Professors across campus received an influx of erroneous non-compliance notifications on Monday, Jan. 20 pertaining to the required COVID-19 test results that all Winthrop students were required to upload to the Medicat Patient Portal no more than five days prior to arriving on campus for moving in, if an on-campus resident, or for attending in-person class, if a commuter.
“I have a total of nine students in three classes who’ve been cleared by Winthrop to return to in-person classes,” wrote Dr. John Holder, a professor in the Department of Political Science, in his Facebook status on Tuesday.
By Thursday night, Holder had only nine students who were not cleared to attend in-person classes.
Professors received varying percentages of student non-compliance notifications, and as of Tuesday, the university is unsure of just how many students were wrongfully notified.
“I am not sure of the exact number [of erroneous student non-compliance notifications], but there was a combination of issues that occurred. There were issues with students getting their information into the Medicat Portal and in our staff getting information out of the portal and into a format that would allow for easy reporting to our faculty on the status of each student,” said Timothy A. Drueke, Assistant Provost for Curriculum and Program Support.
“The staff in Student Health and in the Dean of Students Office continue to work to review student submissions and to get the updated information to the faculty. The goal is to get correct information to the faculty as soon as possible after students submit the proper documentation.”
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Adrienne McCormick, sent an email to faculty and staff on Monday, which stated that the inundation of false reports of student non-compliance were due to “two system errors – one related to spreadsheet updates and one related to email. These problems resulted in inaccurate and falsely elevated reports of non-compliance. The good news is that many more of our students complied with our requirement than today’s reports suggested.”
Despite the data resulting from technical errors and not student’s failure to upload results, students affected by this error were still not permitted on campus until the issue was resolved, causing many professors to enact a change in plans.
“Since 22 out the 23 people in my class were non-compliant, I said maybe it doesn’t make sense to show up just to teach one person, so I emailed the class and said that we’re not sure what’s going on here so let’s go ahead and do tomorrow’s class through Zoom,” said Dr. Michael Lipscomb, a professor in the Department of Political Science.
“My approach is that I’m just going to play it by ear and when we get to a place where we’ve figured out what went wrong and when we’ve corrected it, then we’ll return to face-to-face. So, I’m just trying to work with the administration as they try to work out whatever the problem or the glitch was and work with the students in a way that’s fair to them.”
Students who received non-compliance notifications despite having uploaded negative COVID-19 test results desired to resort to showing their test results to each of their professors individually prior to entering the classroom.
“They [had] us take tests, which isn’t unreasonable, and upload the results despite how slow their system could be and they knew quite well that they would have a whole insurgence of new tests coming in. They have taken too long and have held many students back from entering the classroom despite having viable results that even a teacher could see the screenshots of and be okay with,” said Yogi Patel, a senior business administration major.
Some students found the patient portal website, medicatconnect.com, to be unreliable when uploading their test results and this caused further problems for the university in acquiring accurate data. Upon logging into the portal, there is a disclaimer that states, “If you are unable to log into the portal to upload your Covid-19 results, please email your results to wuhealth@winthrop.edu.”
Having to compile data of students who submitted results via email and via the portal made it even more difficult for the university to navigate the system errors.
“The patient portal was a very outdated and finicky website. It didn’t seem to be legit or work well. I got an email the night before in-person classes and was told I was not cleared to attend class. I have heard some professors were told 70% of their students were not cleared, and no one is quite sure what’s going on. The Dean of Students office told me, in an email, that there was a major error within the system and many students were wrongfully not cleared. I don’t know when I will be able
to go into class, but hopefully this will get sorted very quickly,” said Taylor Evans, a senior theatre and mass communications major.
Some students, however, found uploading their results to be no problem and many received notifications clearing them to attend class in a timely manner.
“I just thought the process was really easy to understand. We received several emails about getting tested and in those emails, it explained exactly what to do. All I had to do was set up my account and transfer my results that I received in a pdf form. I’m confused as to how people had issues with this,” said TJ Wynn, a senior computer science major.
“I didn’t have any issues submitting my test. I was tested on Monday, got my results Tuesday, the doctors emailed me a pdf of my results, and I uploaded them to the portal with no issue,” said Lauren Welborn, a freshman elementary education major.
Upon Student Affairs working diligently to send out accurate student non-compliance information, professors began receiving new data, which was more promising than the initial data, but still had an error.
“They sent faculty a list of those in their classes who were or were not compliant with the COVID test… the problem is, some students are not listed at all, so we have no information about that. In my two classes, three students are not listed at all. Glitches do happen so we should all be flexible in accommodating students,” said Dr. Guy Reel, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication.
Student Affairs is working hard to correct the system errors in hopes that the university will have an accurate depiction of compliant and non-compliant students so in-person instruction will be feasible.
image courtesy Winthrop University
