It took one extra day then they’d probably wanted, but San Francisco State University - my employer - has suspended in-person classes for the rest of this month, due to the ongoing coronavirus threat. All instruction will be converted to remote and online starting next week, while for the rest of this one, staff and faculty is to prepare intently for that change, and the other affects of the prolonged campus shutdown.
You didn’t think I’d be free from the duties of work, did you? Plane tickets are cheap, sadly…
The horrible situation in Italy shows the potential chaos should the coronavirus be mishandled. While the circumstances in San Francisco are still in its infancy we should be doing everything we can to prevent a sudden and exponential increase in cases. That includes limiting or eliminating the opportunities for people to gather, such as crowded workspaces, and classrooms at schools. Of course, individually we should wash our hands thoroughly and often, while refraining from touching our faces with bare hands.
When this coronavirus business is done and over with (relatively quickly, we pray), I think it’s going to create paradigm shifts in different industries, perhaps lasting ones. Take for example universities taking classes completely online: what if a sizable amount of people - both students and teachers - discover that taking classes remotely and asynchronously is actually rather awesome? For a commuter campus like ours, who wants to sit in traffic for an hour, then fight desperately for parking, just to take one class for the day?
If enough people prefer the online method of attending class, I suspect there will be a big shift towards it even after things returns to normality. Support staff like us would benefit, too, because supporting remote classes using online ticketing systems can be done anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. The flexibility to work from home is not to be discounted lightly, because the commuter campus label for SF State doesn’t only apply to the people attending, but for a large portion of the staff as well. I have a colleague who travels all the way from Stockton; every single day.
Things are changing; it’s going to be a weird few weeks.
All the clouds but no rain.