Teaching Continuity Plan

How do we maintain teaching continuity through the coming winter of swine flu?  We’re assured that our university has a plan for the pandemic but we have not been told anything about it, which is unusual – our current President is very good about keeping everyone informed. Meanwhile, I’ve been looking at my own teaching, and what we do in our dept, to work out what the problems are likely to be , and how we might meet them. I think the biggest problem is that many students, even  if they don’t actually have swine flu, will opt to sit it out at home at the slightest sniffle.  Not surprisingly, I’m looking at how I can use technology to deliver my teaching if me or my students are quarantined, or just faking it.

Being realistic, I’m going to get the flu – from Sept 21st I’m going to be in daily contact with hundreds of students. When I do, I’ll be out for a week or ten days. There is a fairly high risk of disruption during the first month of term – that’s when most people will get the flu, so it seems sensible to get ahead and pre-record lectures for the first weeks of term. Later on in the semester, in most courses, there are topics which are not too tightly tied to the sequence, so I can prepare podcasts or screencasts for some of those, and have them uploaded onto the LMS. Four courses is eight lectures for a week which is easy enough to cover.  Since some of my courses are reading and discussion seminars anyway, it is easy to take those online by posting the weekly readings and discussion topics, and using forums or scheduled chat to cover them. Making a virtue of necessity, this forces me to prepare proper presentations for some basic classes which I have to repeat every year, but which don’t change very much.

In fact, I had already decided to teach one of my courses entirely online this term. I used to teach my section of HI2002, the case study course, online, but I let it slip back to face-to-face. Everyone in the Dept teaches a group in this course, so it is good to have one of the 24 groups online – it is convenient for students with access problems or children to mind.

One course is a big problem – my International Organisations Course. At least 3 of the 12 weeks of this are given over to simulation exercises, and the final essay is based on the major simulation. This course works really well, so while I could “downgrade” it to a straight essay, I’d rather not. Fortunately, the first simulation is intended as a warmup for students who have no previous exposure to simulations in teaching. Last year I lost week of a graduate simulation based course to a bank holiday, so I did part of that online. Instead of negotiating face to face, the students had to circulate their diplomatic communications by email. They were slow to start, but in the end the email negotiations became quite interesting. Making the first sim in my IO class online, which is usually a simple League of Nations crisis sim, will not only prepare the students for the eventuality that they may have to do the major sim online, but will also potentially free up a 2 hour lecture for other teaching. I won’t use this to add more content; I’ll use it to drag  topics forward in the schedule and leave me more leeway if we lose time later in the term. Maybe I’ll even base the main simulation on the WHO in a pandemic!

On a departmental and institutional basis, I suppose people will need to think about which courses must go on, and which can slip. Most institutions will have core courses that simply must run, some options or electives which are important because of how they fit into the overall program, and some options which can slip if needed. How universities match teaching capability to courses is something which institutions are going to have to think about more – this year we have a swine flu issue, a few years ago it was the possibility of avian flu and no doubt there will be more like this down the road. Will there be more pressure to match tech-savvy educators with core courses to meet this? Will less technologically capable staff find themselves slipped towards less essential teaching? It may be an unpleasant prospect but educational leaders will have to look at how they prepare for pandemics, hurricanes and other crises more seriously in future.


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One response to “Teaching Continuity Plan”

  1. Sonny Acosta Avatar

    I congratulate you for writing this, I was looking for this.

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