It is Thursday of the second full week of classes. It has been mostly okay so far, although I do sometimes feel a sense of impending doom. The college has reported only five cases of COVID-19 among students, faculty, and staff, although we aren't doing any testing so nobody knows the real number of infections. I've had a couple of students sent to quarantine because they were in contact with someone.
My General Chemistry lecture of 65 students is down to 63, but we have mostly gotten used to the Zoom format. The worst part (for me) is that only about half the students are automatically assigned to their breakout rooms, and every class I have to manually sort the rest. At least I'm getting faster with that. I think the class is going surprisingly well. Students are participating, some stay after class almost every day to ask questions, and they are mostly turning in the work. A handful have already visited my virtual office hours too. I made my first online quiz last week and it was a bit too much. Four questions, three of which required students to upload a photo of their written work. It took hours and hours to go through all of that and manually grade each question. This week's quiz is shorter and hopefully will be quicker to grade.
I have met all my Gen Chem lab students now. Half came last week and the rest came this week. I haven't taught the fall lab in a long time and it's kind of neat to have the raw beginners again. The first day was mostly checking in to the drawers and the kits, and then a lot of safety rules, but they also got to do a little experiment activity.
My other class is also meeting on Zoom because the students work in teams and that isn't practical in the classroom with the distancing requirement. I only have 12 in that class, so three teams of four students. They are pretty good about working together, but it's slower than when I did the same activities in person. Today I even figured out how to do some comprehension checks during the breakout room time. I asked each team to use the Ask for Help button when they got to a certain place in the activity and then I popped in to their room and we talked about the stuff. One team had to wait a few minutes for me to finish with another team, but otherwise it was okay.
That class also has in-person lab, and we're able to be there all together. That has been fun. I haven't had many students for the past three or so years, and suddenly I have 12 and it feels like a real class again. There is more conversation going on, I guess.
In all my lab sections, students are good about wearing their masks and cleaning but bad about distancing. They just don't do it even when I say something to them. My upper-level class sits together in the hall before lab, basically shoulder to shoulder despite the multiple prominent stickers telling them to stay 6 feet apart. And honestly, I don't know if it matters. They live together and eat together and probably spend all their out-of-class time together. The labs at least have excellent ventilation so I feel pretty safe when we're all in there. I'm not taking any extra precautions in lab beyond wearing my mask, washing my hands, and trying to stay distant from everyone when I'm not actively working with a student.
I'm still spending all day in my campus office. It's just so much easier to work here than at home. I keep the door closed and only go out two or three times a day to heat up lunch, visit the printer, or go to the restroom. I am trying to prepare classes enough in advance that I don't need to come in on weekends. I can grade assignments at home on Saturdays. Today I felt sort of caught up for the first time since we started and I rewarded myself by unboxing this desk toy I bought 18 months ago (I had to go check my receipt to remember!)
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