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simplifying the Covid administrative headache

I guess this overall situation doesn't seem too complicated to me really:


  • Some faculty want to avoid Covid and teach from home
  • Some faculty want to teach in person and get on with regular work life
  • Some students want to avoid Covid and learn from home
  • Some students want to learn in person and get on with regular student life


Thus, just give people a choice! How hard is that?


Since formatting a course for either/both in person and online learning is a lot of work, hire a lot of contract (e.g 5 year term) instructional designers to help faculty format their courses for being well delivered online. Thus, faculty get the support they need for all the extra online delivery they may suddenly have to do.


Yes, this will affect budgets from international students not paying higher prices to come here for online courses, and it will affect real estate plans for condos on the mountain. It would also mean hiring this other set of actually productive staff versus whatever army of administrators administrators want to hire.


Make up for this kind of lost revenue with profitable online programs that are marketed globally, and can scale without the kind of enrollment limits imposed by classroom sizes.


Faculty profiles can indicate whether all, none, 50/50 etc. of an instructor's courses are online or in person so students can get needed info that way and make course decisions accordingly.


That's better than constantly changing policy which results in a slew of contradictory information with each policy tweak, e.g. the university president tells everyone labs are in person but in fact labs are closed etc.


Just give people a choice, and so much wishy washy policy shifts and vote counting (how many people want what for political calculations) might actually become unnecessary,


Michael Filimowicz, PhD

Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

School of Interactive Arts and Technology

Simon Fraser University

https://filimowi.cz



From: Behraad Bahreyni <bba19@sfu.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2022 9:48 PM
To: Chelsea Rosenthal
Cc: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Subject: Re: SFU students petitioning for delaying return to in-person
 
Here is another petition from the other side of the fence: