SuppliedThere appears to be a discrepancy between how we will all be returning to university this fall. It turns out that among many things, your department and even your faculty can be huge determining factors. The promotion that has been put out by the University of Alberta can be misleading, as it has become clear that some students are being presented with more choice for in-person learning this fall than others, depending on what program you are enrolled in.
The U of A announced in April that 80 per cent of courses would be in-person for this fall. But when we break it down by department, some students are not being offered anywhere near that number. According to the available information on Beartracks, 32 out of 43 political science courses are offered in-person, or about 74 per cent. Departments like biology and sociology are both high as well, sitting at around 74 and 57 per cent respectively.
However, then there are departments that seem to be mostly online. In the department of Psychology, only 16 out of 88 classes are in-person, or 18 per cent. Even more striking, in the department of women’s and gender studies, only two out of 11 courses are being offered in-person.
There is no obvious answer as to why there is such a difference between departments for in-person learning. Class size is obviously one of the major determining factors, but so is accommodating international students and those with underlying health conditions. I spoke to Michelle Meagher, the department chair of women’s and gender studies, to discuss what other factors went into deciding what classes should be in-person.
“One of the things to bear in mind is that we had to make decisions about the fall extremely early, well before there was any real sense of what the fall would look like,” she said. “The decisions were made in some ways, blindly.”
She explained that class size was her starting point for deciding if a class could be in-person or not.
“If we had 23 students in a course, they could be in a room that fit 50 and have some social distancing,” she explained. Additionally, scheduling had to be made to accommodate some faculty members. “It just wasn’t clear if it was going to be safe or possible for them to be on campus,” she said.
An additional factor for her department was ethics, Meagher explained. Classes on consent and sexual assault she felt, would not be well suited for an online environment because of the difficult subject matter and so they were cancelled last fall. “Those are courses that require an enormous amount of emotional support as well as scholarly engagement, so those are classes we’ve cancelled, which is to the detriment of students, but also in the interests of their security as learners,” she explained.
Those two courses have been scheduled for the winter as in-person classes, she said, adding “we’re confident that winter term will be in-person.”
I asked her if finances played a role in deciding whether classes would be in-person or not and she explained that in an online class, “we don’t have to be beholden to the size of a classroom.” Popular classes were able to take on more students, but larger class sizes also meant more grading and hiring a teaching assistant. Any extra tuition funds she told me, are “distributed through the institution.”
“I don’t see that income; it doesn’t come to my department,” she said. “There are financial implications, but they are certainly not the driver of the decisions that I’ve made to go online with those courses.”
Most decisions about in-person learning for specific courses left up to faculties
The department of women’s and gender studies ended up with only two classes in-person this fall and I asked Meagher if she felt any pressure from administration after it was announced U of A would be returning mostly in-person.
“Actually I didn’t have any conversations with any senior administrators about the work that I was doing in terms of assigning my team teaching,” she told me. “I didn’t feel any pressure, because ultimately it is my responsibility to assign teaching and I felt like I had made a decision that worked for my faculty members and for the students in our program and I would have held my guns on this one for sure.”
She told me that the dean’s office did decide however, that faculty should not be asked to plan two different classes — one online and one in-person — for one course.
“We don’t think that’s fair, particularly to our academic teaching staff who are paid to teach one course,” she said. “To ask them to prepare two courses and pay them for one is completely exploitative, and we’re not going to do that.”
The decision to hold a class in-person versus online is set in stone, she told me. Unless of course a fourth wave hits, in which case the university would have to pivot online like it did in Spring 2020.
We reached out to the University of Alberta for comment on how these decisions were made and whether there was any coordination between senior administrators and department chairs on determining the level of in-person courses. They provided us with the following statement from Melissa Padfield, Vice-Provost & University Registrar:
“Decisions around which courses would offer in-person versus online sections were made by the individual faculties,” Padfield said. “These decisions were based on the unique needs of each course and program. Instructors are encouraged to check-in with the Centre for Teaching and Learning for teaching consults and resources to help them prepare for the new year.”
“Whether in person, online, or in a hybrid format, all students will continue to receive the high quality U of A educational experience they value.”
Unclear if students are satisfied with fall scheduling
The preferences of students seems to be one of the more minor factors in the decision process when compared to logistics, health, and safety. When asked if she thought students were satisfied with the scheduling, Meagher explained to me that it can be difficult to tell.
“I don’t have any sense of student satisfaction until I get the USRIs, the undergraduate student ratings of instruction. That’s when I find out how satisfied students are,” she said. “I haven’t had any complaints but that doesn’t mean students aren’t dissatisfied, I think.”
“If I do assume that registration numbers means satisfaction, then I would say students seem pretty satisfied with the decisions that we’ve made because our classes are very full and we’re in a small department that doesn’t always have very full classes,” she explained. “We’ve got more registrations this semester than we’ve ever had in any other fall semester.”
However, a survey conducted by the Students’ Union in April 2021 suggests that most students would feel comfortable returning to campus if they were vaccinated. Students were in favour of things like masking, social distancing, and small class sizes to allow them to return in-person comfortably. Additionally, results from the vaccination survey conducted by the U of A showed that 91 per cent of student respondents reported being vaccinated. On the other side however, many international students who are going to be unable to fly to Canada for the fall semester have been asking for more online course options.
If students are eager to come back to campus for mostly in-person learning, the reality is that many will have to wait until the winter semester. We are returning to school amidst a fourth wave and the university administration has recently pivoted with masking measures and rapid testing requirements for unvaccinated students to reflect this fact. It is clear we still have a long road ahead of us and the difficult decisions around fall scheduling reflects this fact.
