There is a big question hanging over UC Berkeley as well as many other campuses: how will education resume in the fall? Will we be able to return to campus? Might it be necessary to continue remote instruction for all classes? Or will some hybrid scheme be developed? Surely extensive consultation with faculty — in every discipline — is crucial if we are to maintain the integrity of the academic enterprise.
Going remote has been a jarring experience for all concerned, heightening awareness of the many drawbacks of online education, both for students and for faculty. Yet campus is already planning to make Summer Sessions classes — an important revenue source — fully online, and recruiting lecturers to teach them. Meantime, the campus’s Public Affairs office is soliciting from instructors “success stories” about this semester’s move to remote instruction, no doubt to encourage enrollments.
Last week, Vice-Provost for Faculty Benjamin Hermalin sent out the results of the campus employee morale survey. It had a response rate of 40%, which is high for these sort of surveys. It’s important, however, that such a survey– addressed to staff as well as faculty, and in the early, adrenaline-fueled phase of adaptation — not be used as a surrogate for faculty consultation about instruction. We were surprised, for example, by one sentence in VP Hermalin’s summary: “For those of us who are able to work from home, 84% said they had the equipment needed, and many expressed the desire to continue working from home after the crisis.” The sentence might seem to suggest a correlation between “having equipment” and desiring to work from home after the crisis; certainly the mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures suggests that the “many” expressing such a desire is comparable to the 84% who are equipped to do so.
Examining the report, we found that “many” turns out to be some 56 employees, just 1% of the survey’s respondents, and the report does not even differentiate between faculty and staff responses. If the administration is trying to convey the idea that remote instruction is preferred, then we believe they are grossly mistaken. All the anecdotal evidence suggests this is far from being the case–at least, from the standpoint of faculty, lecturers and students.
To move beyond anecdote, the system-wide Academic Senate has initiated its own survey of how you have fared under remote teaching. Many of you will have already filled out the survey, but if you haven’t, we urge you to do so. It takes only 10 minutes, and it could be important in fighting to maintain serious quality education on our campus. Please fill it out before 4p.m. tomorrow (Monday, April 27).
Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Berkeley Faculty Association