Many faculties at UBC haven’t tried hard enough
Online classes not acceptable to Lachlan Williams this fall.
I was relieved when the president of UBC, Santa Ono, announced that the university was planning to start reopening this fall semester. He stated that “UBC will primarily offer larger classes online with selected smaller classes conducted in-person, adhering to physical distancing and other public health requirements.”
This relief did not last long. The following day, the UBC faculty of applied science announced that all engineering coursework will be online this fall semester, including labs, tutorials, and group projects. Many other faculties are doing the same.
I, along with many of my classmates, was surprised and disappointed.
The faculty has had three months to prepare since COVID-19 emerged as a threat in B.C. and still has two more months to develop a strategy to ensure the safety of staff and students. The decision seems neither safe nor caring, but an attempt to take advantage of a bad situation. Post-secondary institutions’ ability to generate revenue while closed does not exempt them from reopening, let alone without consulting the student body.
What are the faculties waiting for? If it is a vaccine, then it may be years before they reopen.
Perhaps this decision was made to level the playing field for all students, domestic and international alike. But why should domestic students’ educations suffer because international students took the risk that comes with studying abroad? In-person learning should be available for those students able to return. Students surely would accept responsible measures such as physical distancing and streaming of large lectures, as recommended by president Ono.
The University of Toronto has set a cautious yet proactive example, despite the daily COVID-19 cases in Ontario measuring orders of magnitude greater than those in British Columbia. “Plans are being developed for a fall term that mixes smaller, on-campus courses, seminars, labs, and experiential learning, with larger online and remote courses and lectures,” president Meric Gertler announced.
Individual faculties at the University of Toronto, including the faculty of applied science and engineering and the faculty of arts and science, have explained further that students who are able to return to campus will have the option to do so, while those who are unable will still be able to complete all academic requirements remotely through means such as lecture streaming and online testing.
This proposed model is a progressive compromise between online and in-person learning that considers both domestic and international students. The University of Toronto has set the example. UBC needs to follow.
The reasons given by UBC’S faculty of applied science for the continued closure insult and patronize the students by claiming that “this experience of virtual learning in teams will better prepare you for the future of work.”
Virtual learning and virtual working are not like other experience-based and hands-on skills that require sustained practice to utilize productively. It takes very little time to pick up an online collaboration program like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Indeed, anyone, including my 85-year-old grandfather, can learn to work online with ease.
Additionally, how can labs possibly be online when they are, by definition, hands-on? As for group work, true collaboration occurs spontaneously, when people are most connected and able to exhibit both verbal and non-verbal communication.
This certainly is not the case when group members live in different time zones, have never met, and have the barrier of video conferencing technology.
This premature solution is unsatisfactory for all and is an abdication of the university’s responsibility to provide students with a proper education. In an email sent to the engineering students on May 16, detailing plans for the closure, dean James Olson said: “When faced with a problem, we are the solvers.”
He has a faculty with an abundance of intelligent people: people who, by their very nature, are problem-solvers.
Therefore, I think that Olson and the University of B.C. should solve the problem of how to safely reopen our campuses this September. Give students the education that serves them and the challenging world they will shortly be entering.