Dear College students whose classes have been moved online,
Please have grace for your professors/instructors during this difficult transition to online classes. We probably got just as much notice as you students did. Some of us (like me) our students ourselves wondering how this thing is going to work.
I teach 51 students an Intro to Statistics class. Even before it was official, I started prepping for teaching online on Wednesday. I looked into software options for lectures, considered how to give exams online, and thought how to deal with less class time. I still am working out how to do things. I anticipate that this will be more effort for me than teaching in person, but my pay will not change.
This next week or however many days your professors got to prepare will be spent working. This is not a second spring break for us. There are decisions to be made about office hours and homework and exams. Homework and exams to convert. Software to be installed. Papers to be scanned. Test lectures to be recorded. Plus for professors and grad students, our research isn’t going to get a break either.
I’m sorry that seniors attended their last class without knowing. I’m sorry your events and activities have been postponed. Our lives as instructors are also interrupted by the virus. Our conferences are cancelling. We are discouraged from holding large meeting in person. Social events for faculty and grad students have been delayed or canceled.
Overall, teaching takes much more time than the three hours each week spent in front of the class and office hours. I don’t think anybody has all the answers yet on how this will work and what the best thing is to do. We don’t know if zoom and blackboard are up to the challenge of much more usage. We don’t know what to do for students without reliable internet or computer access. Sure online classes have existed in the past but moving classes that have never been taught online to online takes a lot of work. But we are trying to do what is best for the communities we live in by shutting our physical classroom doors while also trying to do what is best for our students. I think everyone would prefer a world where there wasn’t a pandemic and life went on as normal but that isn’t the world today. But let’s have grace for all the people in our lives as difficult decisions are made and things change.