Isn't It Ironic? Adapting an Elective on Quarantine and Isolation for Online Delivery Due to a Pandemic.

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 and the pandemic that followed have given us a front-row seat to the debate over individual rights vs. public health. There is a fine line between protecting the health of a community and maintaining civil liberties. More than a year before COVID-19 made the jump to humans, a lower-division, non-majors course was developed to explore the application and ramifications of quarantine and isolation. This 10-week class focuses on the biological and epidemiological rationale behind these nonpharmaceutical interventions, important historic examples, and the emotional, societal, and political consequences of such policies. This Quarantine and Isolation elective was included in the 2019–2020 University of Washington, Bothell course catalog and was scheduled to be taught in person spring quarter; little did we know that weeks before this class would meet, Washington State would become the apparent epicenter of America’s COVID-19 outbreak. As our campus followed physical distancing protocols and moved to remote emergency learning, it became necessary to shift this course to online delivery, include conversations on how this new public health crisis connected to events of the past, and best support students with their heightened levels of stress and anxiety. The goal of this paper is not only to share curriculum related to quarantine and isolation, but also to describe successful strategies for online instruction and student support during a pandemic and beyond.