Looking Ahead, Faculty Edition

This one is particularly for faculty.

Having been through an abrupt midsemester pivot -- honestly, I can’t use that word without picturing Ross Geller on the stairs with the couch -- and facing the prospect of something similar in the coming fall or spring, what adjustments are you planning to make?

I’m asking for a few reasons.

One is basic curiosity. As longtime readers know, I’m always up for good new ideas.

Secondly, if there’s a way to target professional development resources to do the most good, I’d like to know that. I have to tip my cap to all of the faculty who made the shift so quickly, and with so little time to plan. Our Teaching and Learning Center did heroic work -- and is still doing heroic work -- to help people adjust, but I don’t think anyone would argue that shifting most of the curriculum in a week is optimal. It’s reasonable that we were caught flat-footed this semester, never having faced anything like this before, but that excuse only works once. We have credible reason to suspect that something similar could happen again in the coming year; it would be irresponsible not to prepare.

Finally, some changes require rejiggering the various administrative systems around scheduling, financial aid, registration and the like. That may sound trivial, but it isn’t.

For instance, on a conference call with my counterparts around the state, someone asked about moving to seven- or eight-week classes. The idea is sound; if the semester gets interrupted, faculty and students only have to shift half as many classes. And if the interruption occurs in the second half of the semester, the first half is already done and in the books. Russell Lowery-Hart, the president of Amarillo College, reported on Twitter Tuesday that part of the reason Amarillo was able to handle the transition as well as it did was precisely that it splits the semester in half. It’s easier to migrate two or three classes than five.

Granting that it would be a good idea, though, most of us couldn’t make significant progress on that for September. The class schedule for the fall has already been published, and students have already started registering. Splitting the semester now would entail redoing the entire schedule, reallocating classrooms, figuring out lab sessions, redoing financial aid and attendance reporting, and a host of other considerations. Well in advance, that’s doable; the success of Odessa, Amarillo and Grayson Colleges, among others, shows that it can be done. But starting in May for September? That’s a tall order.

Some possible moves are straightforward enough, like moving more sections to entirely online delivery. If a class is entirely online from the outset, then the possible fluctuations in rules around social distancing don’t matter much. Hybrid or blended classes offer the best of both worlds if things are fine, and an easy fallback if we have to abandon ship for a while.

This week I came across the idea of “hyflex” classes, which sound like taking the hybrid concept to the next level. As I understand it -- and I make no grand claims here -- it sounds like running an on-site and an online version of the same class simultaneously and allowing students to move between the two as they choose. That way, if a student is sick or has a family emergency one week, they can go online that week without penalty and return to the classroom the following week. Conceptually, I see a lot of benefit for students, and it could help with social distancing if folks take turns showing up physically. But it’s a double prep for faculty, as I understand it. (Of course, one could argue that it’s easier than an abrupt midsemester switch that could happen anyway, and would probably have better results.)

All of that said, there’s more in heaven, earth and the interwebs than is dreamt of in my philosophy. So here’s where I turn to my wise and worldly readers.

What are you doing (or planning to do) differently for fall classes, in light of the possibility of another pandemic-driven interruption?