Trying to convince universities to allow remote learning in maskless in-person classes and maybe to allow mini-HEPAs on the desk during exams appears to be futile despite the current risk level. Higher learning, my eye!
Why Universities Should Lead the Way
Last July, two grad students from the University of Waterloo wrote an article explaining how "Universities can lead the clean indoor air revolution."
Click the image to read the article, but I'll highlight a few pieces:
"Poor air quality impedes mental processes, increases the risk of disease transmission and contributes to interrupted work and schooling. Post-secondary institutions are ideally placed to set the pace for indoor air improvements. . . . Well-fitting, high-quality face masks also enhance filtration by preventing infectious particles from being inhaled. . . . As CO2 increases to 1,200 ppm, one in every 50 unfiltered breaths contains re-breathed air. As a consequence, poorer air quality can increase the risk of getting and spreading airborne infections, including the virus that causes Covid-19. High levels of CO2 have also been linked to tiredness and impaired attention and concentration. . . . Displaying CO2 measurements in campus work, study, and living spaces, disseminating clear messages about CO2 targets and the meaning and impacts of high CO2, as well as supporting students, faculty and staff in taking simple steps to respond to suboptimal IAQ, can yield immediate benefits."
And then in September, an article in Policy Options clarified that,
"Institutions like universities are the main source of spread for this virus. While many may be sick of hearing about the pandemic, ignoring it won't protect those who work and study in a university setting. . . . Universities are communities of learning dedicated to research and committed to equity. They must ensure their approach to Covid is inclusive, particularly with infeciton rates already surging in many countries, and starting to rise again in Canada. As centres that foster critical thinking, universities should be at the forefront of developing inclusive ways to protect their communities. . . . Widespread transmission at universities increases the barriers faced by those who are already marginalized. People with disabilities are at higher risk of short and long-term harms. . . . Students fade away from university life or disappear altogether or make difficult decisions to put themselves or their loved ones at risk to stay in class. As more people develop medical conditions due to Covid, the number of students dropping out will increase. University leadership must take notice. . . . Universities can help reduce the toll of the emerging wave by requiring masking on campuses now . . . mask-required room options during exams should be offered. . . . 'Considerate masking' could become the norm."
It's such a no-brainer to me! We can't say we care about diversity and then make classrooms inaccessible to anyone who could suffer irreparable damage from Covid (which is really all of us). The university classrooms I've been in over the past year all have a HEPA in a corner, the worst spot for them, and they're often on the lowest setting or unplugged because they're the noisy kind. I've measured very high CO2 in the room (over 1500ppm) even with a window opened directly behind me. Beyond those poorly used HEPAs, there are currently no mitigations taking place to protect staff and students from a fatal and disabling selection of viruses circulating. Profs are all about group work now, so even if you carefully choose to sit by an open window, coming early to guard your prime territory, you could be moved to the middle of the room to spend 20 minutes with three or fours others projecting their voice, maskless, directly into your face from a foot away.
Gross.
A study in Nature shows that it just takes a few seconds for transmission, and don't forget that most transmission is from people without any symptoms!
Ableism and DEI
Stats Canada recently announced that disabilities of all types have increased, with 27% of people now having at least one disability.
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We spend a lot of time in various classes discussing the effects of racism and sexism, but precious little on ableism. Maybe it's because it's being openly demonstrated across the campus. We can't begin to talk about removing barriers while benefiting from their existence. I'm not sure how people are benefiting, but there must be some reason they're adamant about in-person learning regardless any medical documentation around anxiety or being immunocompromised.
Mandatory Attendance
My university's admin has made it clear that I have to attend classes in person or leave. The classes are designated as in person classes, so they have to be taught that way. I get that they have to be delivered in person, but it's not at all clear to me why that has to be the only method of delivery possible. How it must be delivered doesn't have to impact the many ways that it could be received. Accessibility Services will give students extra time on exams, carry books to class, take notes for them, and help them get in and out of the building if they need it, but each student still must find a way to be in the classroom regardless the amount of a biosafety level 3 pathogen circulating inside. They're creating more immunocompromised students affected by the destruction Covid causes to the immune system.
One prof at my institution, unfortunately not in my program, advised administrators concerned with dwindling attendance that masks might help. I commented that I don't attend when data shows high risk, but that means I can't pass despite lectures being recorded and posted. My advisor made it clear that those videos are just for occasional use, not for all of November! Nobody in charge is too worried that November looked like this, and December will likely be even worse:
After some arguing, I've gotten permission from my current profs (and the Dean) to continue online to the end of term. I sent this graph to classmates to make them aware that Zoom is an option for our final class this week and cases are extraordinarily high. Don't they want to be healthy as they return home for the holidays? Unfortunately I think the level of misinformation out there is even higher, overriding any concerns for their health.
Why aren't universities tracking wastewater and hospitalizations in the area and warning students when they might consider wearing masks or attending from home?? That should be part of the job of administrators everywhere now that Public Health has completely dropped the ball.
It's amazing how much the far-right rhetoric about masks and the 'covid is mild' bullshit has infiltrated institutions to the point that the expected complaints of a few override the health and safety of the many, even with measles and TB on the rise. It's actively anti-public health and anti-science. At one point the university suggested they'd follow the data and bring back masks as needed, but more recently they clarified that there is no scenario where they would bring them back. Apparently, according to one prof on social media, the Dean said that "individual faculty can ask students to wear masks in their classrooms and that our Dean will back us up on that," but that still puts students in a position of just hoping to get a prof who understands the science and cares enough to protect their students.
Regardless the lack of simple mitigations, the insistence on mandatory in person attendance is not pedagogically sound; it's just punitive.
Attendance Is Not a Measure of Competence
I completed three degrees previously without any professor ever taking attendance. At some point in the last 20 years, administrators decided that regularly collecting signatures on a page is vital to demonstrate understanding of the course content. Now that we're in the high-tech age with every professor having a website of some sort that makes zoom/teams/google meets available at the click of a button, and where physical space no longer has to be a barrier to having discussions with students who can't make it to class, it's just bizarre that now we've started demanding in person attendance.
Unless, of course, they're afraid nobody will come to class given the option.
Back in the 80s, my Psych 101 class was taught by an instructor who told us to read each chapter of the text before class, then he read it to us, stopping periodically to ask, "Any questions so far?" The packed lecture hall dwindled down to just a handful of students in attendance. Attendance wasn't necessary for understanding of the material for the vast majority of us. Instead, we studied together in the cafeteria for the multiple choice midterm and exam, each worth 50% of our mark. Nobody cared that people didn't physically attend. Students continued to sign up and pay the full price for the course and the instructor was paid just like any other. The lectures were there to augment the texts and additional readings. There was nothing to prove with a packed classroom.
Teaching has changed since then, not always for the better, but what else changed to drive attention to full classrooms? I'm so curious!
As a teacher, whenever a student asked to be able to work from home, typically due to an anxiety disorder, I was always able to make that possible. There were, however, always a few colleagues who would suggest I've been played. They see these students as getting away with something by not having to do what everyone else has to do. By contrast, I think that if coming to class is seen as a drudgery, something people will lie about to avoid, then maybe everyone else shouldn't have to do that horrible thing in order to succeed at something as vital as learning! When I taught remote learning during the second year of the pandemic, most students claimed they took courses online to avoid the bullying that is still a huge problem in our schools. If the goal of an institution is to teach content and then assess understanding, why does it matter how students learn if they happen to learn better outside our typical classroom set up. If we really care about individualization of instruction, then we should celebrate when students are able to learn without us and just be there to assess how close they are to a standard. Sometimes a YouTube video provides a better explanation on a topic than I possibly could, and I made the bold move of letting students know what we'd be doing each day prior to class so they could choose to stay home or work elsewhere on days that I'd just be pushing 'play' on the projector. And that's in a high school where bums-in-seats affects funding! If they can't learn without us, then at least they had an opportunity to discover that. If a few stay home, it also means more time can be spent with those who need more help. Insisting on attendance means we're concerned more about perpetuating an employment model than we are about our students.
The adoption of this model in universities is particularly baffling to me since babysitting children so parents can work isn't an unspoken part of the job.
Part of this shift to mandatory attendance feels like arrogance on the part of profs who think their words are vital to understanding despite the hundreds of dollars and hours of time we're required to spend on books and readings each term. Professors are there to explain what we can't understand from reading and to augment the readings. In one of my classes, we read three very straightforwards books, and the classroom lessons are from groups of students presenting on specific chapters and external readings, one after another, spread out to total 36 hours. I understand the role of students as cheerleaders, helping classmates to feel appreciated for their efforts, but that's extraneous to our role as students there to learn from experts in the field. If we can learn from one another just as well, then universities start to feel like a cash grab in exchange for a degree. I question having students pay to learn from other novices. But I also question, if it's possible for learning to be entirely from discussion with other students, then why is it so vital to be in the room to listen to any prof?
In high schools and grade schools, under the Education Act, teachers are responsible for the physical safety of students (except for Covid, somehow), so they have to know where they are during our class time. We're reminded, from time to time, that if little Sally sneaks out to go to the store across the street, and gets hit by a car, then the liability is on the teacher, although I've never seen a teacher actually get sued for that type of event. It might just be a way to scare us into keeping kids under a watchful eye during class. But universities are very different in this regard. Students are deemed adults, and parents soon find out they hold negligible sway over classroom decisions. Yet, even as adults, they are no longer allowed to decide for themselves when they need to attend classes in order to better understand the material.
I'm not used to be talked to as if I'm a naughty child who's trying to get something for nothing by paying a few thousand dollars, doing all the readings, listening to all the lectures, and writing so many essays (sometimes four or five in a course) that never get less than an A grade, yet daring to ask for permission to get the credit without walking in the door to sit and scroll on social media for a few hours while inhaling a virus that could literally kill me. I'm just too old for this level of profound disrespect of people's needs in order to access the education they signed up for!
Make it makes sense!!
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