regard the provision of asynchronous online materials as constituting contact time. I had suspected all along that this would turn out to be the case.

I’ve been so infuriated with our teaching ‘leaders’ this week. I don’t envy their position at all, and clearly they’re trying hard, but the sensibleness of most of the decisions and guidance is beyond me. Our latest guidance on making videos was to avoid having any words on the screen! The videos should just be pretty pictures, presumably with nice simple topics to go with them.

It will be interesting to see how the OfS input develops. Probably needed, but also not helpful in terms of actually getting ready.

@GCAcademic

Can you record the seminars, GCAcademic? I was under the impression we couldn't record things that students are on (voices/video) without express permission? Or will you need to upload the seminar discussion points or activity/answer key? Hmm.

Oh they’re not asking us to record seminars that are actually taking place. No, that would rank too low on the scale of institutional stupidity (I agree that students would not like this and would refuse permission). They’re telling us, instead of running a face to face seminar, to somehow record a seminar and make it available asynchronously. Don’t ask me how this is supposed to work. I honestly think that some of these people are so far removed from the realities of teaching that they don’t even understand what a seminar is.

Anyway, DH and his colleagues have just had an email telling them to ditch all the plans they had made so far and await further instructions as the university had a steer from the OfS, who apparently don’t regard the provision of asynchronous online materials as constituting contact time. I had suspected all along that this would turn out to be the case.

I’m wondering about that too. We’re plowing ahead with planning for asynchronous teaching to accommodate the large number who are expected to remain at home for term one, so I’m wondering how to square the circle.

I don't envy the managers either, but there seems to be very little understanding on their part of what we do in sessions with students. They don't teach anymore, mostly, and it shows! I mean, I could set up several mini videos with instructions for individual work/tasks that would form part of a seminar, for them to do at home, but how do we then feed that back into a larger discussion or reflection? Not to mention the extra time required to do that...

That's also worrying about the OfS saying online asynchronous activities don't count as contact time. Will we be doing synchronous one on one tutorials then, with all the extra time that will take?!

@moimichme we've been told to do it on teams, put groups into breakout rooms and then come back together with each group feeding back to the main, or using flipgrid or onenote for feedback. It's a huge learning curve though and not just for staff, the first few weeks of term will no doubt be getting students to be able to use all this software.

Did you not already use this software in finishing 2019/2020?

No I was bought out of teaching last term and I teach post-grad so new students next year who won't be familiar with it

Bellesavage That makes sense, I didn't use those tools either because teaching was nearly finished for us in late March and we were told asynchronous teaching was required since some students had no way of accessing 'live' sessions at home (mature students with kids or those needing to share computer time with family members, etc.). I tried Collaborate for one seminar, but no one turned up. Teams and Flipgrid seem more useful to me...

I'm frustrated this week that they're saying we should just get on with it, but university- and department-wide decisions about the format etc. haven't been made yet and I don't intend to re-do loads of work when they finally do choose which software we should use for seminars etc. ☹

Our incoming first year, second year and masters students won’t be familiar with the software. We only used it for revision sessions as we’d finished proper teaching by the time the lockdown started, and our outgoing first years didn’t have exams.

Our incoming 3rd years have been using Teams for project meetings but not anyone else.

Told that lectures no longer count as contact hours ...

Is this an external thing? That will put the cat among the pigeons. I was told on Thurs I had too many contact hours!

Internal. An edict from above. Since most courses run as a one hour lecture followed by a seminar--this means we have to find a way to make up that time. We are going for blended learning but the students have also been told that 50% of their contact will be face to face ...

It's a mess, especially since the post-graduates have not been given any teaching.

I'm feeling very very anxious about everything. I teach a vocational performing arts subject and the staff on the course I run are adamant face to face time is protected while the uni management are adamant a large proportion goes online. We have discovered during lockdown a significant number of students don't have adequate laptops/WiFi and we don't have enough software licenses. Of course we can't spend any money at all either!

Does that mean more asynchronous learning IvySquirrel?

How are you supposed to manage?

Our drama Dept have used zoom successfully. It's free but agree digital poverty with students is a big issue.

We are forbidden to use Zoom although lots of academics say it works better than MS teams.

I don't see much in the way of attempts to address the issue of digital poverty. Something can be done to address this but it costs money.

More difficult to address the question of access and space to study if students are still at home.

Ironically, in the worst experience I had of talking via Teams to a student with a poor WiFi connection, the student was on campus in her Halls of Residence. The connection was abysmal and we gave up and resorted to the telephone.

@IvySquirrel

I'm feeling very very anxious about everything. I teach a vocational performing arts subject and the staff on the course I run are adamant face to face time is protected while the uni management are adamant a large proportion goes online. We have discovered during lockdown a significant number of students don't have adequate laptops/WiFi and we don't have enough software licenses. Of course we can't spend any money at all either!

Ah yes, the budget. It’s been made very clear that there won’t be any!

(To clarify, I mean at the individual lecturer, me asking for things to help, level. They have bought microphones and similar.)

We have been using Zoom fairly successfully as well as Teams but poor WiFi has been a big issue. There is also an issue of specialist software some of which is Mac only. But we don't currently insist that students buy their own Mac and I don't really think that should be a condition of going to university. In normal times we have labs they can use. My eyes have been well and truly opened to digital poverty recently. I knew it existed but didn't really have to think about it.
I think asynchronous is the way to go for online delivery but worried to hear up thread that it may not be seen as contact hours.

We are forbidden to use Zoom although lots of academics say it works better than MS teams.

Zoom isn't any good for things like odd calls at random times that haven't been put in the diary, but we use it for meetings between those at our uni and elsewhere. I haven't noticed a difference in call quality really.

The chat, from a student's point of view, is better on Teams as they can @ me or chat more easily as I am presenting. I have to remember to keep the chat window open (I usually do though I can't say the same of colleagues in meetings!)

For those of you doing face to face teaching, how many hours do you think you'll be doing and with what size groups?

I'd also be interested to know whether anyone in moderate or higher risk groups have had support or guidance on this from HR?