Fall 2020 Online Semester

Students in Windsor have started the fall 2020 semester with online learning and on-campus protocols. 

Ryan Flannagan, associate vice-president of the student experience at the University of Windsor said there are a lot of tools that the university uses to conduct classes. 

“There are a lot of facilities such as Blackboard Collaborate, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom that we are predominantly using to support our classes,” said Flannagan. 

But Windsor elementary and secondary schools have a different plan for reopening. 

Stephen Fields, the communications coordinator at the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, said they provided both options – in school or at home learning – and simply asked parents to declare which option they were choosing prior to the start of school in September. 

They also organized classes according to the group in which the students are enrolled. 

 “In the secondary level (Grade 9-12), the students who are attending in person have divided into two cohorts and they attend in the morning on alternating days,” said Fields. “On the days that they are not in school then the teacher delivers lessons in real-time simultaneously to the students in class and to the students at home via webcam.” 

Fields said in the elementary panel (Grade JK-8), students who opted to attend school in person are in class every day for a full school day as normally scheduled. 

“Those who elected to stay home were organized into virtual classes and their teachers instruct them via Google Meet,” said Fields. 

The main challenge of online learning is students and staff not having access to sufficient broadband internet connection. 

According to Statistics Canada, 1.2 percent of households with children do not have access to the internet at home. Moreover, 58.4 percent of households who have access had less than one device per member. 

Fields said online learning does pose some challenges for certain classes such as physical education, music, and more hands-on technical courses, but teachers have found creative solutions to those challenges. 

Fields said school operations in the next semester will depend on community transmission rates of COVID-19. 

 “We will continue to watch our case counts and will adapt according to the situation,” said Fields. 

Flannagan said the University of Windsor has already made a statement that most courses will be online in the winter.