During COVID-19 times teaching has gone virtual - what is next?

How did students cope with the switch from classroom to online teaching?

The sudden switch worked remarkably well. Both when asked directly and in an anonymous survey, student feedback was very positive. Of course, circumstances and working style differ between students - but overall, students appear to get along very well with online teaching.

There has been an information update by the Rector’s office on Friday 24 April. Can you say a few words about the teaching-related milestones that will be possible in Phase 1 and Phase 2?

During Phase 1, which covers the remainder of the semester and the June exam session, all teaching and exams must be carried out online. During Phase 2, students are allowed back on campus, and can resume experimental lab work. First-year students can thus start their 8-weeks project after the June exam period, and second-year students are expected to resume their experimental Master thesis work from June 8th. The exams in August are expected to take place on campus. Also, the mandatory lab courses for our first-year students are planned to resume in mid-August. Here, we still need to figure out the details of how to operate under social distancing rules…

The rector of ETH Zurich, Sarah Springman, stresses that it is ETH Zurich’s aim to have no student miss a semester. Now, what is your opinion: will students be as well prepared for the upcoming examinations after a semester of online teaching as if they would have learned all the material during classroom teaching?

According to my personal experience (which appears to be shared by others), students tend to be better prepared if lectures are available in recorded form. We may therefore see better results in many exams. However, not all students can focus on their studies in a normal way during these extraordinary times as they may have to take care of others or have to cope with personal illness or isolation. Accordingly, any failed exam in June will not count towards their degree. Moreover, all my colleagues agreed to offer a repetition opportunity in September for all June exams held at D-BSSE.

You already mentioned the practical and laboratory courses at D-BSSE which will be available again during late August / Sept: do you expect special safety protocols to be valid at that time, such as 2-metres social distancing, wearing masks in the laboratory and so forth…?

We certainly need to ensure safety and minimize the risk of virus transmission at all times. But the 2-metres distance-rule will be difficult to realise in the student labs. We are in touch with the ETH Unit for Safety, Security, Health and Environment (SGU) to better understand how we can address this issue. We hope that we can build on the experience of hair dressers who also cannot maintain 2-metres distance to their clients.

I am coming to the outlook. What do you expect for Phase 3 in September when new students arrive, and beyond the COVID-19 times: What is your personal prediction: will online teaching be fully replaced again by classroom teaching or do students and professors at D-BSSE fancy either the physical or the digital classroom?

We are currently planning for a return to on-campus teaching from September, and I look forward to welcoming our new cohort of students in person. Social distancing rules will still apply, which will create additional challenges in building a community among the new cohort of students. Given the size of our lecture rooms, a maximum of 22 students will be able to attend a lecture on the D-BSSE campus at a time. Accordingly, I expect that online teaching will continue at least in part, and for the laboratory courses we will have to carry on with the solution that we will find for the summer lab courses. In the long-run, teaching is likely to profit from new online resources that colleagues build and experiment with at the moment. These will be welcome supplements in the post-pandemic times. But I am sure we will all be glad when we can go back to in-person teaching. Campus life and personal interactions offer a very different experience and engagement. It will be great to get back to that…!


Many thanks, Dagmar! I recon we are all looking forward to the big crowds bringing back life to the Science Lounge and the labs later this year!