In MAT 244 and MAT 334 (Fall) and APM 346 (Spring) of 2920/21 there will be only online classes and no “dual mode”. Why?
All mathematical classes, and MAT 244 “Introduction to Ordinary Differential Equations”, MAT 334 “Complex Variables” and, especially, APM 346 “Partial Differential Equations” have a lot of formulas. Which means, in person classes, that they should be written on the blackboard (which is the common practice, and it is the best) or projected on the screen as a slideshow (which is a rather standard practice in seminar and conference talks).
In the dual mode it means that while some number of students are in the lecture hall, the rest are watching it as a broadcast. The normal ratio was planned to be 1:5–1:7.
And this online majority gets a raw deal! If the blackboard is small, the result is not too bad but if it is a large stacked blackboard, then without a professional technician on-site formulas on the blackboard are poorly readable or not readable at all.
On the other hand, pdf slideshow in the lecture hall defies in-person teaching, at least, in mathematics. Further, pdf slideshow from the screen in the lecture hall is definitely worse than one directly broadcasted from the computer in Zoom.
Plus these students have no interactivity, while in Zoom Lecture there is a rather limited interactivity. The same is true for Tutorials, but in Zoom Tutorial TA can provide more interactivity (since the class is much smaller).
Instructor can send slideshow to both the screen in the lecture hall and Zoom but it leads to a double workload during the lecture and to the worse experience in Zoom learning, than in pure Zoom meeting.
Conclusion: while the dual mode delivery is reasonable for some classes but definitely not for mathematical classes.
At the moment APM 346 (Spring) is scheduled as a dual mode, but it will be fixed, so
LEC 0101 + LEC 9101 → LEC 0101 (online),
LEC 0201 + LEC 9201 → LEC 0201 (online),
TUT 0X0Y + TUT 9X0Y → TUT 0X0Y (online),
TUT 5X0Y + TUT 6X0Y → TUT 5X0Y (online).
