Working from home is probably the fate of many lecturers for most of the coming academic year. Over the past six months, we have all increased screen time and have become experienced in using Zoom, Teams, Skype and other tools for online meetings with students and colleagues. Some personal experiences:
The image above shows the view from my bedroom / office, with a beautiful sunrise. From this room, I've delivered my undergraduate freshers course Design of Structures and Foundations 1 during the Summer Term at TU Delft. Luckily, the evaluation showed a quite positive result: students, overall, were happy with the way the course was delivered. It was a huge effort, which could not have been succesfull without the help of a younger colleague that prepared most of the coursework, a GTA that made a very clear index of all captured lecture videos of the previous academic year, and a team of 10 GTAs that on a weekly basis each guided 30 to 40 students through the coursework, using a Zoom class with breakout rooms.
The exam and the resit exam were done from home (students and me) using Maple TA. We were not able to reuse all old questions, since due to the remote position of the students, we now suddenly had an open-book exam, rendering some existing knowledge questions very easy. However, by using parametric questions, each students was working with a slightly different parameter set (see image below), and received questions in a different order. In some cases we drew questions from a pool of equally difficult questions on the same topic. Luckily, we had already been using Maple TA for years, so that part didn't make us nervous. This was the first time in my life that I attended the exam from the camping site during my holiday, which was a nice option that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
The image above shows the view from my bedroom / office, with a beautiful sunrise. From this room, I've delivered my undergraduate freshers course Design of Structures and Foundations 1 during the Summer Term at TU Delft. Luckily, the evaluation showed a quite positive result: students, overall, were happy with the way the course was delivered. It was a huge effort, which could not have been succesfull without the help of a younger colleague that prepared most of the coursework, a GTA that made a very clear index of all captured lecture videos of the previous academic year, and a team of 10 GTAs that on a weekly basis each guided 30 to 40 students through the coursework, using a Zoom class with breakout rooms.
The exam and the resit exam were done from home (students and me) using Maple TA. We were not able to reuse all old questions, since due to the remote position of the students, we now suddenly had an open-book exam, rendering some existing knowledge questions very easy. However, by using parametric questions, each students was working with a slightly different parameter set (see image below), and received questions in a different order. In some cases we drew questions from a pool of equally difficult questions on the same topic. Luckily, we had already been using Maple TA for years, so that part didn't make us nervous. This was the first time in my life that I attended the exam from the camping site during my holiday, which was a nice option that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
The introduction of the new students in the beginning of September went well. Most of the international students had indeed arrived in Delft, except 2 or 3 that were struggling with travel restrictions. With the excellent help of our study association U-Base (United Building and Structural Engineering) we were able to have a nice online welcome meeting and introduction, in which each student could introduce him/herself, there were some lectures, a design competition, and an on-campus pizza event under social-distancing rules, which went well and allowed us to meet in person.
The Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences offers the first-year students the opportunity to spend one day per week on campus, and we have thus been able to deliver two blocks of two hours live education, while the rest of the lectures unfortunately remain delivered remotely.
Overall, I'm not completely unhappy with the way things have gone so far. Everyone has a sense of urgency, and we all accept that things are not like we would have normally done it. Still, the almost daily online contact with students also results in a sort of connectedness. We see that they try their best, and students see, that we are also trying to support them as good as possible.
Let's hope and pray that the second wave will be limited and that perhaps the Spring Term can be delivered from a blooming campus again, both in Delft and in London!
Roel Schipper
September 2020
The Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences offers the first-year students the opportunity to spend one day per week on campus, and we have thus been able to deliver two blocks of two hours live education, while the rest of the lectures unfortunately remain delivered remotely.
Overall, I'm not completely unhappy with the way things have gone so far. Everyone has a sense of urgency, and we all accept that things are not like we would have normally done it. Still, the almost daily online contact with students also results in a sort of connectedness. We see that they try their best, and students see, that we are also trying to support them as good as possible.
Let's hope and pray that the second wave will be limited and that perhaps the Spring Term can be delivered from a blooming campus again, both in Delft and in London!
Roel Schipper
September 2020