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THE DAILY ILLINI
THURSDAY October 29, 2020
The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Vol. 150 Issue 20
University reports new COVID-19 surge Campus sees largest single-day count since lockdown
as there were for the entire week ended Oct. 18. Monday’s spike comes as Illinois, and the nation is pummeled by a new wave of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and restrictions. With 4,729 new cases on Monday, Illinois’ sevenday average of new cases is above 4,500 for the first time since the pandemic began. Prior to October, the state’s seven-day average of new cases briefly peaked above 2,500 in mid-May. On-campus, the spike could’ve come from several factors. The Illini football team played its season opener on Friday, and resulting on-campus gatherings may have contributed to the spread. With temperatures hit-
BY ETHAN SIMMONS NEWS EDITOR
RYAN ASH THE DAILY ILLINI
Junior Collin Follin poses for a photo at a table in his house on Wednesday afternoon. Follin has struggled with adapting to online classes this semester.
Semester brings mental hardships BY VALERIA NAVA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Connor Follin, a junior in Business, is exhausted. He bombed his recent virtually proctored finance midterm. But this year, it was far harder to reach out to his peers. Sitting behind a screen, staring at countless black tiles, he could sense the lack of productivity that would come out of yet another silent Zoom breakout room. Not only did he feel hesitant to reach out to his classmates, but he felt his professors had not provided sufficient guidance nor structure to their classes. Fatigued and distraught
following the exam, he finally talked to other students. His feelings resonated with them. This semester, and year, has brought unprecedented hardships for students, ranging from severe loneliness from lack of socialization to extreme frustration being unable to grasp course material on their own because of online schooling. This new learning environment has led to an influx of students struggling with their mental health. “All the days are so similar now because it’s wake up, sit at your computer, go to sleep,” Follin said. To make matters worse,
students have a hard time even reaching out to express these concerns with fellow peers, family members, professors and mental health professionals. With the semester being half-way completed, some students have become accustomed to the virtual educational structure, but even more students continue to internalize fears pertaining to different aspects of their lives that ultimately affect their overall well-being. Follin talks about his excitement at the beginning of the semester regarding coming back and seeing his friends again. At
After a couple of weeks of low new caseloads, the University of Illinois is seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 on campus. Monday’s 74 new cases were the highest single-day total since Sept. 8, back when Chancellor Jones’s stay-at-home order for undergraduates was still in effect. That’s as many new cases
SEE SURGE | 3A
UI sees highest single day of cases since September
this point in time, however, he states that those positive emotions have diminished, and his mental health has been on the decline. He highlights his peers’ sentiments as well, saying that they agree that they’ve “socially stagnated.” Seeing the same faces day-in and day-out causes boredom even for Follin, who resides with his Delta Kappa Epsilon brothers. His boredom has reached the point where he’ll find any excuse to leave his house. “If someone tells me they’re going to the grocery store, I just tag along,” he
Daily cases for the last two weeks
80 70
Oct. 26
60
74 cases
50 40 30 20 10 0 Source: Illinois Shield Team
SEE ONLINE | 3A
CASSIDY BRANDT THE DAILY ILLINI
Online school strains transcription software BY CHIEH HSU STAFF WRITER
CAMERON KRASUCKI THE DAILY ILLINI
Student Shaina Lohman signs into the University COVID-19 testing site located in State Farm Center on Oct. 8. University researchers are currently waiting for the FDA to approve their COVID-19 test for nationwide use.
UI awaits FDA approval to spread testing to CU BY ALIZA MAJID STAFF WRITER
The saliva-based COVID-19 test was created by UI researchers and has made a great impact on the testing process on campus, but that isn’t the same for the Champaign-Urbana residents. The C-U community does not have access to the state of the art saliva-based testing and has to rely on the nasal swab testing instead. “We will be able to offer the test outside of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus once we receive emergency use authorization from the FDA,” said Ben Taylor, the spokesperson for Shield Illinois. The University claimed to have the authorization in mid-August, but sometime during the month of September, a change was made in the press release and the campus backtracked on their statement without announcing it to the public, according to Illinois
Newsroom. The saliva-based testing is only available to UI students, faculty and staff since the test was developed on campus and was approved for on-campus testing by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments certified lab director. The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments regulates federal standards U.S. facilities have to abide by in order to test humans for health assessments or diagnose a disease. During a September UI senate meeting, Chancellor Robert Jones said spreading the saliva tests to Champaign-Urbana was a top priority for the University. “Its first major deployment should be to serve the community. K–12 education: We’ve had two meetings with the superintendents of the school districts, and we will be looking at a way to make it available to SEE FDA | 3A
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Due to COVID-19, a majority of classes have moved to online operations with professors choosing to upload lecture videos instead of hosting in-person classes. In Computer Science and Engineering, instructors are using a software called ClassTranscribe developed by University professors to advance the online learning experience. “My project allows students to easily go from one video to the next,” Lawrence Angrave, teaching professor and co-developer of ClassTranscribe, said. “It also allows students to search across the whole course.” This semester due to COVID-19, Professor A ngrave encountered IT challenges when ClassTranscribe had to expand suddenly to support thousands of students. “Fortunately, we now have the deep experience and know-how from NCSA to help build and scale this system,”Angrave said. According to Angrave, the project provides good captions and makes video-learning much more active. Using crowdsourcing and machine learning techniques, the app is constantly improving its transcription with more than 1,938 hours worth of transcribed subtitles, he said. “It started over five years ago when I had a student walk into my office and said ‘I want to be able to search lecture videos and find content because often I don’t learn it the first time,’ so we started our early prototype,” Angrave said. “Fast
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PHOTO COURTESY OF LAWRENCE ANGRAVE
A world map with the IP locations of all the users of ClassTranscribe in the world is pictured above. Users include international students scattered around the globe.
forward to today, our project is supported by Microsoft and National Center for Supercomputing Applications and growing with more and more courses each semester.” Apart from being userfriendly for the students, Angrave’s team also strives to make online teaching easier for other instructors. “Each semester we have more faculty contact me saying ‘how do I get my videos onto ClassTranscribe?’” said Angrave. ”Then we can set out to help them so it doesn’t take any time on their part. We’ve made it very easy for faculty to use.” As of now, 44 classes across five colleges in the University and a sophomore course at Grand Valley State University are using ClassTranscribe. Next semester, Angrave and his team will be able to “make books from videos.”
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Using an editing environment that allows its user to start with a 10 minute or two-hour video and turn their transcriptions and images into a PDF or EPUB file. Despite being passionate about online learning, there are certain elements of in-person education that are still irreplaceable.
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“I miss the actual energy of student interactions,” Angrave said. “I miss having lively office hours. I miss having lively lectures. It is hard to capture that when there is technology, distance and time between you.” chiehh3@dailyillini.com
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Opinions: The results may shift after election night
Sports: Illini offense to adjust in Week 2
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