"We have come a very long way in a very short time"
In the interview, Director of Studies Prof. Juerg Leuthold talks about the biggest challenges for lecturers and students in times of Corona, learnings for the future and how he personally deals with the unfamiliar situation.
Most D-ITET members, like all ETH staff, currently have to work from home in order to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.
Prof. Leuthold, what is the current situation?
The crisis came suddenly, but our department reacted quickly and decisively. On 4 March a first e-mail with tips and guidance was sent to the professors, and only one week after the announcement that ETH wanted to switch its courses to online teaching, we were already completely online! There is currently just one lecture offered by the D-GESS, which we had to cancel, but this was because the teacher was also involved in medical activities. Other than that, all lectures and courses are online. So we have come a very long way in a very short time. I am proud of the department and of all the doctoral students involved in teaching, who made this possible.
What are the biggest challenges for lecturers and students?
In my view the biggest challenge for a lecturer is to keep the students as engaged as if they were in class. If you see the students and their reactions, you teach differently. We have to get used to the idea to “act” in front of a camera without seeing the audience. The younger generation is certainly many steps ahead of us if you look at their "professional" Youtube videos. Of course, some technical difficulties had to be circumnavigated. So, for instance, I realize that my hardware has not been purchased for video-processing. Cutting a and recompiling a video clip on my laptop takes ages.
“I am proud of the department and also of all the doctoral students involved in teaching.”Prof. Juerg Leuthold, Director of Studies
What were the main issues?
At the beginning, we had bottlenecks with the recordings in the lecture halls, there were issues around the rollout of Zoom and legal questions about the use of this tool, and we face the abolition of mid-terms. I am happy, though, that things are progressing rapidly.
Are there any other challenges that come with the current crisis?
The discontinuation of research in the laboratory hits us all very hard, but we try to come up with creative solutions. We now primarily focus on the theoretical aspects of our research and take care of the administrative paperwork that was neglected over time.
The biggest challenge for the students now is to keep up with the regular teaching schedule. The teaching goes on at a normal pace. It is very tempting to procrastinate and to think: "I will go through the material during the semester break". In an attempt to improve this, we will take even more care of students, who need additional motivation in their isolation. Fortunately, we were able to prevent that learning elements, such as bonuses for exercises or similar, were cancelled. Still all intermediate examinations had to be discontinued. Likewise, many lab courses, projects and seminars had to be remodeled to be more theoretical. Other practical labs, where a transformation is not possible, are rescheduled to be held as block courses in summer.
We will also have to deal with the question of how to conduct the exams. The team of Educational Development and Technology (LET) is working together with the departments to find a solution. We only can ask the students to have some more patience until we can communicate how and when they will be held!
Do you see any positive effects and learnings for the future?
I think the most positive effect is that we have learnt that it is possible to transition a lot to “online”. You can meet with peers, business partners, your team at the lab etc. instantly without wasting travel time. Particularly ETH Zurich is involved in many national and international research projects, so were got used to travel a lot before. Just considering myself: With some of my projects, I had up to three personal meetings a year, which required a lot of travelling. Now all of a sudden we realize ho effective online meetings can be. This saves time in the Corona lockdown and I guess it will save us time way beyond the Corona crisis. Something very positive!
We realize that the technology has matured to the extend that we can have meetings with hundreds of people without suffering from glitches. I am positively surprised how well the online communication works, particularly with tools like Zoom. These tools have become very simple to use and make our lab stay in contact quite easily. We might keep it later, being able to skip a lot of real time meetings and thus save a lot of time. Especially in my research field of communications, we have told the world for years how we would like to improve internet connections to make technologies like video conferencing easier. Now we see that it really works!
Do you have any tips for both lecturers and students?
For the students: Keep up with the lectures! Anything else is dangerous. The other thing: Look for a peer group to discuss challenges and feel less isolated. Make it a habit to meet regularly online. I know that many already practice a virtual life, whereas others might still need to get used to the idea. A big thank you also to AMIV for external pageproviding a platform, where interested students can register to take part in such groups.
For us as lecturers I think it is good to collect online exercises weekly, just to encourage students to keep up with the material. Giving a bonus for handed in exercises is still permitted and we should do it! Additionally, we now need a lot of new ideas on how to handle the rest of the semester without being present.
How do you personally deal with the unfamiliar situation? Do you work from home?
I was used to working at ETH during the day and at home in my spare time. Now I can save the way to and back from work every day. Of course I miss the direct interaction with my team. With regards to teaching I miss to see the immediate reactions of the students. Everything happens now at the home office. But I have to admit it is also very nice to have my family around. You can share a lot more, have lunch together – this for me comes as a privilege.