Teaching Architecture during the C-19 Pandemic

The author of this post prefers to remain anonymous

We are nearing the end of the first semester of blended teaching within a school of architecture at a UK based university. It has been an epic semester, both in the lead up to the academic start and the whole way through. We have had to try to mix our face to face and digital teaching approaches, be flexible for students who have not returned to university (so are in different time zones and have multiple constraints with their own families being around), those that have had to go into isolation and those that have actually contracted COVID 19, support students emotionally who are feeling isolated and depressed, and be available for those students who are desperate for face to face contact. This is all in parallel to managing my own anxiety around face to face teaching, contracting COVID and the impact this would have on my own personal situation, being a mother of a primary school aged child and a partner to an Architect who is working full time in a big multi-disciplinary UK based practice, from home. It has become apparent over the semester that those of us with any dependents have felt more anxious about face to face teaching, with the initial lock down and the closure of schools increasing the levels of stress on those households, as parents juggled workload and leave to mind their kids until the schools opened again (like many families across the world).
Despite all the constraints and in the spirit of creatively responding to complexity, we have embraced this context and done our best to make this as great an experience for the students as we can. This has meant learning new digital communication tools which previously had been underutilised, new collaborative mapping and research tools like Miro, and trying to use apps like Google Classroom etc. to ensure improved communication.  Where previously we could rely on studio culture to do much of this work for us, we have had to find ways to constantly keep the students informed about what it is we would like them to be doing each day, how we are meeting, when we are meeting and where all the various pre-recorded lectures can be found, more similar to a remote teaching platform than ever before. It has meant that being prepared has become important but being flexible and adaptable each week is imperative to survive the wide variety of situations that we each find ourselves in at that moment.
As the full time staff of the university are overwhelmed with extra work as it has been difficult to manage the extra commitments that we have had to embrace to ensure that we give as equal a learning experience to each student as we can, and attempt to match the previous cohorts experiences too, we are all struggling to maintain the workload to achieve this. Training for the various extra digital tools has been made available but always on top of the extra work that we have been doing to achieve flexibility in our teaching approaches.
Each studio has endeavoured to create a context where students get to know each other and learn from each other about work ethics and basic design tools that would have been easier to learn with people around 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This has meant trying to create buddy groups, support drop in zoom chats etc. Perhaps the partial closure of the studios will mean a change in the 24 hour a day culture finally, where the expectations on students to work all the hours of the day can be adapted to a healthier version. But it seems that the pressure is simply mounting on those students who cannot afford to buy new laptops on which to work at home, and buy the software required to represent their designs using software that they are expected to learn for gaining a job after they graduate.
Previously students would have been able to use the studios to make models and do hand drawings which could be left in the designated areas, which of course is no longer possible as we are restricted to using space more specifically, related to shared work space requirements and risk assessments. The students’ accommodation is limiting these outputs as well, as they live in small student rooms and/or share houses with many other students who are all struggling with similar constraints, therefore building a model is almost impossible. 
In previous years, the students have noted that the annual field trip experience has been the best part of that academic year, and within the COVID context this has meant that travelling as a studio group has been impossible. To try to achieve immersion into a context for a design programme, some studios have endeavoured virtual field trips. In the studio I teach we spent the whole week in groups working on collaborative Miro boards, reading books about the context, listening to pre-recorded interviews, and watching various films. It was a great week, and the students learned loads, and they finally managed to collaborate across the year groups. However, this was all done over and above the normal commitments for teaching, without any compensation. The studio chooses to situate the project on a site in an international context which means the onus is on the tutors to manage this within the hours they are allocated.
Luckily, I am very passionate about teaching design, and I continue to do as much as I can to learn new ways of working and teaching. However, the universities do leverage our time, our passion and commitment, as we continue to do way more than we should to support the students to achieve great things!