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Chris, I'm not sure I see how your suggestion about capacity restrictions could be implemented. We don't have enough large rooms to scale up our classes. The 30-person course could be moved into a room that holds 50, perhaps, and the 100-person course to a lecture hall that holds 300. But the 300-500 person courses can't be moved into larger rooms. And there's no way we have space to have students 2m from each other! Just not possible. I personally do not want to have to do hybrid courses, where half my students come Tuesday and half Thursday. Either I repeat material and activities and get half of the course accomplished, or I have to have half the class online, an assistant to watch the chat bar, someone to make and monitor breakout rooms every time I do group discussions/activities in lecture (which is every class), and I have to pass a mic around a large lecture hall or repeat everything everyone says into my mic. This would be so much work for me and, I believe, would impede student learning significantly. Were you thinking of some other way to teach with capacity restrictions in all rooms? Nicky
From: Christopher Pavsek <cpavsek@sfu.ca>
Sent: August 26, 2021 11:20:10 AM To: academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca) Subject: (SFUFA) COVID protocol update Hi all--I think two other things that SFUFA could request or demand of the university would be the imposition of capacity restrictions in all rooms on campus, or at least for all lectures over a certain size, so that we don't have 400 students sitting without
any possibility of distancing in lecture halls. Such capacity restrictions would be consistent with current restrictions in the province on organized indoor gatherings. As I understand it, the only thing the university has done to "ensure" the safety of lecture
halls and classrooms is to check the ventilation.
In addition, SFUFA could advocate for faculty to be able to switch their courses to online instruction, regardless of any demonstrated medical need for vaccine exemption, etc. This would be good to implement at a university-wide level so that individual chairs and directors and faculty don't have to negotiate these matters on a case by case basis.
Chris
Christopher Pavsek, PhD
Associate Professor of Film School for the Contemporary Arts Simon Fraser University 149 West Hastings Vancouver, BC V5N 1X4 cpavsek@sfu.ca 778-782-4672
I respectfully acknowledge that I work on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
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