Ohio State announced Friday the creation of a task force to direct the return of “appropriate on-campus operations” once the COVID-19 outbreak has been contained, and faculty and administration are taking precautions in case in-person fall classes are also forced to transition online. Credit: Casey Cascaldo | Managing Editor for Multimedia
The question on many students’ minds right now is whether or not they will be able to return to campus for fall classes at Ohio State, and although the plan is unclear, professors are preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Ohio State announced the cancellation of all in-person classes for the remainder of the spring semester on March 12, and since then, summer classes have also been moved online. A Friday Ohio State press release announced the creation of a task force to direct the return of “appropriate on-campus operations” once the COVID-19 outbreak has been contained, and faculty and administration are taking precautions in case in-person fall classes are also forced to transition online.
“There’s so much uncertainty that people are trying to plan for radically different scenarios and each scenario has all these different moving parts to it,” Thomas Davis, an associate professor in the Department of English, said.
The post-pandemic operations task force will plan the return of campus operations and faculty, staff and students will be represented in the planning process, the release said.
“All university units have begun transition planning while still responding to the crisis at hand,” University President Michael V. Drake said in the release. “The task force will align planning across the wide spectrum of functions and operations necessary to the university’s return to on-campus operations.”
The timetable for the back-to-campus transition is still unclear, the release said.
During the spring semester switch, Ohio State extended spring break by one week so professors could better prepare their in-person lectures for an online format. James Onate, associate professor of health and rehabilitation sciences, said he spent 3 1/2 hours creating eight online modules to replace his normal hour-long, in-person lectures.
“I mean, we just have to think of new strategies and go, ‘OK, is there a better way?’” Onate said.
Davis said his department told him he should start planning ahead for his two in-person fall semester classes. He was told to prepare for another shift to online, in case campus remains closed into fall.
“Online classes actually take a long time to build up,” Davis said. “They take a great deal of planning.”
Davis said professors will likely have to take time over the summer to plan for uncertain scenarios so planned assignments for fall classes can adapt to both in-person and online learning.
James Bonus, an assistant professor in the School of Communication, said the number of students allowed to enroll in his online fall semester class has doubled, going from a cap of 100 students to 200.
“I’m thinking more about, like, there’s lots of strengths here too, even though we’re missing out on some things, so it’s really just trying to figure out how to rescue those things that we might lose, shifting online,” Bonus said.
