Those of you with kids at uni may be interested in a tip off I got from a senior colleague today.
I am at one of the big 3 in London. We teach tens of thousands of students. I was assuming that we would be planning to pick up the pieces in October. Not so. The presumption is there may be still be restrictions on movement and proximity due to COVID. This means the institution must have a plan. And of course the plan is cautious:
"we have been warned to prepare for all taught programmes to deliver teaching online from September, with campus based teaching from January. This is considered an optimistic scenario"
What this means is even if COVID is over by September, because we have to set up everything well in advance - curriculum, assessment, room bookings, staff timetabling (I have 1400 teaching hours a year), all of which has to fit together, we have to decide what to do in the next couple of weeks, and stick to the plan. We can't possible think about improvisation. Before I bore you to death....
The same applies to football as well. What happens from August 2020 to May 2021 will need to be decided soon. Again, the plan will have to be for the worst case scenario. To me that means no football till 2021, for sure.
Back to higher education, a lot of what we do is lab based. That will go out of the window (you can't do a practical online). We will have to invent new delivery and new assessment. We will need to start on that in the next couple of weeks. **** knows how medics will be tought. You can't learn how to become expert at examining a patient and delivering diagnosis and treatment by watching a video (if that were true, England would be awash with imaginative and versatile lovers - what say you about that?
).
I am a bit taken aback by this. We are quite poor, where I work, at dealing with disruption to teaching at the best of times (vide the recent industrial action). Not good.
If you have kids planning on starting uni in 2020 I'd start looking into a gap year. If you have kids already in uni, especially if lab work, performance and interaction are part of training and assessment, I'd start looking into an interruption.
I am at one of the big 3 in London. We teach tens of thousands of students. I was assuming that we would be planning to pick up the pieces in October. Not so. The presumption is there may be still be restrictions on movement and proximity due to COVID. This means the institution must have a plan. And of course the plan is cautious:
"we have been warned to prepare for all taught programmes to deliver teaching online from September, with campus based teaching from January. This is considered an optimistic scenario"
What this means is even if COVID is over by September, because we have to set up everything well in advance - curriculum, assessment, room bookings, staff timetabling (I have 1400 teaching hours a year), all of which has to fit together, we have to decide what to do in the next couple of weeks, and stick to the plan. We can't possible think about improvisation. Before I bore you to death....
The same applies to football as well. What happens from August 2020 to May 2021 will need to be decided soon. Again, the plan will have to be for the worst case scenario. To me that means no football till 2021, for sure.
Back to higher education, a lot of what we do is lab based. That will go out of the window (you can't do a practical online). We will have to invent new delivery and new assessment. We will need to start on that in the next couple of weeks. **** knows how medics will be tought. You can't learn how to become expert at examining a patient and delivering diagnosis and treatment by watching a video (if that were true, England would be awash with imaginative and versatile lovers - what say you about that?
).I am a bit taken aback by this. We are quite poor, where I work, at dealing with disruption to teaching at the best of times (vide the recent industrial action). Not good.
If you have kids planning on starting uni in 2020 I'd start looking into a gap year. If you have kids already in uni, especially if lab work, performance and interaction are part of training and assessment, I'd start looking into an interruption.
