Musings on teaching in person

Two days from now, it will be the first time for me to teach an in-person lab session since the Covid-19 virus hit the UK.

Now there is a lot of discussion about whether in-person teaching is a good thing or not, and here in the UK's the unions are already making a move to get rid of it while the pandemic rages on and test and trace isn't fixed. But frankly it's not up to me to decide whether to teach in person or not, as those decisions are normally made by the Upper Echelons of University Management, who often go by excessively prefixed and Latinized job titles, because a simple phrase like “Director” simply isn't popular enough.

In this post, I just want to summarise the thoughts and opinions I have been having about this all, and share those with all of you for your consideration. I am happy to see my views corrected or trashed, and Twitter or Mg.Social would be the place of choice to do that :).

Will teaching in person worsen the Covid-19 spread?

After having read about topics around this for several months now, I think the answer to that question is a clear YES. However, by how much it worsens the spread depends on the precaution taken during the teaching:

Do help?

Many people and universities clearly think they do, but a recent article using a supercomputer calculation claims that they're largely ineffective at preventing spread.

In my opinion, any kind of barrier should help reduce the spray of stuff when you speak (as an aside, house walls work particularly well, but laying down bricks and mortar halfway down the pub table might not be the most charming way of infection prevention). But of course a visor doesn't quite seal off the face as well as a medical-grade mask does. So relying on a visor alone probably isn't a good idea?

If you wear a visor, then I think we'd need to pair it with a mask :). Source: Wikimedia commons.

How does one debug a code while social distancing?

In England we have to social distance 2 meters. But the main purpose of having Computer Science lab sessions at all is to help students in debugging their broken programs.

And that debugging involves operating a keyboard and a mouse, whilst looking at the student's screen. An alternative could be to remotely control a student's computer, but that opens up a whole new can of (cybersecurity-related) worms.

Come to think of it, perhaps we should just all have our own keyboard and mouse at least, and just plug it into workstations when we help students out? A good screen I can view from 2m distance, but I lack the implements to operate a mouse over 2 meters ;).

Reminiscing of childhood cartoons I posted about a while ago, Inspector Gadget surely would be an asset for socially distances investigations... Source: *pixy.org*.

My closing thoughts

I'm not fundamentally afraid of running an in-person lab session, but I do prefer to be on the safe side of things, because I want to be sure I've done all I reasonably could to prevent any possible latent infection on my side from propagating to the students. Can you imagine what it would feel like to realise you were the source asymptomatic superspreader of some massive Covid-19 outbreak?

I also recommended students to wear a mask, but fully understand it can't be made mandatory, as some people are physically not well able to breathe through a mask, or have psychological difficulties with wearing one.

I also do see the fundamental benefit of running a physical programming lab session in a very select set of circumstances: when people cannot do their work otherwise, or when they are stuck with a problem so intricate that it can't be troubleshooted online.

In the end, there are two things that really matter to me in this context:

Lastly, for the teachers among us, I found this quite useful Conversation article on how to effectively teach with a mask.

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