I am a professor at VT as well and am on a task force
for one of the colleges. We are currently meeting to develop best practices in preparation for next semester. The results will basically be a "how to" for everything online. We had to rush to put classes online and realize the experience was not the best. However, I will say it was very good given the one week we had to prepare. Now we are going back to make the experience much better for the students and hopefully for us.
That does not mean we are going online in August. It just means we are preparing in the event something like this virus happens again. We are waiting until June when the university makes the call. If I had to hazard a guess, you will see a hybrid. Some really big classes will go to online (and probably should have been online already). Smaller classes will continue to meet. I could even see a scenario where we are teaching "live" but it's also recorded for students who may not feel comfortable attending.
It's been a learning experience for all of us (I came from industry and was used to using Webex etc. but it was still a big adjustment). The students have been fantastic and have pivoted well. If August comes and we are still online, it will be a better learning experience as we will have had a chance to prepare for 4 to 5 months instead of 1 week
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In response to this post by DaveVT)
Posted: 04/21/2020 at 12:54PM