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Sunday, September 19, 2021

What's In-Person? What's Online?

The Daily Bruin has a piece about students trying to find in-person courses in the latest issue:

Bruins are expressing feelings of uncertainty for fall quarter as UCLA moves into a hybrid learning model of instruction.

Chancellor Gene Block announced in June that UCLA plans to return to mostly in-person instruction in the fall, with around 80% of classes in person. UCLA later announced that large lectures would be primarily online with discussion sections in person.

Although students will be moving back onto the Hill in full capacity, many will be attending some or most of their classes online. Some classes are planning for instruction seemingly with little guidance from UCLA’s proposed guidelines...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2021/09/17/uclas-hybrid-learning-model-leaves-many-bruins-with-concerns-about-fall-classes.

The article goes on with interviews of various students trying to put together their course schedules. 

Out of curiosity, yours truly poked around on the registrar's webpage for courses, particularly those likely to be taken by lower division students. There is indeed a mix of online and in-person classes and the online ones are themselves a mix of types ({pre}recorded vs. real time, etc.) It isn't necessarily only the large-enrollment courses that are online. Some courses, such as introductory language courses, that I would have thought would be best taught in-person, are in fact online. Even some fiat lux courses - which are supposed to be smaller seminars - are online.

There is no indication about hygiene rules within the in-person classes in the course listing, e.g., social distancing with regard to seating.

You can poke around for yourself at the course listings for fall at:

https://sa.ucla.edu/ro/public/soc.

Note that UCLA follows LA County rules so it is possible that, if case incidence starts rising, some in-person instruction might revert to online. 

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