By Hayley Nau
Faculty at Edgewood college have found creative ways to move second semester classes online during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Using many different virtual tools, lessons, labs and more, faculty and students have moved to an online classroom setting.
“They use a variety of live tools to engage students, ask students to share online presentations, play interactive online games related to their content areas and unpack challenging case studies,” said Rebecca Zambrano, director of online faculty development.
Other faculty members created wikis or blogs to encourage students to connect the curriculum to their lives during the pandemic through photos and stories, said Zambrano.
According to Zambrano, some students and faculty have found more opportunities from going online than they would have in a classroom setting.
Many well-known scholars and speakers have joined WebEx meetings, most of which would not have been able to speak in person, said Zambrano.
Other faculty members have created “micro-lessons” and “how-to” videos in a file that students can come back to as well as breakout rooms where students work together to create projects that are later shared with large groups.
The transition to online classes included some challenges in addition to the creative learning experiences.
“The biggest challenge in shifting instruction to temporary remote learning has been ensuring that students and faculty have the technology and the immediate skills needed to be successful,” said Karen Franker, associate academic dean for online and adult learning.
To make sure that students can access course materials online, faculty have adapted assignments based on the needs of students in addition to offering many resources and options.
The Technology Assistance Center (TAC) has assisted with loaning equipment as well, said Franker.
Classes requiring a lab, clinicals and practicums are another challenge that faculty and students have faced.
“There are some kinds of practicums that can’t be duplicated online because they require people to be out in the field, working with children as pre-service teachers or working with patients as nursing interns,” said Zambrano.
Some practicums have been postponed, but others have moved online using virtual labs or case studies to discuss issues commonly encountered.
“It has been inspiring to see the faculty members’ dedication and enthusiasm toward ensuring that students have a positive learning experience,” said Franker.
Faculty insight
Transitioning to on-line in the middle of the semester with courses that were designed to be taught face to face is not an easy thing to do, but professors and teachers all over the world are figuring out how to do it because there is no alternative. Despite the drastic change in delivery method, the best pedagogical practices still hold, and we are truly fortunate at Edgewood to have small classes that enable us to stay in touch with all of our students and to redesign assignments and evaluations to compensate for our changed circumstances. For my courses, synchronous meetings are always optional since students have a wide range of demands on their time, but it is lovely to have those real time conversations when possible. I am proud and humbled to be part of a community that includes students who are first responders and essential workers, as well as students who are caring for family or separated by states or even continents from those they love. Even in these circumstances, my students are producing lovely essays and thoughtful posts, and I am grateful as always to be a teacher.
-Lauren Lacey, associate professor and chair of English
Fortunately, I had been discussing the possibility that we might go online with my students and with colleagues for a few weeks before spring break. Of course, I still didn’t feel prepared – making this shift required a great deal of improvisation. I had abundant support from mathematics professors all across the country – the professional societies really stepped up, and the free material provided by textbook publishers was a gift that I greatly appreciate.
Training adequate to this situation is impossible – except that, as a graduate of a liberal arts program in mathematics, I am an experienced problem-solver. Life-long learning requires confidence and curiosity, traits that are nurtured in a liberal arts environment, and mathematicians get lots of practice in both.
-Susan Hollingsworth, associate professor of Math
While obviously technology savvy, I never spent this much time on teaching and interacting with students! Since all the teaching materials we also make available asynchronous, one should be extremely well prepared for lectures. To me it is like the difference between telling a story and writing a story!
-Greg Alexandrian, associate professor and chair of Computing and Information Sciences
Not many of us in Arts and Sciences have much if any experience in teaching online. That said and given the circumstances, I think the college did its best to make resources and training available to faculty to help aid in this rapid transition. Also helpful has been informal networks between faculty colleagues to teach each other and share best practices and what’s working and what’s not.
This is no one’s idea of an optimum situation; both students and professors desperately wish we were back in a normal classroom and strongly prefer face-to-face education. However, it’s also something every single student in the United States is facing and my guess is than in serving our students as individuals, we probably compare somewhat favorably to many larger institutions right now.
I have to say that my students have really risen to the challenge with 90-95% attendance for twice weekly videoconferencing and most keeping up with all their work. For my part, I’m using a combination of videoconferencing during class time and posting narrated PowerPoint lectures as MP4 files on Blackboard and lots of video clips and films. My commitment is to not let anything slide and to try to maintain as much integrity in the class material and experience as I possibly can given our obvious constraints. I also have been advising by phone and sending and answering a far great volume of emails than in a normal semester. My goal has been to provide my students with a bit of normalcy and a sense that their professors and the whole Edgewood community really cares about them and their education, and that these are things they can still count on when everything else seems to be going to hell in a handbasket.
-Steven Davis, professor of Political Science
As you can imagine, teaching theatre courses, especially acting courses as I have this semester, is just plain weird online. Unlike other disciplines, there are not many examples of theatre moving to an online platform, as the discipline of theater specifically studies the art of collaborative storytelling in a real time, live setting. So it’s been a huge challenge, but one I’m happy to report has not gone nearly as sideways as I feared it might.
I have to give high praise to my students who were game to try using WebEx as we continued to meet regularly during our regularly schedule classes. They have told me that, while of course they much prefer regular classes, they prefer meeting during class time to email or Blackboard assignments alone as this gives them a sense of both a schedule and community.
So we’ve been working on monologues and techniques, and even did one very interesting set of scenes using WebEx. It does shift the work to “acting for the camera” a bit, which is new for the particular classes I’m teaching, but continuing to hold my classes at their regularly scheduled times and to actually see my students has been a joy. We’ve developed some work around tech issues—even just using a WebEx and cell phone on speaker combo when a student just cannot get the internet to work where they are; and while that’s not been ideal, it’s not gotten in the way of our ability to learn, to continue to develop techniques in theatre and create. I will say this is more exhausting. But I’ll take exhausted over nothing, absolutely.
-Jeanne Leep, head of Acting & Directing and theatre producer
I felt pretty prepared and comfortable with teaching online. At first, I thought teaching art classes online would be a futile exercise, but by now I’m feeling fortunate that I am teaching art classes. If I had to do lectures with notes and PowerPoint and WebEx, I wouldn’t be feeling so confident.
As it is, my husband has made demonstration videos of me addressing the students, demonstrating techniques and giving project assignments just like I would in class. I have posted those on Blackboard. I have the students read and practice and send me ongoing images of work in progress. That way, I can comment and inform the class about what might need to be done to improve.
If having online classes continues, I want to set up Zoom or WebEx communication so we can have critiques and discussions. Right now, I have people comment on other people’s work that I post by going on the Blackboard discussion board. Between the Blackboard postings and email, I have been able to conduct a pretty decent class.
-Jane Fasse, senior lecturer of Art
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