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One of the real quandaries facing higher education today is the fact that our customers feel that they are getting an inferior product (remote, Hyflex, or Hybrid) and should pay less, while faculty are working harder than ever to deliver instruction. This is a real discrepancy.
Pre-pandemic, unless a faculty member was teaching a course for the 1 r 2 time, there wasn't much prep required. Just pull out the slides, assignments, & tests from last time - and go. Faculty are experts, and it was simple & easy 2 pull out slides and speak extemporaneously.
From the faculty member's point of view, pre-pandemic, this is how most teaching was done, particularly at research Universities.
Now, with the hyflex, hybrid, or remote options, faculty are working harder than ever. I must have put in 200+ extra hours this summer, prepping assignments for a hybrid model, recording videos showing solutions 4 problem sets, thinking the organization of the class through.
As a result, students are getting the best course I've ever offered. There's more content available, it's organized better, solutions are documented and reinforced with videos. The course schedule is laid out in advance, and we're sticking to it. Grading is a bit more lenient.
Every class meeting is recorded and made available, providing more flexible attendance options for students who sometimes need to stay out of the F2F environment.
But yet, this is largely seen as an inferior product that should be offered at a reduced price.
This is the dilemma and opportunity because somehow the perceived value of what we provide isn't correlating with the total cost in terms of time and effort required to produce instruction. That's now how things are supposed to work.
If we do anything post-COVID in HE, let's fix this discrepancy.
