Day 29: administrative travails
Friday, 24 April 2020 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI have spent the week running online orientation for our students' remote learning. which has been... challenging. Because we are in post-apartheid South Africa, which still has massive social inequalities (although, under late capitalism who doesn't, frankly?), and there is absolutely no way that a significant chunk of our students will have access to the internet or laptops or bandwidth or data in sufficient quantities to make remote learning easy or even possible, even before we get to the skills problem. (The very flawed survey they did a week or two back says that something like 30% of our students don't have suitable access). I keep having to deal with emails from students in rural areas who have had to travel from home to borrow a friend's phone in order to have either the data or the connection to send email, and are panicking about the absolute impossibility of learning online under those conditions.
And the whole thing has been complicated by my Cherished Institution, which is huge and slow and complacent, and has woken up to the exigencies of the situation like a particularly somnolent leviathan several hours after the alarm clock has given up beeping. Wits had data plans in place for their students ten days ago. We have spent the week rushing to roll them out, having pasted them in hurriedly when it became apparent that zero-rating certain key sites was insufficient, while frantic appeals mount in my inbox. We have sourced laptops for students who need them, but those are also only going out this week, and again with the desperate emails, and it's only for SA students, so international students are sitting in shitshows like Zimbabwe absolutely abandoned. Communication has been bad, reponsiveness has been bad, I really think the institution is floundering in the crisis.
My particular situation has been complicated by the need to do curriculum change remotely, except that the registrar's office wants students to submit forms through the student database rather than by email, which is fine except that they have spent the last week and a bit assuring us that yes, they'll set it up and explain the process, and then not doing that. While the emails from frantic students desperate to drop courses pile up in my inbox. Are you sensing a theme here, with the inbox? I am doing a shitload of cut and paste, mostly placatory generalities and exhortations to be patient.
This all sounds rather dire, but actually mostly the orientation has gone well, I have assembled a kick-butt team (mostly grad students, because heaven forfend actual academics should actually put in any time) to reply to student queries, and the sites are nicely designed by the university's online teaching team. But I have started yet another Stardew Valley game, because Witcher 3 keeps making me do things I don't want to, and apparently I need to have a small corner of my life in which I can advance with measurable progress and which is absolutely under my control.
And the whole thing has been complicated by my Cherished Institution, which is huge and slow and complacent, and has woken up to the exigencies of the situation like a particularly somnolent leviathan several hours after the alarm clock has given up beeping. Wits had data plans in place for their students ten days ago. We have spent the week rushing to roll them out, having pasted them in hurriedly when it became apparent that zero-rating certain key sites was insufficient, while frantic appeals mount in my inbox. We have sourced laptops for students who need them, but those are also only going out this week, and again with the desperate emails, and it's only for SA students, so international students are sitting in shitshows like Zimbabwe absolutely abandoned. Communication has been bad, reponsiveness has been bad, I really think the institution is floundering in the crisis.
My particular situation has been complicated by the need to do curriculum change remotely, except that the registrar's office wants students to submit forms through the student database rather than by email, which is fine except that they have spent the last week and a bit assuring us that yes, they'll set it up and explain the process, and then not doing that. While the emails from frantic students desperate to drop courses pile up in my inbox. Are you sensing a theme here, with the inbox? I am doing a shitload of cut and paste, mostly placatory generalities and exhortations to be patient.
This all sounds rather dire, but actually mostly the orientation has gone well, I have assembled a kick-butt team (mostly grad students, because heaven forfend actual academics should actually put in any time) to reply to student queries, and the sites are nicely designed by the university's online teaching team. But I have started yet another Stardew Valley game, because Witcher 3 keeps making me do things I don't want to, and apparently I need to have a small corner of my life in which I can advance with measurable progress and which is absolutely under my control.
