While many schools, including several area colleges remained on-line to start the new school year, the University of Idaho decided to return some in-person learning this fall. U of I College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Michael Parrella said roughly halfway through the fall semester, their efforts have proven to be fairly successful. He noted before classes started in August, one of their main objectives at CALS was to build on and improve from their sudden transition to on-line learning in the spring.

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“Can we create, first off, on-line courses that have been content or that are more strategically developed with the idea of being on-line rather than it being an emergency situation?  So, credit to our faculty who have stepped up and done that.  And obviously what we’ve done is come up with this hybrid flex model.”

Parrella noted that under their current hybrid model, students rotate who attends class in person, and who remains on-line, ensuring that social distance is promoted. He added the U of I has developed their own coronavirus testing center on the campus, allowing the school to get COVID-19 test results back in 24 hours, allowing for quicker response.

While the hybrid model has worked well to this point, Parrella said the big question is at what point do they return to exclusively on-line classes? And that question has taken new importance with an uptick in COVID-19 cases reported in Moscow.

“So, those are some of the issues that we’re dealing with at this point now.  We’re hoping that’s not the case.  I’ll just reinforce what I said earlier, ‘so far, so good’.  But again as you can expect an uptick in infections, we’re hoping to manage that, but we’re concerned at this point.”

Parrella added their main objective at CALS is educating students while keeping them safe.




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