Back to class, sort of

UA courses to combine online, in-person instruction

College students are nothing if not adaptable. Particularly in the age of ubiquitous technology, any coffee shop can be a library, any sofa can be a lab and any park bench can be a classroom. Those who teach the students may not be so nimble. But they’re learning. They got a crash course down the street at the big state college last March when in-person instruction was suspended on the University of Arkansas campus. It hasn’t returned, but we are assured it will when fall classes begin Aug. 24. It won’t be every course. We learned this week that about 28% of the school’s courses that were originally planned to have in-person instruction will be online only in the fall. In raw numbers, that’s 1,320 out of 4,675 courses that were to be taught in a classroom. UA officials went on to say many of the in-person courses will be a “hybrid” of online and in-class instruction. That could mean small groups of students enrolled in a class meeting on a rotating basis, or only periodic class meetings. UA officials say other changes are in store. Some classes will be moved into larger spaces to allow for greater physical distance between those attending, and they say they will grant as many course-change requests as possible to accommodate students who want a different method of instruction. Also, faculty members will be able to request to teach online only if they wish. This is, of course, all because of the covid-19 pandemic, which continues to confound all efforts to return the world we live in to what we’d come to expect as normal. By golly, it’s even threatening the resumption of Razorback football (write your own joke here about how fans have been waiting for that for several years). Universities across the country are struggling with how to resume classes and keep students and faculty safe. Some, like the University of California at Berkeley, have already said all instruction will be online only to start the fall semester, while others, like Texas A&M, plans to offer half its fall classes exclusively online. Back in Fayetteville, we don’t so much worry about the students adjusting to the new, if temporary, reality on the hill. As previously observed, college students have long been proficient at adapting to their environment. Truth be told, some faculty members have been teaching both online and traditional courses for a while. The UA already offers 825 classes in online-only programs. But there are other faculty members whose introduction to the brave new world of higher education came with a sudden shudder last March, pushing them into unfamiliar territory. It’s fair to say the rapid shift to online teaching last spring was challenging, frustrating and not necessarily as effective as all would have hoped. Better days are ahead, they say. “The online instruction for the fall is going to be much, much stronger than the spring when we were just scrambling to make it to the end of the semester,” Stephen Caldwell, chairman of the UA’s Faculty Senate, told the newspaper. “It gave us half a semester to see what works and what doesn’t work.” That makes sense. Surely few planned for a “pivot” to online last January when classes started up. The breadth of the pandemic was not yet known or even imagined. Presumably, with four months to get ready for the new teaching environment, even the most rigid members of the faculty have a better idea how to conduct their classes amid a global pandemic. To help, UA officials said that nearly 500 faculty members took part in training for remote teaching over the summer. “It should run much, much smoother,” Caldwell said. Here’s hoping. It’s also worth noting a lot can change between today and Aug. 24. It may mean other adjustments will be required for UA students and the faculty responsible for educating them. However, Chancellor Joe Steinmetz told faculty he doesn’t anticipate a return to all-online instruction this fall. “I don’t see a scenario right now” that would call for suspending all in-person instruction, he said. “But I’ll add that the virus will determine where we are and what we do.” In that, the University of Arkansas is not alone.