Disruptive. Unsettling. Dissatisfied. Those are some of the nicer words university faculty around the country have used when recalling the very rapid transition out of the classroom and into cyberspace in March as the COVID-19 pandemic surged.

Most of us were then and still are today concerned about the health risks of a quick return to in-person teaching, learning, or really anything else in-person on campus. University faculty tend to skew older than the average U.S. workforce, amplifying those concerns. And even if younger faculty members may be a little less worried about health issues, they are much more likely to face a different challenge — having their own children learning or needing care at home.

(l-r top row) Corey Shdaimah, Brent Reed, Alex Likowski; (middle row) Adam Puche, Roger Ward, Isabel Rambob; (bottom row) Gregory Spengler, Christina Cestone, David Gray.

At the same time, many have expressed dismay over what they see as a pernicious trend toward less-effective and less-valuable higher education. A Bay View analytics survey conducted in the thick of it in mid-April seemed to confirm those fears. About half of the 800-plus faculty and administrators surveyed said they did reduce assignments. And about a third admitted relaxing expectations of performance.

Not so fast, wrote three professors from Georgetown and Illinois State universities and Rollins College on May 1 in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “We knew this would happen. Just six short weeks ago [although they’ve felt long], we worried that academe’s emergency shift to remote instruction would result in lots of folks trying to use this crisis to reach conclusions about the value of online teaching.”

They went on to write “a large body of research has documented that good teaching is good teaching, whether it happens in a physical or a virtual classroom. Rather than a collection of tips and tricks, good teaching is guided by research on how students learn.”

On May 20, in a UMB effort to gather research about the pandemic’s impact on teaching and learning, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Roger J. Ward, EdD, JD, MSL, MPA, asked University faculty to participate in a wide-ranging survey. In a letter to faculty, he wrote, “We also want to know how you feel about UMB's COVID-19 response and what we can do to better support you as we plan to transition from a response to recovery posture and a phased return to campus life.”

While UMB’s survey was still ongoing, by the end of that frenzied spring 2020 semester, Michelle Miller of Northern Arizona University summed up her experiences this way:

“Most of us have moved heaven and earth to ensure some kind of continuity in our students’ education, even as we have spent our own days coping with emotional and personal strains we could hardly have imagined mere months ago. In short, we did the job we signed up to do — under conditions that none of us signed up for. And, unfortunately, it looks like many of us will be in the same predicament come September.”

Now, still more than a week away from September, many colleges that did plan to open have decided to cancel or altered those plans due to rising health concerns.

On Aug. 18, Notre Dame University suspended all in-person classes after a surge of COVID cases and a 19 percent positivity rate in testing. A day later, Michigan State University President Samuel Stanley asked students to stay home — at least for now — saying, “It is unlikely we can prevent widespread transmission of COVID-19 between students if our undergraduates return to campus.”

And in what has been characterized in the media as a “fiasco,” the University of North Carolina did an about-face the same week, closing campus after a large COVID outbreak there. The UNC chancellor said he was surprised by the velocity of the outbreak, while the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, had a headline that proclaimed, “We all saw this coming.”

As the UMB fall 2020 semester begins with Round 2 of mostly online learning, the fruits of the University’s faculty survey are finally ready to be shared. On a special edition of Virtual Face to Face with Dr. Bruce Jarrell on Aug. 20, substitute host Ward, who's also dean of the Graduate School, presented the findings (survey results). A panel of faculty leaders joined to help explain the survey results and field questions and comments from the audience. The panel included:

Isabel Rambob, DDS, assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Dentistry

David Gray, JD, PhD, MA, the Jacob A. France Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Adam Puche, PhD, assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Medicine

Corey Shdaimah, PhD, LLM, the Daniel Thursz Distinguished Professor of Social Justice, University of Maryland School of Social Work

Brent Reed, PharmD, BCPS-AQ Cardiology, FAHA, assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy

Greg Spengler, MPA, associate vice president for institutional effectiveness, UMB

Christina Cestone, PhD, executive director, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, UMB

The survey results were compiled from 1,161 total responses. Among the findings:

• 83 percent were extremely or somewhat satisfied with the support they’ve received from their school and central administration to help adjust in the spring.
• 96 percent agreed strongly or somewhat that university level leadership effectively protected faculty from the negative health consequences of covid19.
• 77 percent of faculty researchers say their work was affected by COVID-19, with 35 percent saying the pandemic had a major or catastrophic impact.
• 37 percent taught some or all classes virtually prior to the pandemic, with 79 percent using remote teaching during the pandemic.
• Most respondents said they would continue to use tools like Zoom and Webex even after the pandemic clears.
• 61 percent saw a significant or slight increase in time spent on instruction.
• 66 percent experienced a significant or slight decrease in instructional effectiveness (17 percent significant).

To watch the entire program, including questions from the audience, please access the link above.