Virtually Autumn: Learn about the Learners

Two of the most important decisions to be made early on when designing a virtual class are:

• the percent of the class time the instructor will require synchronous (in real time) participation
• the format of that synchronous participation

The end of the 2019-2020 academic year, with many campuses reducing or eliminating in-person instruction, brought into focus that many of our students do not have the resources to effectively access synchronous virtual instruction. By resources, I mean: time, environment, and technology.

Time

I know that many of my students last spring had major schedule changes imposed upon them after COVID-19 struck. Their public school-aged siblings started learning remotely as well, and some of my students now had family expectations that they would help care for and tutor younger siblings. Some students and/or their parents had work schedules suddenly change as businesses adapted to COVID-19. Even through uncertainty and change, my students did still have time to commit to schoolwork, but now it wasn't necessarily, for all students, at the same time of day our class was scheduled to meet.

Environment

Upon returning home to start virtual instruction, many students also found themselves in a place with distractions. Their siblings, for example, might be having conversations with their own teachers via videoconference in the next bedroom, making it more difficult for my student to concentrate on the video I had asked them to watch.

Technology

Some of my students did not have what I would deem appropriate technology to efficiently participate in class (e.g. they might have had a smartphone, which isn't great for producing written work), and some of my students did not have access to free, high-speed internet. Some students do not have unlimited cellular data plans (even I don't!), and some of my commuter students have poor connectivity in outlying rural areas. Add to that the scenario that home bandwidth might now be shared among multiple students of various ages all trying to have videoconferences at the same time.

Course Redesign Approach

I argue that, even if one of my students in my class this fall does not have the resources to succeed in my class, then I need to design my virtual class with that student in mind. How I interpreted this situation is that I needed to design a flexible virtual class that would ameliorate at least some issues of access.

The principles I advocate are to learn about the environment and technology resources your students have, and to consider their situations, when deciding:

• how much synchronous participation you will require
• what format that participation will take

In my case, I have decided that most of the activity in my fall semester classes will be asynchronous, and that most required synchronous work will be low-bandwidth, like group-editing a shared Google Doc or participating in a discussion board. This way, I hope I am not imposing an additional cost on students who might have to pay extra for data needed to stream live video content.

I will also ask students to access the course content on their own, asynchronously, before class. Then, I will hold optional synchronous videoconference meetings to try to replicate the classroom setting during scheduled class times. I will record these meetings to make them available to students who are not able to attend. Thus, I am designing a blended learning ("flipped") class, where the "in-class" time will be optional and devoted to question and answer time to help address student alternative conceptions and to more deeply explore class content.

Although every class is unique, I also propose that instructors retain some synchronous instruction, if possible, because that "face time" is very important in helping build relationships and the intellectual community of your class. These connections will be critical to help engage and retain your students in what can otherwise become a "faceless" class that is more easily ignored.

Learn about the Learners

To understand your students' environments and available resources, you'll need to ask them questions - right now! This past spring, when instruction took the emergency move to virtual delivery, I immediately circulated a survey to my students, so that I would have information on which to base my course redesign.

If your class roster is populated and you have a way to contact your students for the upcoming semester, then this is a great time to learn from them what situation they are in.

What to ask
Here is the survey I distributed to one of my classes this spring, and the responses I received were incredibly helpful as I chose how to adapt instruction. I hope it will be useful to have this example as a reference.
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~jross/pdfs/studentlearnersurvey.pdf

How to ask it
First, it is important to indicate that student responses will remain private, that completing the survey is optional (but explain why it is important!), and that students should not feel the need to provide more details than they are comfortable with.

As far as the method of creating and distributing your survey, there are several options. You can do something as easy as add your questions to an e-mail you send each student individually, or you could attach a document that contains the questions.

If your class learning management system has a quiz function, then you could write all of the questions as part of a zero-point quiz. This is a good approach because it will help collect responses in a more useful format than in a mailbox full of individual e-mails.

If you have advanced question types you'd like to ask, then you might choose to develop your survey in Google Forms, or SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics (if your institution has a license for these platforms). The example survey above was designed in Qualtrics.

Thank you for considering the resources your students have and adapting your course design accordingly!