Take a deep breath. You are about to launch into an online adventure.

By Doug Ward

We need to talk.

Yes, the conversation will make you uncomfortable. It’s important, though. Your students need your guidance, and if you avoid talking about this, they will act anyway – usually in unsafe ways that could have embarrassing and potentially harmful consequences.

So yes, we need to talk about generative artificial intelligence.

This is what teaching online looks like.

That’s not quite right. This is what planning for teaching online looks like after a week and a weekend of long days and an early meeting on Monday morning.

About noon, I looked down and realized I was wearing mismatched boots. Some people wear mismatched socks. I wear mismatched boots.

One aspect of online teaching that I feared would make it less enjoyable for me as an instructor is that my students and I wouldn’t get to know one another as well as we do in our in-person courses.

I thought that it would be difficult to replicate the interaction and dynamic atmosphere of a classroom where we all exchange ideas, participate in thoughtful discussions, challenge each other’s beliefs and positions, develop an understanding of and respect for one another, and come to care about each other as fellow humans.

The fog that settled on the Lawrence campus Monday morning seemed all too fitting.

Classes officially resumed after an extended spring break, but Jayhawk Boulevard was mostly empty, as were the buses that passed by. Faculty and students alike ventured into a hazy online learning environment cobbled together with unseen computer chips and hidden strings of code. Even the most optimistic took slow, careful steps onto a path with an uncertain end point.

With apologies to the late Warren Zevon, isolation is hardly splendid – at least when it is forced upon us.

The shift to remote teaching this semester quickly became a form of torture by isolation inflicted upon us by microscopic organisms. There has to be a bright spot somewhere, though. Right?

Dear sleep deprived colleagues,

We ask you to take a few minutes to consider these not-so-solemn words. Full disclosure: You have all been muted for the duration of this speech.