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[melba_frilkins]

I just got a note from HR informing me that I had earned 3 hours of sick leave from when I taught an online class this summer. It wasn't clear whether I get to accumulate those for later or if they were use it or lose it. That doesn't really matter too much. But it got me to thinking:

How do you handle sick days/sick leave when teaching online? To a certain degree, you often don't need to use sick days because you can either still work from home (perhaps slowly but surely), or just catch up later in the week. On the other hand, there's got to be a point where you can't catch up.

What about situations when you teach a mix of f2f and online classes and have an extended absence (say recovering from surgery) and you're able to teach online but not f2f. Have you seen any precedents in that kind of scenario?

(I don't even want to think about how furloughed faculty figure out how that impacts their online teaching!)

[zuzu_]

I can't imagine how this would come in handy--unless such sick time was accumulated and could help if you were wholly incapacitated for a week or more.

[glowdart]

(I worked at a school where you got paid for your unused sick leave when you left/ retired.)


In terms of f2f teaching, we are "strongly encouraged" to use our on-line system when we have to cancel class because we are ill.  In the past, we were "strongly encouraged" to create alternate assignments for students when we cancelled class because we were ill.  So, we could cancel class, but then we had to email the students and tell them to write a 2 page paper summarizing the reading for that day. 

Thus, if anything happens that would keep us out of the classroom for more than a day, then we're supposed to move the class on-line (flu outbreak, blizzard, funeral out of state, long conference, etc.).

[melba_frilkins]

So, we could cancel class, but then we had to email the students and tell them to write a 2 page paper summarizing the reading for that day. 

Ouch. So even though you are out sick, and burning up a sick day, you end up with an extra stack of assignments to grade?

[glowdart]

So, we could cancel class, but then we had to email the students and tell them to write a 2 page paper summarizing the reading for that day. 

Ouch. So even though you are out sick, and burning up a sick day, you end up with an extra stack of assignments to grade?

Ah, bad verb tense use on my part.  Different schools -- but yes, you're out sick and end up with a stack of grading.  My new approach is to assign an on-line discussion, and everyone gets credit/no-credit for it.

[melba_frilkins]

 My new approach is to assign an on-line discussion, and everyone gets credit/no-credit for it.

Oh, that's a great idea. I'll keep that in mind if I'm ever in that situation.