AIBU to be angry at my university's response to virus

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Advice is - "continue to encourage all students to attend seminars and lectures to get the most benefit from their course." We could easily switch to online, but no, they are too worried about it impacting on attendence figures and we have been told they "will continue to monitor lecture attendence, and follow up non-attendence". (I am a lecturer at this university).

Manchester announcedlast night.

Dd1 has been told to hold off on Erasmus for Sept (Cardiff)

My DH works at a university which has moved to online. The university's epidemiological modelling showed a significant preventative (deaths avoided) impact on the university and wider community as I understand

@ GCAcademic You could be right about the semester versus term aspect. My ds is at a uni that does semesters. He is actually home this weekend. If they are planning to shut/move to online lectures I wish they would say now. Otherwise he will have to go back tomorrow night & then potentially come home again in a few days. One of his flatmates is currently self-isolating...

Half our course are on placement in care homes - the care homes have over ruled the university on this one and stopped the placements early apparently.

Still business as usual though. Grr

I'm a lecturer at Swansea and all face-face lectures and seminars have been cancelled from Friday 20 March - 1st May! Although that excludes healthcare and nursing students!

I work at a uni, apart from banning international travel it's business as usual for now. Although there is an increase in people working from home that already have that arrangement in place.

Agree with this sadly: ‘But many universities don’t really treat their staff terribly well, so this is not surprising, and if social media is anything to go by most students REALLY don’t give a shit about university staff anyway’.

I expect most universities will close to students over the course of next week. Those who do not wish to attend in the meantime should just report this as required. As others have said, moving online is huge for a lot of staff. We are trying to do it at our place as quickly as possible and without creating panic. And a lot of students do not get it yet to be fair - I had 11 angry emails (including 2 parents) for cancelling a 2-week field trip to France last week.

They're following govt advice, so surely it's the govt you should be angry with in the first instance?

Actually attending lectures in the 21st century at all is ridiculous. There is no reason why all courses without a practical element shouldn’t already be 100% online for the benefit of the student. The best way to boost attendance would be to offer digital attendance.

Sorry Reginabambina. I totally disagree. You cannot ask a recording questions. Teaching at distance requires a different pedagogical approach which is why universities can't immediately switch over to remote teaching.

Mine has gone to all online classes, but some services are still open if students need it. It seems a sensible balance to limit numbers on site.

My uni sent out emails yesterday saying that all face to face teaching has stopped. I'm relieved.

Agree with this sadly: ‘But many universities don’t really treat their staff terribly well, so this is not surprising, and if social media is anything to go by most students REALLY don’t give a shit about university staff anyway’.

Think that's probably true in the courses with a cohort of 100+... but our course is very very close-knit and actually we've all been worried when our staff have been ill (we told one trying desperately to lecture while looking at death's door to bugger off home and just give it up for the day recently) and I don't want them, with their families and older parents just by the nature of the fact they're obviously older than most students, putting their families at risk by all the unnecessary social contacts required by the universities trying to prove they're more stiff upper lip than the university next door by soldiering on regardless.

I begun raising those concerns, plus the concerns over placements a good couple of weeks ago and asking what was going to happen... been ignored and fobbed off and told it wasn't going to spread wildly in the UK. My bloody 8 year old understood the maths of one person infecting 2 people and shit getting bad really fast!

Sounds like my university.....right down to the attendance monitoring bit.
I'm really hoping this situation changes over the weekend

The uni where I work is now moving online because we have a confirmed staff case.

On the other hand.. A family member is at another uni doing a HCP course and has been emailed to say they might be drafted in to work in a hospital on the request of the government. It’s absolutely mental 😩

I work at one where we've been told we HAVE to follow government advice, no choice about it. But that's clearly nonsense if others are closing. So what are they playing at?

Actually attending lectures in the 21st century at all is ridiculous. There is no reason why all courses without a practical element shouldn’t already be 100% online for the benefit of the student.

That was the great hope with MOOCs. Until they had a massive drop-out rate. And people realised that education is a social activity where live and real-time interaction is valuable and good online provision engenders high set-up costs (those staffing most of the online providers have crap terms & conditions and low wages too - it’s turning into a bit of a call centre phenomenon with providers going to low cost labour countries).

I am actually really concerned for our poor EU and International students desperately trying to get home right now. We’re obviously doing everything we can to support them...

We had an email from the VC yesterday (at 5pm on Friday ), basically saying that they're still monitoring the situation and will let us know if when they decide anything. No university-wide policy of event cancellation, no decision yet about exams and face-to-face teaching. It's a highly devolved uni structure, so they're going to leave it up to individuals to make the call . Despite this, my emails and social media have been full of conferences, seminars, meetings, etc being cancelled. I was asked to work from home where possible by my line manager (a prof nearing retirement, who is also doing the same). We have also cancelled events for the next month and are rescheduling a workshop and seminar that were due to be held in early May. It seems that behaviour at a departmental and lab level is completely different from the uni's official line .

Actually, attending lectures in the 21st century at all is ridiculous. There is no reason why all courses without a practical element shouldn’t already be 100% online for the benefit of the student

Which is probably OK if you are an introvert or a deeply unsociable person but as RoyalAlfred has pointed out it leads to higher drop out rates. It is also very isolating. Why bother going to the expense of leaving home to go to university if all you are going to do is sit in your room and watch online lectures and tutorials? With a few exceptions, the social aspect is very important for a student’s mental well being.

You might as well stay at home and do an OU course or other distance learning course. I think your suggestion @Reginabambina is not very well thought out TBH.

@mackerella it’s been the same at ours up until yesterday. Business as normal, and down to depts to make their own decisions about events, field trips etc. But individuals have been cancelling things despite this. A lack of official party line has been chaotic, to say the least!

We're still getting the 90 second video clip from the VC being retweeted to very condescendingly "hey I'm your mate dude, don't panic, we've cleaned the door knobs"

Students with vulnerable family are getting very very angry

I am a little worried about online learning. I love going into uni for the taught lectures. I learn better that way. However I believe my university has made the right decision to move to online teaching.

Why don't all lecturers who are concerned, just develop a new continuous cough (a nervous cough from lack of leadership action) ;) and voila! Unis cancelled because all the staff are self isolating a cough for 7 days ??

Don’t think we will need to OnUp. Getting a lot of (genuine) messages from staff and students being advised to self-isolate.