Bulletin No. 2, 2020

Coming Closer at a Distance: Snapshots of CUHK in the pandemic 15 ‘I understand what you are getting at,’ said Prof. Isabella Poon who had been figuring out what picture we had been trying to take of her, while heeding the requests of the photographer. With backgrounds in mathematics and statistics, the officer of the University who is chiefly responsible for its missions in education wields logical thinking in analysing issues and shares her thoughts on the solutions when she has resolved the intricacies. At nine o’clock in the evening of 31 January 2020, CUHK announced that all teaching would go online. Poon received a call at about 10 pm from Prof. Rocky Tuan , Vice-Chancellor, who had just finished a meeting with other university presidents. He related the doubts on online teaching expressed at the meeting. But after listening to Poon, his mind should have been put to ease. She had been as reassuring as she was persuasive, as her opinions and reassurance come from a firm grasp of facts and her penetrating power of observation. Even if it’s doable, to move the weekly 8,000+ activities online would take mammoth effort. Within the two weeks from the announcement to the commencement of the term, Poon and colleagues from the Information Technology Services Centre (ITSC) had worked many nights and days on defining issues, fleshing out solutions, formulating policies and apportioning responsibilities for execution. Some of the issues arose from their deliberations, and some were raised by the staff and students in the more than 20 workshops conducted during the period. She recalled: ‘The issues were nefarious, touching on systems and equipment. Some students owned neither a laptop nor a tablet. We had to find some for them to borrow. The Library’s online resources. No Wi-Fi in the staff quarters. How could we ensure no interruption in teaching when a teacher is quarantined?’ It’s important to get the policies right. So the deliberations would involve the associate dean on education of each Faculty and the coordinators of compulsory programmes. Once the hardware and the policies were in place, the next thing was how well the teaching staff might take to online teaching. ‘There was no time for worries. We needed to handle it.’ The professor responded to every query from the teachers on the use of only the Zoom platform and other policy