Rock, meet hard place. On one hand, many faculty are devoted to doing their best and making their courses great learning environments. They were caught off guard when mode of delivery suddenly had to change (for all of their courses, all at once). On the other hand, now faculty are being asked (sometimes for additional compensation, but most often not) to prepare for more virtual instruction this coming fall. And now we have months, not days (despite general lack of compensation for our time) to prepare, so the expectations of quality will be much higher!
In addition, now, more than ever before, our livelihoods depend on our willingness to go above and beyond to vastly improve the quality of our teaching! If fall instruction is mostly virtual, as currently planned, then how many students will actually "show up" (online) and agree to pay tuition? What sort of long-term impact could student opinion of low-quality online teaching have on our employers?
Summer Faculty Professional Development
For compensation, I'm now leading a cohort of twenty of my faculty peers, across disciplines, in a introductory training course for improving virtual instruction. They're being compensated for their time, as well. In the forthcoming series of posts, I'll be describing the emerging concerns that they have collectively voiced and some of the tools and techniques we have found, shared or developed to make Fall 2020 the best semester we can.By way of background, the faculty who are part of this course elected to enroll in it. The course itself was created in my campus' learning management system (LMS - in my case, Canvas) by our campus instructional designers, and multiple faculty are leading multiple sections of the same course. The course is delivered on the web through Canvas, and I've opted to make the course asynchronous: the faculty participants can move at their own pace through the course content, reading text, watching videos, participating in discussion boards including peer feedback, and completing exercises and quizzes. The course was designed to incorporate three synchronous Zoom meetings, and the content of those meetings was not suggested. In my section, we used the first meeting for introductions and to discuss the course structure and schedule - like any typical first meeting of an in-person course, even.
The student perspective
One of the best experiences I've had so far (the course launched about a week ago, and there are two weeks left to go) is experiencing a Canvas course both from the student perspective (I didn't create the course, so I went through all of the content before I published the course to my faculty participants) and from the faculty perspective as the instructor (more "facilitator," in this case), where I field questions both on content and also on mechanics (e.g. technical issues, interpreting assignment instructions).It is not surprising, but still remarkable, that my students in this course are just as diverse as any students I'll have in any undergraduate course I teach. Average age might be the only difference! This has been remarkably impactful to my own professional development. I'm afforded not only the two views of virtual instruction (student perspective and teacher perspective), but my students are also my peers, and I think I'm receiving more (honest or forthcoming might not be the correct words…) raw feedback from them than I normally hear from undergraduates. When my faculty peers experience something they don't understand, or when something goes wrong, they are letting me know! So, the first concept of virtual instruction that has been reinforced for me is:
Don't design a class for the "average student"
There is no such student. Design for the students who might be at the margins, and then your course might be as accessible, engaging, and welcoming to all as it can be.I categorize some of the most vocal feedback I've received so far into two categories:
- The course content isn't what I expected, and I'm unhappy about that
- I'm not a digital native, and I'm confused about what I'm being asked to do / this is taking too much time / I need technical help
You might recognize these as common issues for any course, even before virtual delivery was demanded!
The first point might be out of our control as teachers. Messaging about course content when students enroll often occurs before we become involved.
The latter point is the focus of the rest of this inaugural post. Like our usual classes, my training course has no "average student." Some of my faculty peers were on sabbatical when our campus switched LMS venders from Blackboard to Canvas, and they're not used to how this system works. Some are semi-retired and self-identify as not tech-savvy; they feel particularly overwhelmed (like our undergraduate students!) at the prospect of learning how to operate Canvas from the teacher side. We have careers are are probably financially and professionally secure: imagine the additional pressures and risks that our students face navigating the same transition!
Moving Toward Fall
The faculty I'm working with have expressed interest into deep exploration of at least a few key topics over the next couple of weeks, and these will form the basis of future post topics:- How to motivate/reinforce/monitor academic honesty in online assessments
- How to facilitate student small group interactions
- How to decide the appropriate balance of synchronous (real-time) vs. asynchronous course activities
- How to record, deliver, and make video content accessible for students
While I work on those additional posts, I'll conclude now with three pieces of advice that I've distilled from years of blended learning ("flipped classroom") instruction and that I think will be relevant to all of us who are pushed to virtual instruction:
Whatever changes you make, ensure they're sustainable!
There is a LOT that goes into making any course a great course, especially for virtual instruction to those of us who have not had much experience. There are many foundational concepts of instruction that transcend the mode of delivery (face-to-face vs. virtual), like the importance of building community in the class. Then there are the nice extra things we can do to further enhance our classes. Are you going to record all of your synchronous videoconference meetings with your students and post them online? Make sure you have time to devote to ensuring that those videos are all captioned for accessibility! Are you going to commit to grading all submitted discussion board posts within 24 hours? Make sure that is reasonable. Aiming high and then having to reduce efforts on one or more resources that some of your students have come to depend on is not good. Start small, and consider your course's virtual redesign a process that will take at least a few iterations to arrive at what you thought would be a good starting point. Build from there.You cannot overdo the resources and instructions you provide students
As long as your delivery is organized, there is practically no limit to the number of pertinent resources you provide. For example, in my course I'm facilitating now (which, again, I did not create), I was really impressed with the number of links to YouTube videos our instructional designers had built into this virtual course. For example, one assignment was to take a screenshot of a webpage showing that I had obtained a particular minimum score on a quiz. I know how to take a screenshot on my laptop, but some don't! On the same assignment page, there were links to YouTube tutorial videos on how to take screenshots on multiple mobile devices. This is absolutely the way we all should be thinking about designing courses delivered virtually.Try to consider your course from the student perspective
We often lose perspective of materials we create. When writing, it is sometimes hard even to catch our own misspellings and grammar errors. When creating instructions for an assignment, of course we think that our own end product is as clear as possible (but usually that means "as clear as practical, given the amount of time we're willing to devote"). In virtual courses, even more attention should be paid to being as clear and descriptive as possible. This goes beyond my advice in the previous section: you might even consider the "unwritten rules" of academia and particularly of virtual instruction (e.g. "netiquette") that students might not be familiar with and need additional resources to understand. Because communication is often (almost always?) asynchronous in online courses, it is more important than ever to be proactive in addressing questions or concerns.Finally, the most surprising thing I've learned so far by helping my peers work through this course:
Never assume participants will remember all of the details; always be kind
Even though you have worked diligently to put all of the necessary resources at the hands of your students, and even when you have gone particularly out of your way to be as proactive as possible, you will have students who forget a detail, and can't remember where to find it, and will contact you directly. Take a minute, or a few hours, or sleep on it, and then provide a helpful response!
In my case, in our first synchronous class meeting, I spent time discussing an intricacy of how to perform one specific task of one assignment, because the required web-based approach was not intuitive. I walked through the steps, and the Zoom meeting was recorded and posted on YouTube for reference. Two (10%) of my participants e-mailed me within a week complaining about not being able to figure out how to accomplish that same task. My response e-mails contained links to the specific timestamp in the class Zoom recording that contained the step-by-step instructions, and that was enough.
All of our class participants have different circumstances, needs, challenges…they won't all be able to keep track of all aspects of all of their classes, especially when moving fully online is still new, and especially when those students aren't just taking one class at a time! Please consider that, even though you might have invested a lot of time designing your course, it is not an affront that a student asks for help that you foresaw.
In the next post, I'll address one of the major talking points I've heard faculty discussing with increased intensity over the last three months: how to encourage and enforce academic honesty during online assessments.
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