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Right. Dame Nancy, @OfficialUoM, are you paying attention? A thread. 1/n https://twitter.com/JamesBSumner/status/1313519359239901190
The full quote that you excerpted from was "In many cases, there are essentially no benefits of in-person teaching under necessary health and safety constraints to outweigh the risks." Clearly there are MANY benefits of in-person teaching. In general. 2/n
In case you missed it, much of the rest of the paragraph talked about pedagogy, which is startlingly absent in your rebuttal. What are we going to do in these lovely in person seminars? 3/n
With students sitting 2m from each other, all facing forward, spread across an entire lecture theatre, wearing masks, good large-group discussion will be hard, small group work will basically be impossible. No sharing of objects. Hard to look at detailed texts together. 4/n
Sharing papers could happen, but that requires students with laptops (cf. "digital divide"). And still they can't sit close enough together not to be speaking very loudly, along with all of the other peer editing pairs talking very loudly. Not great. 5/n
So basically we're looking at lectures, delivered in a mask (makes it harder to hear and has disability access implications), that have to be repeated because of class sizes, with a reduced amount of contact time! Because see below. 6/n
Student preferences are great. I haven't seen the survey you sent them, but did you mention that in-person classes will be about 15 minutes shorter than online ones (that's 1/4 of class time for hour-long classes)? 7/n
Did you ask the staff who miss personal connections whether that lack is in fact worth the kind of risk that many experts have identified as coming along with on-campus teaching? I miss them A LOT. I'm also willing to give up quite a few of them to keep people safe. 8/n
Perhaps the most important thing you mention is the "digital divide". But having small group teaching in person doesn't remedy this because most students will still also have quite a bit of online work to be doing. 9/n
Things that the university can do to help bridge this divide (help provide computers, internet, study spaces) would still work if we're all or mostly online (as long as campus is still open), but WITH LESS RISK! Amazing how that works. 10/n
While I'm glad to see you're concerned about mental health, it's a) telling that you don't mention the mental health of everyone else (like staff) and b) a little worrying how much emphasis you seem to place on classes (and teaching staff) to address mental health problems. 11/n
But that wasn't the only part of the argument. It was not that there were no benefits. It was that the benefits did not outweigh the risks. So what are the risks? Well. Glad you asked. Manchester now appears to have the highest increase in COVID cases in the country! 12/n
And the parts of Manchester that are most seriously affected are the student neighbourhoods populated with students that you got to come back because we'd be offering in-person teaching. Top of the league tables. Yay us. 13/n
This was both predictable and preventable. Pretty much everyone who knew anything about epidemiology or higher education or young adults or urban housing or any combination of the above not only could have predicted it, but was predicting it. 14/n
And of course it's not just students and staff that are affected. I have an elderly neighbour who is so terrified about the rise in infections that she won't leave her house. And she's probably seeing numbers that are significantly underestimated. 15/n
(There are other experts out there talking about this issue, but apparently quite a few of our students didn't know they were supposed to report, plus it was weirdly difficult, plus apparently some are being encouraged to send housemates out for food?) 16/n
All in all? I'd say that we're pretty solidly in the very easily-anticipated "essentially no benefits of in-person teaching under necessary health and safety constraints to outweigh the risks" territory. 17/n
Plus (shout out to the timetabling staff) we now have a timetable that may or may not transfer well to the all online teaching that we're suddenly (rather than with time to plan) doing! 18/18
tl;dr Often poorer pedagogy, students don't always choose wisely (especially when not given needed, honest information), this doesn't solve the digital divide, teachers aren't mental health experts, the community's at risk too. 19/18
