By Buck Goldstein
When I wrote earlier that the fall semester at Chapel Hill would be a test case for broader reopening in society, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.
UNC has been in the national news as one of the first schools to reopen — and now one of the first to pivot back to teaching exclusively online. These are not the headlines we’d been hoping to make, and certainly not the outcome we wanted for students or the wider community.
But to a significant extent, we chose to be the canary in the coal mine on the theory that a public university with the resources and research capacity of Carolina had an obligation to make the effort. There are real costs to remaining online-only, and not just financial. The support services and social experience of campus life matter a lot for equity and student success, even if the quality of online learning is strong. In any case, there is no point in failing if you’re not willing to share lessons learned, so here goes:
- Beginning with teaching and learning, we found that it’s possible to keep classrooms safe with masks and appropriate social distancing. As far as I know, contact tracing at Carolina turned up no instances of classroom spread. At the same time, a lot of us learned that a face-to-face classroom with required masking/distancing precautions is actually inferior to a fully online classroom. At least Zoom classes allow everyone to see facial expressions, hear all participants in the classroom, and avoid the unsettling experience of being one of 25 students in a classroom with 100 seats. “Hy-flex” class — “hybrid-flexible,” where some students are online and others are in the classroom — are the worst alternative by far. Unless you’re in a specially (and expensively) outfitted classroom with all the high-tech gear needed for that kind of hybrid discussion, having a passel of masked, spread-out students in person and a bunch of others online was a compromise not worth making. As long as we are living with the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, the online learning experience is probably better than a muddled face-to-face experience.
- A number of positive surprises emerged from teaching online over the first two weeks. Students and faculty seem more comfortable with Zoom than they were in the spring. Office hours are well attended. Class discussions and group work go at least as well over Zoom as in person and in some cases better. Online allows for large classes to break easily into smaller groups in ways that can’t be accommodated in a traditional lecture hall. Surprisingly, faculty seem to be more not less accessible in an online environment.
- We learned the hard way that university housing makes real social distancing impossible. UNC’s first COVID-19 cluster of five or more cases emerged less than a week after classes began, and it was followed by many more — mostly centered in shared housing. Unless a strict policy of sheltering in place is adopted for student housing and density is dramatically reduced, it is not feasible to even consider congregant living arrangements. A strict lockdown combined with massive testing might make a difference, but that hardly seems like a campus experience that will appeal to a significant number of students. Stringent policies that are tough to enforce on campus will prove even more challenging in off-campus housing.
- We also learned that most students — and, crucially, their parents — prefer a residential experience even if the actual classes are all online. Knowing that the majority of courses would be taught online, and that any individual student had the option of learning remotely, the vast majority of students returned to Chapel Hill for the fall semester. When classes switched back to entirely online and students were encouraged to leave the dorms, there was a huge rush to off-campus housing as an alternative to returning home. Now, even with undergrad classrooms shuttered, there’s an off-campus housing shortage around Chapel Hill. The ultimate impact of this ad-hoc, student-led decision to stay “at college” is yet to be determined. But in the near-term the burden of student safety is shifting from gown to town a scary prospect for the average citizen who is now living among thousands of young people who just moved from campus to the town of Chapel Hill.
- We quickly saw the disproportionate impact that fraternities and sororities have on spreading the virus. Aside from outbreaks in the fraternity and sorority houses themselves, it appears that many of the hot spots were triggered by what we politely term “Greek life.” Both the university and the town were concerned about frats and sororities from the beginning, and those concerns were totally warranted. We probably would have been forced to pivot online even without them, but one thing is certain: in the age of Covid-19, you can’t have an open campus and open frats. Until there is a vaccine, shutting down Greek life is a requirement for any shot at reopening.
Our understanding of what’s possible in the COVID era is already much improved since March and April — three cheers for outdoor gatherings! — and as we work through this crisis, our understanding of how higher ed can better meet its mission will undoubtedly improve as well.
UNC’s attempt to fully open was not triumphant, but it can still prove valuable. At the very least, we provided a vivid case study for those schools who plan to reopen in the next several weeks. Bottom line: If you plan to reopen—don’t.
Buck Goldstein is a Professor of the Practice in the School of Education and University Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Teressa Jimenez says
Your observations are good ones but as a Chapel Hill resident and an employee at a major tech company in RTP – some of these “lessons” could have been avoided with a few conversations with those that have worked in a virtual world for over 15 years and speaking to the students – the two that come to mind:
– A class with some students in class and some online is a disaster. It doesn’t work. I know this having led groups where some were in a conference room face to face and some were scattered around the globe. It’s all together or all apart, otherwise one group will suffer, most often, those online. Offering this type of class is reflective of folks not wanting to make a tough decision. As the saying goes, “you can’t be half pregnant.”
-Greek life is an Achilles Heel. My daughter, in a sorority at another school said as much and others did too. There was great concern with this cohort but “tradition” outweighed common sense. Great. Here we are.
Dennis Michael Daley says
The operation was a success, but the patient died.
Concerns about out-of-class student spread were being voiced from the beginning of Summer school across the nation. The only miscalulation was how fast the virus would spread among students. No mention of the impact that sending infected students back home to spread the news will have.
Victoria Shields says
Thank you for the humility to admit this was wrong. As a town resident, I was – still am – deeply troubled by the lack of disregard for our safety and well-being. I was 18 and a student once too – I had no real awareness much
less regard for those outside my “cohort”, no real sense of responsibility and connectedness – and so it is now with many students “living at college.” I’m an alum, soured over the past 5 years especially – and now this. Seems it’s just about the money – but there is an opportunity to do this well, not just for this time of pandemic, but for the “new world” reality of diversity and inclusion. I’m watching, hoping for that!
Sincerely, Victoria ‘81
Mary Pardo says
Turning an entire TOWN into the canary and ensuring its exposure to this illness would be increased by a factor of 100s (and possibly 1000s) verges on criminal irresponsibility, I (like every other older citizen in Chapel Hill/Carrboro) was not asked, but was forced into this guaranteed failed experiment. What an insane price to pay to learn that online teaching actually works and that the students now spreading uncontrolled infection just wanted to get away from home to be able to party (presumably without the bonus of not risking mom and dad‘s lives)! Calling this act of aggression against the local community an „experiment“ is particularly cynical.
Tom Kane says
Having had a son at Chapel Hill I believe there was a strong desire to have a social life. With the university not providing that the students went to events and parties where these were happening. I do not think this is an issue with on-campus housing as much as the group that lived together going to these events and returning with COVID to spread it among the clusters in the halls. Of the campuses that have closed at Chapel Hill, NC State and ECU most were either athletic, Greek Life or party related and not on-campus housing created..
Roger Wilkes says
I think the article was strong , but how could anything think that the students would get sick . ?Greeks are getting too much blame ,, . There were many other residential positive cases. . No many how it was handled, , the general public will Not except the scope of the problem . . . I think the administration handled this issue very well . If I had a young college kid , I just might let him stay home and take a year off . This is a dangerous time .!
John McHugh says
For several years in the early 1990s, I taught a local/remote Computer Science class, the Capstone project class originated by Fred Brooks. There were at least 2 classroom classes, one at UNC and one at Duke and one year, there was a class at UNC Charlotte. There were also smaller groups at UNCG and MCNC on occasion. The technology of the time, two way video / audio based on NTSC broadcast television carried via a microwave network) was not as effective as today’s internet, but marginally adequate. The audio portion had been especially well done for the period (microphones at each seat with gated audio to cut out background noise) so that interacting with remote students was pretty good and both local and remote students could hear me and each other Although I gave most of my lectures from UNC, I tried to visit the other classroom sites and originate the class there on a regular basis.
Nonetheless, I noticed much less interaction with the remote students no matter where the class originated. Part of this may have been the distraction as a camera pivoted to focus on a student when they started to speak and I always felt that the remote students in large classrooms got a second class experience. The small groups worked a bit better and probably approached the interactivity of today’s Zoom or similar technologies.
This class was unusual as the bulk of the learning took place in the project teams (three to five students) which were developing useful products for “customers” from the local community. In addition to lecturing, I held weekly meetings with each UNC team, serving as the second level manager as each team had an internal manager and technical lead. Remote teams had a second level manager from their institution.
A few years later. I taught similar classes at Portland State University in Oregon. The classes were taught from a remote facility in Beaverton, in the heart of the Silicon Forest. There, the video was one way, no provisions had been made for easy two way audio. Interaction with the remote class was almost non-existent. I still believe that a combined classroom / remote class can be effective, but that getting it right is very difficult.
Rob Rivers says
Very disappointing and factually incorrect piece. Last week when UNC-CH closed, there were 5 dormitory Covid-clusters plus plus the off-campus residence hall, Granville Towers. Out of over two dozen fraternities, only two had clusters as of that date. The student congregations occurred at a far higher percentage in the dorms than in the fraternities which were aggressively promoting compliance fearing just such a response as this. A total of 130-150 new student cases had been confirmed as of the shut down date, according to the UNC Covid Dashboard, out of a total campus student census of about 22-24,000. There was not a huge spike in cases according to UNC’s own data. To blame fraternities and sororities is a new low for UNC even eclipsing the blame-assigning for their academic and athletic scandals over the past 10 years. As a Carolina alumnus and the father of two current students including one in a fraternity, I am wholly disgusted in UNC’s disastrous handling of the failed opening this semester. I am far more disgusted in Mr. Goldstein’s article. My youngest son is Vice President for Loss and Prevention in his fraternity and monitors Covid compliance. There are no cases in his fraternity, and they intend to keep it that way. Dorms did not have such preventive measures in place. As a lifelong brother of my fraternity, I cannot place a value on the lessons I learned, the friendships that have lasted a lifetime that I made, and the return to the community in which I participated. Fraternities have a higher average GPA, higher 5 year graduation rate, and higher acceptance into professional schools than the campus average. Their alumni give far more financial support to Carolina than any other alumni group. Carolina needs to quit blaming others. The administration simply needs to look in the mirror to see where the blame lies.
Jim O'Hara says
We “LEARNED that a face-to-face classroom with required masking/distancing precautions is actually inferior to a fully online classroom”?
We LEARNED “that university housing makes real social distancing impossible”?
Who didn’t know this in May?
We also learned that the decision not to test everyone (supposedly because it would “create a false sense of security”) was very foolish.
The Board of Governors, which over the last few years has done some things well but has bungled several other things terribly, should bear a huge amount of blame for this potentially deadly fiasco.
Art Padilla says
I agree with most of the comments, and especially those by Mr. Rvers above. The “lessons” apparently learned by the writer (were they also “learned” by the administrators, deans, and department chairs who actually made these decisions?) are not lessons. They were excruxiatingly obvious before they were “learned.” Blaming off-campus residents and Greeks misses the mark.
However, I am greateful the University writ large is not patting itself on the back for the speed with which it “pivoted” to online classes, as it embarrassingly did last spring. This “pivot” takes about as much time as falling off a wet log.
Perhaps the two most useful lessons may be that 1) managing this virus in our badly divided nation is like keeping a beach ball under water and 2) massive public universities (with packed dorms) may be nearly ungovernable. Many smaller institutions have thus far been able to keep their dorms less crowded (one per room), their students more in control (some have actually disciplined their party animals), and their hybrid classes going quite smoothly.
Cassandra Taylor says
This article mentions lessons that were LEARNED, but most of these lessons were already KNOWN. The whole world has been asked to stay six feet apart, yet you welcome students, literally strangers from around the globe, dump them into a suite with 7 other students WITHOUT testing them. Why would anyone expect something other than a COVID-19 disaster?
This was KNOWN to be an unavoidable disaster, even if you never went to a party or the dining hall. The UNC Board of Governors should bear total responsibility for making such an INFORMED decision that would put so many folks at risk when they basically forced the campuses to open. The university cannot independently “close” the campus because the Board of Governors holds that power and authority. I’m convinced the university administrators at the campus would have made a much safer and more responsible decision, if they’d been given the chance.
It’s unfortunate the students are conveniently being blamed for virus outbreaks simply because they entered a dorm room on an open campus without being tested.