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March 28, 2024, 06:34:14 PM

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University Challenged

Started by Alberon, March 16, 2020, 10:17:12 PM

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pancreas

Does anyone know any good stats on transmission on campus, non-residential, in particular lecture rooms? In particular, even with masks and social distancing?

It may be that there are some US examples.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: pancreas on October 13, 2020, 06:21:09 PM
Does anyone know any good stats on transmission on campus, non-residential, in particular lecture rooms? In particular, even with masks and social distancing?

It may be that there are some US examples.

well, only theoretical and a bit early

https://stack.dailybruin.com/2020/05/12/covid-model/

BlodwynPig

If you don't invite your cohort back to yours for fun and revelry, you should be ok. But aren't NU going on-line at Tier 3 now?

Alberon

We've spent weeks putting stickers up, measuring and reducing classroom sizes to allow social distancing and I walk by one lecture room today and some students have pulled some tables together to work on a project.

The lecturer seems unconcerned, if he didn't ask them to do it in the first place.

I give up.

pancreas

Quote from: BlodwynPig on October 13, 2020, 06:33:11 PM
well, only theoretical and a bit early

https://stack.dailybruin.com/2020/05/12/covid-model/

Not useful, but thanks for trying. Here's the thing: UK universities believe they have summoned up 'covid-secure' campuses. They believe you cannot get infected on campus, because it is 'covid-secure'. So I just need some examples of actual staff infections in universities. Just a few cases will be enough, even better if they end up with long covid.


poo

About 30 hrs of f2f under my belt so far. Not dead but only a matter of time innit. How did guy above know he got infected in a seminar - I can't be arsed reading the twitter thread?

BlodwynPig

To win this battle you need to cover all your bases/faces.

pancreas

Quote from: poo on October 13, 2020, 09:29:22 PM
About 30 hrs of f2f under my belt so far. Not dead but only a matter of time innit. How did guy above know he got infected in a seminar - I can't be arsed reading the twitter thread?

dunno mate. I can't be arsed either.

Attila

Quote from: pancreas on October 13, 2020, 08:28:21 PM
Not useful, but thanks for trying. Here's the thing: UK universities believe they have summoned up 'covid-secure' campuses. They believe you cannot get infected on campus, because it is 'covid-secure'. So I just need some examples of actual staff infections in universities. Just a few cases will be enough, even better if they end up with long covid.

Into week 4, me, of 10 contact hours a week, mostly 1 hour at a time, and a few 2 hour blocks. Small classrooms with poor ventilation; two of them laughingly 'socially distanced' (I have students sat about 3 feet away from me). Two rooms where you can't open the windows, so the AC is cranked sky high.

We're to keep windows wide open in the classrooms that have windows; it was freezing in those rooms on Monday as it's been rainy and sleety here the past few days.

So if covid doesn't get me, pneumonia probably will; I've been so cold a couple of times in the classroom that my teeth were rattling. I plan to start wearing 1940's- era double-knit jumpers I've inherited from my dad.

poo

Yeah I had a bobble hat on yesterday.

bgmnts

Pre Christmas university closures planned in England I think.

Attila

Yeah, they want to move to lockdown and online teaching between 8 December and 22 December.

That would cover the last week of our term, as we finish fairly early in December.

My heaviest teaching days are tomorrow and Friday, and judging from how many students are actually coming to class, I might as well be teaching online. Had 2 in class last Thursday with maybe 10 online (small final year module).

I figure by the middle of the semester I'll be in the classroom alone teaching to a cluster of avatars on the screen.

George Oscar Bluth II

How much "in person" teaching is happening at unis with big outbreaks where presumably lots of students are either ill or self isolating?

Alberon

Our uni has under 40 cases in staff and students and management think things are going reasonably smoothly at the moment so this isn't going to go down well with them.

Also, as plans go, it seems to be leaving a lot of space on the back of the fag packet.

Attila

We have 'only' half dozen cases, but my university insists it's not the same half dozen; that the original people isolating with covid are now all better, and these are just rando cases/flukes.

I suspect we'd have to be 90% infected with covid before my uni shut down, and even then would be reluctant. They were not happy when we had to go online in March (senior management, of course, bugged off campus a good two weeks prior to that, though).

I don't think this has been posted. It's a few days old and very much belongs here.

Birmingham UCU have declared a dispute: https://birminghamucu.org/2020/10/12/ucu-declares-formal-dispute-with-university-of-birmingham-over-on-campus-working-and-teaching/

poo

Just had a calendar invite for our department's Christmas party.

The uni has a dashboard: 48 student cases over the whole university and 2 staff cases. However, it feels like the on-campus accomodation is riddled with the bug.

We've had 1 positive case from a student in the department and there's a whole track and trace mechanism in place which swung into action. We've also done our own internal chasing - getting in touch with students we knew had worked close with them in the preceding week.

We've got the target of 3 hours per week face to face teaching, which we've done with practical classes (using < 20% of capacity of the UG labs) and targeted maths tutorials (< 10 students in a lecture theatre). Certainly distanced.


Blue Jam

Quote from: poo on October 15, 2020, 07:11:40 AM
Just had a calendar invite for our department's Christmas party.

I've just had an invite for our department's annual Christmas quiz. It is however going to be online this year. We'll all be forming teams with the other members of our household and will have to do our own buffet and provide our own booze.

No Christmas party this year!

Blue Jam

Embra seems to be doing the opposite of most universities- keeping the staff safe while treating the students like crap:

https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/out-date-food-fines-isolation-19020109

https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/self-isolating-student-edinburgh-university-19086734

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/pollock-halls-edinburgh-university-students-asked-pitch-deliver-food-isolating-classmates-company-pulls-out-2999346

Not only are we giving them inedible food and overcharging them for it, they've now got to do the (unpaid) work of delivering it themselves. This has made me feel pretty ashamed and angry, and glad I no longer do any teaching and won't have to face the angry mob next year.

Ominous Dave

This is just going to fucking collapse the UK university system isn't it? It's been coming for a long while because it's a rancid, rotten system run by cunts, but I have so many friends who are academics and are going to be utterly fucked by this that it's tragic. How many students do they think will actually come back after Christmas if this shit keeps going?

(The most comical bit was the idea that universities 'might tell students they can't come home over Christmas', as if they have any legal authority to do that. Though maybe the Cummings-led government will just arbitrarily decide they do, as it its wont.)

In my more radical moments I tend to think that academics need to start thinking about what's going to replace the university system rather than working to prop it up. But that obviously isn't much help to people who rely on it for their living.

It's just all fucked, isn't it.

Just feeling very glad that I decided not to become an academic now.[nb]My only actual teaching experience was trying to teach basic mathematical logic to first-year philosophy students. Which was like pulling teeth. From your own diseased skull.[/nb]

George Oscar Bluth II

At the base of it the problem is that marketised system. Students want "the student experience" still, so in August everyone had to pretend that is what they would offer. Any university that was honest and upfront that the experience would be mostly Zoom calls and there was a high chance you'd be locked in your halls for two weeks at a time would have been totally fucked.

Of course, for all their claims about "levelling up" etc this government really wants fewer of the plebs to go to university, so would have been quite happy to see some go to the wall.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on October 21, 2020, 10:36:10 AM
At the base of it the problem is that marketised system. Students want "the student experience" still, so in August everyone had to pretend that is what they would offer. Any university that was honest and upfront that the experience would be mostly Zoom calls and there was a high chance you'd be locked in your halls for two weeks at a time would have been totally fucked.

Of course, for all their claims about "levelling up" etc this government really wants fewer of the plebs to go to university, so would have been quite happy to see some go to the wall.

At the same time, any A-Level student who thought the academic year coming/their potential first year at uni was going to be anything other than a fucking nightmare of restricted civil liberties, mumps, stds, prison in halls, covid, 1980s packed lunches and so on was woefully naive, but even as an umbrella to that, their parents should have advised that they take gap years. Even A-level results were a clusterfuck. Absolutely nothing signalled 'this is going to go well'.

You are right an underlying problem is of course marketised education where it becomes a product in effect and so students and parents start treating it like a product and service you purchase. They can't get their head around simple facts like module enrollment being full up, because all the other indicators are that they have purchased this service and now they get to decide how to utilise it.

BlodwynPig


Captain Z

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on October 21, 2020, 10:07:41 PM
their parents should have advised that they take gap years.

To do what, exactly?

Shoulders?-Stomach!


George Oscar Bluth II

I thought that about gap years too but things you do in your gap year are, like, do a crappy job, probably in the service industry, to save money or do a crappy job and then go traveling and neither of those things are possible this year.

Bernice

Yeah I can't blame 18 year olds for deciding they'd rather not sit around unemployed in their parents house for another fucking year. I imagine 6 months of that was long enough.