Two Signature Course professors reflect on the challenges of teaching virtually and in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Teaching Virtually – professor Patrick Davis
My pharmacy teaching in the spring semester of 2020 was largely lecture-based, and the mandated transition to the online format after spring break was challenging. As with many of my colleagues, the goal was to ‘get it done,’ with little experience in online pedagogy, and a sense of loss of the kinds of interaction that, for me, define classroom teaching. But we got it done!
In planning for my fall 2020 Signature Course, I vacillated on committing to the format, partly based on the changing predictions of COVID’s impact on the campus, unfolding policy decisions, and, most importantly, a decade of experimenting and refining the format for my course. In contrast to my pharmacy teaching, “Really Bad Bugs: Diseases That Changed the World” is a flipped model with students internalizing their weekly readings on historic diseases through first-person narratives, and extensive active engagement during class time. I’ve never given a lecture; I’ve never shown a single Powerpoint. I concluded early in the summer that I simply wasn’t equipped to transition to an online format, but kept my options open as I explored online pedagogy through formal and informal sessions sponsored by my college and the university, providing insights from faculty mentors with a wealth of experience to help guide me.
By late summer, reflection and personal circumstances directed me to choose the online-synchronous format. While I freely admit that I went into the course with some trepidation (reminding me of my first-time teaching), I quickly learned that the students were accepting and eager to learn and that the training I received over the summer served me well in designing the transition. I learned from my colleagues that every active learning component at the heart of my course could be transformed to work with the synchronous-online format using tools available in Canvas, Zoom, and Google apps. It required ‘backwards design’ based on what I wanted to accomplish and then identifying the right tool(s) to get it done. I learned that it isn’t just pushing students to Zoom breakout rooms with the charge to ‘discuss’—my colleagues coached me on dozens of examples for structured, active engagement in breakout rooms paired with methods ensuring accountability that are, in a number of ways, better than what I was doing with the in-person class.
The fall semester is coming to a close, and I have enjoyed my Signature Course as much this semester as any previous year, and I thank my students and colleagues for that. I know we all look forward to the time when the campus returns to ‘normal’—for me, there is no substitute for the energy of a live classroom. But this semester has been a great learning experience, and many lessons learned on ‘how’ and ‘why’ will be carried back to, and hopefully transform my traditional classroom teaching going forward.
Teaching In Person – professor Chiu-Mi Lai
People have asked me how it has been going, teaching in-person this term, and I quip, “Great! Safer than going to the grocery store.” Kidding aside, it’s been delightful. A few technical glitches at the start of the term, and inconsistent and confusing seating arrangements with those zip-tied seats, but otherwise it has been great to be teaching live, in-person. Lecture Capture has been a godsend, not a substitute for true remote teaching, but a good backup for students who quarantine from anywhere between one day to two weeks. With a few students who have gone into preventative quarantine, or just sick with a garden variety cold, I’ve met with them on Zoom after they have viewed Lecture Capture recordings (automatically loaded on Canvas). This term has shown me what good can come from everyone taking responsibility for everyone’s safety to prevent the spread of COVID. Basic things such as wearing masks in class, taking quarantine seriously (as soon as a roommate or friend has tested positive), and most importantly, getting tested. After the first White House outbreak, I congratulated my cohort of 18 students for successfully practicing safety for the community—we have not had an outbreak in our class. At first, I had trouble hearing students through their masks. They were also a bit shy, but it didn’t take long for adjustments in volume. Just as I have learned to project my voice speaking through my mask, the students have as well. It’s so normalized now.
As for the students, the incoming freshmen feel fortunate that they are taking my course in person, as all of their other four classes are online. They tell me that they enjoy leaving the dorm and actually walking to our classroom. Lately, they have been looking like normal college students during midterm exams and other deadlines, rushing into the classroom with an iced coffee in their hand, masks on. The dynamics of the class are lively. They gather before class and chat, some of them are in other classes as well so they study together on Zoom.
But this class took a little longer than usual to warm up. I always devise an icebreaker exercise for discussion in small groups but how to keep it safely distanced this time around? They formed groups of three to four students, sitting in their socially distanced seats which swivel, so students could turn to their classmates sitting to the side and to the back of them. Their challenge was to “map” out an early medieval Chinese folktale piece on the whiteboard in the classroom with one side for each group. The piece is rich in details but the trick is that names and places only “look” historically or geographically authentic. (Yes, alternative facts, even then!)
This required close reading of the piece, discussion, and collaboration on how the group would create a visual representation of the piece. Each student went up to the whiteboard in turns to draw a detail. It didn’t take long before the students were laughing, and the groups became raucous as natural competition took over. When I announced that the peer mentor (SCUGA) would judge the winner, there was a last-minute scramble to touch up their visual representations with dragons. This was all documented by Trent who was visiting the class to capture in-person class photos. The students lost any self-consciousness they may have had, and forgot all about him, but the photos tell a good story. That’s the day I think of when the students discovered their voice, their personalities emerged behind the masks, and even socially distanced, they became a tight-knit group. Since then, I watch them leave the classroom in twos and threes and overhear their plans to grab a bubble tea after class. Just last week, the day after the elections, leaving the classroom, they huddled with each other to check their phones for poll results, and excitedly announced to each other, to everyone, that 99% of Michigan ballots had been counted.
So, in answer to how it’s going? It’s going just fine.
