Teaching online this fall like so many others are. I have been interested in this challenge for years, and volunteered to teach public speaking and other courses online about five or six years ago.
What I learned then is that students respond very well to being given a list of tasks and dates they need to complete that work, and a basket of resources to help them put those assignments together. Having everything submitted digitally either in audio, video, or text helps too.
This term has several additional layers of challenge to it. First the prevalence of COVID 19 around the country means that students are feeling various sorts of impacts. Their parents might be between jobs, transitioning jobs, struggling to keep the family business open, or out of work totally. There might have been changes in family income that mean a student must be present to help with childcare for a younger sibling, or assist with eldercare. There might be less of the typical foods and entertainment that were an important part of their schedule. There is also the chance that family members can become ill, hospitalized, or die. Also there’s the presence of a lot of stress, about the current situation, friends and family, and the future – what sort of economy will we have? What sort of jobs will be out there?
Another challenge is the length of the term. We are altering the fall term, like a lot of universities, moving it from 15 weeks to 13. With holidays and other adjustment days, this makes the term functionally 12 weeks. So I have to adapt my comfortable and familiar 15 weeks of work, readings, and progression to something like 12 weeks. This has been a very tough challenge for me.
COVID 19 has permanently changed education by forcing us to be more comfortable and normalize the use of webcams and video conferencing, as well as social-cooperative hubs like Microsoft Teams. I think that there will be a lot more interest, demand, and availability of online courses in the future. It’s here to stay and will become more popular even though everyone is complaining about the quality of online instruction.
Here are my course outlines for the fall term, let me know what you think!