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Jan. 31st, 2021 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violsvaI can't speak for how they're treating faculty and staff (my program's student advisor seems extremely overwhelmed, but that may not be new), but at least in terms of interaction with students my college's conduct during the pandemic has been exemplary. Primarily, we get clear communication, a full semester in advance, how classes are going to work. (That is, since May - it's not like they could have given us a semester's notice for summer classes.)
Almost everything has been online and the campus is almost entirely locked down. This has the negative effect that more of the cost is put on the students, who have to buy lab equipment for themselves that would otherwise be provided on campus, but for me it's still well within the range of my OSAP grants.
On a less systemic level, every professor I've asked for an extension has immediately said "Yes, of course, no, I don't need to see a note," which has been nice.
That said, this is a technical college, and there are in fact some programs, like, for example, Aviation, that cannot be taught entirely virtually. So I have one in-person electronics lab course this semester. Due to failures of preparation and communication on the part of the provincial government, they had to add a bunch of sections after students had already signed up, with the result that my lab is on Sunday afternoons and only has nine other people in it. And then a 2km walk home in January because it's not really worth taking public transit right now.
The first couple labs were very straightforward "Have you forgotten how circuits work in the last ten months" exercises, but this week we were doing something slightly more complicated and I got to spend almost two hours cheerfully doing science in a space made for the purpose and with no interruptions. It was great.
Almost everything has been online and the campus is almost entirely locked down. This has the negative effect that more of the cost is put on the students, who have to buy lab equipment for themselves that would otherwise be provided on campus, but for me it's still well within the range of my OSAP grants.
On a less systemic level, every professor I've asked for an extension has immediately said "Yes, of course, no, I don't need to see a note," which has been nice.
That said, this is a technical college, and there are in fact some programs, like, for example, Aviation, that cannot be taught entirely virtually. So I have one in-person electronics lab course this semester. Due to failures of preparation and communication on the part of the provincial government, they had to add a bunch of sections after students had already signed up, with the result that my lab is on Sunday afternoons and only has nine other people in it. And then a 2km walk home in January because it's not really worth taking public transit right now.
The first couple labs were very straightforward "Have you forgotten how circuits work in the last ten months" exercises, but this week we were doing something slightly more complicated and I got to spend almost two hours cheerfully doing science in a space made for the purpose and with no interruptions. It was great.