Here in Brazil we are slowly returning to face-to-face activities, and this includes university classes. Most proposal suggest that we do this gradually, by first implementing a hybrid teaching system (e.g. with 40% in-class and 60% online activities), and only going back to fully in-person activities after the situation is safer for everyone.
One big problem we are facing during these discussions is how to properly distribute online and in-person acitivites in a way that:
- avoids agglomerations (e.g. at any given time at most 30% of the usual number of students is at the university, when compared to pre-COVID era)
- avoids situations where a students never goes to the university.
- avoids students having in-person classes right after an online one (or vice-versa).
- avoids packed classrooms.
The current best solution seems to be returning labs and final-year courses in the first semester of 2022, then labs and last and next-to-final-year courses in the second semester of 2022, etc., however this does not address the last point.
I am looking for specific guidelines, experiences and results from other countries and universities, when implementing a partial return to in-person activities.
The university I work at, UFSC, has 5 campi and ~40,000 students.
(I also appreciate descriptions of other experiences, not involving hybrid learning, although those will probably not be adopted here.)
Thank you very much in advance.
