AACC will hold 41.5% of its classes on campus in the fall, according to college vice presidents.
“The push has been to bring back more face-to-face offerings so we get that community feel again,” AACC Vice President for Learning Tanya Millner said.
Still, Millner explained that if more students than expected register for online-only courses instead of face-to-face classes, the college is flexible to open up more online sections.
Millner explained it is easier for the administration to move face-to-face sections online than it is to do the opposite.
This semester, 43% of classes are face-to-face, as opposed to the 50% that the college planned for. This semester, fewer students registered for face-to-face classes than college administrators expected.
For the fall, the college will offer 30.5% of classes fully online.
Another 18.5% of sections will be in the online SYNC format, which means students will take part of their coursework online plus they will meet with their professors and classmates on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, usually twice a week.
Finally, 5.8% of fall courses will take the hybrid format, which means students will take the class mostly online with occasional on-campus classroom meetings.
Millner said the college must “do the research and look at what has happened over the past five years.”
At some points during the past five years, almost all classes were in person, Millner said. But when COVID-19 hit, classes shifted heavily to online for four semesters.
Millner explained in-person courses have value but administrators must take into account that “people’s lives have changed … people are working from home and doing in-home child care and [some people] cannot get to campus.”
The pandemic has an effect on what the fall will look like on campus, Vice President for Learning Resources Management Melissa Beardmore said.
If nothing changes with the risk of the pandemic, Beardmore explained, the college “does not anticipate [requiring] vaccines and COVID testing into the fall.”
The college this semester removed the requirement for on-campus students and staff to prove they are vaccinated or have tested negative for COVID-19 each week. On May 19, AACC’s mask mandate will expire.
Those rules do not include faculty and students engaging in clinical work.
Second-year transfer studies student Dan Spencer explained he has “gotten the most out of [in-person] classes as compared to the online ones.”
First-year nursing student Mariyah Alexander said the freedom of online synchronous classes is beneficial.
“I do like being at home,” Alexander said. “I don’t have to get up and get ready. Like, I’m just right here, just put on my computer.”