Umich, how so brainless?
Mar. 14th, 2020 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandroot*crawls out of the hell-pit of this week*
Ugh. I mean ugh.
So, yes, hi. This week, Umich finally decided to move classes online. This happened in the form of a message on WEDNESDAY saying that classes were cancelled for the last two days of the week to give faculty time to shift to online. It didn't have a smiley emoji on the end, but you could tell it would have if the uni president knew how to add one.
Umich, and ESPECIALLY the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which employs me, is a wholly residential school. It prides itself on being a residential school, with the residential experience, and only a smattering of online programs at the graduate level in the professional Colleges. When I say that the university is utterly, abysmally, unspeakably unprepared to do any online teaching whatsoever, I am understating the case by about a thousand percent.
Nevertheless! Four whole days, to prepare to go wholly online!
I should, perhaps, mention that my unit, all seven of us, are the ones who would be responsible for online education at LSA (all 20,000 students and 4,000 instructors worth of LSA), supposing there was any online education, which there isn't. If you think this means there are exactly two of us (one of them me) who are in any way prepared to support the (4,000) faculty in this, you would be correct.
Now, I saw this coming last week, and have been writing webpages of recommendations and resources like a madwoman to get them up in time, and I made it by the skin of my teeth, but of course then the entire goddamn College ignored that advice to attempt to almost ALL hold class by videoconference. Never having done so before. In the middle of the whole rest of the country trying to do the same thing. I'm sure you can imagine how well this is going so far, and we haven't even had actual classes that way yet.
So, my boss is losing her mind, my team is losing their minds, my faculty are losing their minds, and it wasn't until Friday that the uni president finally, finally caved in and said non-essential staff should go remote too.
Non-essential staff only, mind you. The University isn't closing. Oh no. My parent unit is still responsible for assisting all those instructors who want to come in and use their classrooms as usual to lecture to empty seats and be recorded with Lecture Capture, and call it teaching. So, the rest of Technology Services is losing their minds also.
But I and my team, at least, will now be able to do what we can from home, instead of (just for example) taking the bus in every day. *sings hallelujah to the tune of the Loan Ranger theme, which comes out sounding quite suitably unhinged*
So, yeah, that was my week. How was yours?
Ugh. I mean ugh.
So, yes, hi. This week, Umich finally decided to move classes online. This happened in the form of a message on WEDNESDAY saying that classes were cancelled for the last two days of the week to give faculty time to shift to online. It didn't have a smiley emoji on the end, but you could tell it would have if the uni president knew how to add one.
Umich, and ESPECIALLY the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which employs me, is a wholly residential school. It prides itself on being a residential school, with the residential experience, and only a smattering of online programs at the graduate level in the professional Colleges. When I say that the university is utterly, abysmally, unspeakably unprepared to do any online teaching whatsoever, I am understating the case by about a thousand percent.
Nevertheless! Four whole days, to prepare to go wholly online!
I should, perhaps, mention that my unit, all seven of us, are the ones who would be responsible for online education at LSA (all 20,000 students and 4,000 instructors worth of LSA), supposing there was any online education, which there isn't. If you think this means there are exactly two of us (one of them me) who are in any way prepared to support the (4,000) faculty in this, you would be correct.
Now, I saw this coming last week, and have been writing webpages of recommendations and resources like a madwoman to get them up in time, and I made it by the skin of my teeth, but of course then the entire goddamn College ignored that advice to attempt to almost ALL hold class by videoconference. Never having done so before. In the middle of the whole rest of the country trying to do the same thing. I'm sure you can imagine how well this is going so far, and we haven't even had actual classes that way yet.
So, my boss is losing her mind, my team is losing their minds, my faculty are losing their minds, and it wasn't until Friday that the uni president finally, finally caved in and said non-essential staff should go remote too.
Non-essential staff only, mind you. The University isn't closing. Oh no. My parent unit is still responsible for assisting all those instructors who want to come in and use their classrooms as usual to lecture to empty seats and be recorded with Lecture Capture, and call it teaching. So, the rest of Technology Services is losing their minds also.
But I and my team, at least, will now be able to do what we can from home, instead of (just for example) taking the bus in every day. *sings hallelujah to the tune of the Loan Ranger theme, which comes out sounding quite suitably unhinged*
So, yeah, that was my week. How was yours?
no subject
Date: 2020-03-14 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-14 07:52 pm (UTC)Indiana U's Keep Teaching pages are getting copied pretty much everywhere, with their blessing.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-15 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-15 04:33 am (UTC)Only one of our instructors managed to request additional reserve scanning before my (branch) library closed.
https://www.library.upenn.edu/blogs/libraries-news/covid-19-libraries-policies-and-information
https://www.library.upenn.edu/blogs/libraries-news/virtual-classes-guides-tutorials-and-services
https://mobile.twitter.com/upennlib/status/1238561345550700545
We are allowing student who can not safely return home to stay in the dorms. And our university hospital is already treating at least one person with covid-19. I have not, however, heard news of any of our students being confirmed ill.
Yay not having to commute in!
no subject
Date: 2020-03-15 07:22 pm (UTC)