Online learning during coronavirus

Parents Forum
1

Hi all,

My son will be attending college soon and I wanted to know more about how online learning is being done at colleges during coronavirus

  1. What kinds of tools are being used to facilitate learning similar to in person classes?

  2. How are lectures being done? Is it mainly through zoom for lectures and youtube videos for pre readings?

  3. How about office hours? If my son has a question, how would he be able to ask the professor / TAs about it?

  4. Lastly, how do you feel about the new way teaching is being done now? What are the parts you like and what are the parts you don’t like?

Thank you for answering my questions!

2

For my daughter’s school this spring all of her courses migrated to zoom- same class days/times. The readings were the same as before but a couple of projects were changed to different projects. Group work was still required and also mostly happened over zoom. My daughter’s school doesn’t have TAs, so nothing to add there. Office hours shifted to zoom but remained consistent. If anything teachers became more available (time-wise) and would often offer phone calls or zoom meetings to help with issues.

3

Got it, thank you so much for the explanation.

For online zoom lectures, do the teacher usually teach by pointing their video to a whiteboard?

I believe zoom allows raising your hand to ask a question, is that a commonly used when students have questions? Are students comfortable asking questions through zoom?

Thank you again!

4

Zoom has break-out rooms for smaller group meetings and projects. Office hours are easy. Zoom also affords a way for the professor to ask a question, and for students to ask questions, as well as a chat. There are multiple choice type questions, and also polls. One of my kids teaches and has taken workshops. Hopefully the offerings this summer and fall will be better than those offered on an emergency basis in March.

That said, remote lectures on Zoom do not constitute what I consider true online classes, and are kind of a stop gap. As professors and schools get better at Zoom, it will approach the quality of a true online class, however, particularly in offering multi-media resources and personal contact among students and with the professor.

I have taken wonderful online classes in which the professor is barely seen or heard, only as a sort of moderator. No lecture. The work is independent but highly structured. Each student posts a response to the reading or film or whatever the assignment was, and then is required to post responses to three classmates’ posts, each week. The discussion can be interesting. The resources offered in terms of photos, slides, film, music and links to further info were great.

In either case, Zoom remote or true online, I think students can have a great experience in terms of learning and there are opportunities for interaction. The posted syllabus and organization of each week’s work provide a structure and schedule that actually helps some students.

ps at the university where I took my online classes, they cost more than in-person

5

Depending on the university just for clarification they may have their own “Zoom” source - so maybe not Zoom but another videoconferencing system. Like Blackboard or something.

D is a grad student but says she is taking advantage of prof office hours virtually. She is very comfortable with this process even as a sometimes “quiet” student.

I think as weeks have gone past while it is not substitute for being in person, the video conferencing has been fairly effective and teachers and learners have relaxed, adjusted and created a vibe similar to in person teaching. Some profs are better at it of course. :slight_smile:

6

I think Blackboard is used for online courses and Zoom tends to be used for remote classes, a distinction I may not have articulated very well. However, as my kid has shown me some of the potential on Zoom, beyond just a taped lecture, I have been impressed. There are other teleconferencing companies but in my area Zoom is used a lot.

7

I think you’ve gotten some good replies. In our experience, the classes varied based on the professors. Some did traditional lectures live on zoom, some just posted recorded lectures and some used zoom breakout sessions and other features to make it more interactive, etc. D had 2 lab classes. One just dropped the lab when they went online and one modified the lab so they kids could do it at home. She didn’t have any classes with group projects, though she does this fall and is worried about them.

My D signed up for another class at her school online this summer. She is actually attending office hours now. The way her class works if you long onto zoom and get “in line” to ask your question(s). You ask them online as you would in office hours. In some classes those meetings have been private and in others the professor allows students to hear each other’s questions. Her teacher is also very available to answer questions via email if needed.

My D much prefers “live” classes. I am sure some kids if given the choice would rather watch recorded lectures over getting up and going to class. That is not my kid. She does better in person. That said, she feels her teachers did a decent job with the online classes this spring. Honestly, the teachers who were better in person were better online. But remember in the spring the teachers did not have a lot of time to prepare for the transition to online. I think the expectation is the classes will be more interactive, etc. come fall if they are online again. That all said, my D obviously didn’t hate it too much since she chose to take another class this summer.

8

To answer your further question, for my daughter’s classes (which are all very small) the teachers are mostly talking to them in harkness-like discussions. They all keep their mics on and simply say excuse me or physically raise their hands to speak. It is run a whole lot like if they were all physically together for class. None of my D’s classes had more than ten people in them except for one, and that was a writing tutorial where they all had individual sessions both before and after going online.

9

Here’s how I taught composition when we switched over:

–I changed from a day by day schedule to a weekly one

–each Sunday, I made a short video, sort of a very casual, friendly, presentation of the week’s topic. Basically a PPT with me talking in a circle in the corner. This were not done ahead of time, because I was generally riffing off of the previous week’s discussions and work, and introducing topics and concepts for the next week.

–Then I posted on Canvas an announcement linking to all the weekly work, which was generally to watch the video, participate in a Discussion board with extensive instructions of what was expected, read assigned readings and/or watch assigned videos besides my intro one, and complete whatever writing tasks were assigned that week, either homework which tended to be reading feedback, or drafts of papers.

–Sometimes there were other assignment versions, like online peer reviews, or small group discussions.

I would respond during the week with extensive feedback on drafts (sometimes typed, sometimes audio) through Canvas, and monitor all discussions. Office hours were email, chat, or Zoom or Canvas Conferences–student choice.

–Outside of OH’s, I answered all emails as soon as possible, seven days a week, till I went to bed, basically. Some of these were long convos with students. I wanted to make sure that communication was open. I also made Zoom appointments when needed outside OH.

About once every two weeks, I held optional Zoom classes for students to get to interact live. I also held Zoom one on one conferences on drafts for the major paper.

So, though most of it was not “live”, I made sure my students were plugged in and that lines of communication were open.

I am not sure what next fall will bring, but my preference would be to refine this system, as it seemed to work well.

10

I teach ESL in two programs at a community college. Some of my students are working adults, others are getting ready to go to college in the US.

  1. For both programs, classes are taught live, in Zoom. Instructors in the credit division are heavily encouraged to use Blackboard, which makes live interaction more challenging. I’ve been told that Blackboard will incorporate Zoom in the fall. But maybe that is a myth. My students would struggle with Blackboard so I am glad I don’t have to use it. Please encourage your son to attend with a laptop or desktop computer, and not with a smartphone! It really is harder for students to do what they need to do with those minuscule smartphone keyboards. And it is waaaaay harder for them to split their screens.

  2. My lectures (such as they are for ESL) are live in Zoom. I post homework in Edmodo, and use a group email in Outlook to communicate with my classes. In class group and pairwork takes place in break-out rooms in Zoom. I haven’t taught reading & writing yet, so what I do may change when I have one of those courses.

  3. My students email me at all hours of the day and night, but I wait to answer when I’m awake. :wink: They also can reach me through Edmodo. I don’t hold office hours, but they would be pretty easy in Zoom. The waiting room feature allows the instructor to let only one or two people into a meeting at a time, and permits messages to be sent to the folks who are waiting “outside”.

  4. I like not having a commute. I like learning all the new stuff I’ve needed to learn. I don’t like sitting at a laptop the whole time in class instead of moving around the room to check on my students. I miss the big whiteboard for students to write on. I’m still figuring out how to do that kind of thing with Zoom. I miss the informal before and after class conversations with my students. They don’t like losing that kind of chat time themselves - it was their biggest complaint (after classmates not muting themselves) in the end-of-spring survey. My working adult students like being able to take classes on a schedule that suits them better than when they were limited geographically to the location closest to home.

I am just starting up the summer session this week. Fortunately for the conversation class I am teaching now, 5 of the 6 enrolled are also enrolled in a reading & writing class together. This will help those students better develop relationships with each other because they will “see” each other a total of about 18 hours each week. When classes went remote in March, my students already had developed that sense of community. I am curious to see how long it takes for them to feel at home with each other in this new situation.

Although my CC has outlined plans for returning to live on campus classes in stages, I expect my pre-college classes will continue online through the fall semester at least. I do not expect the adult ed. classes to return to their former high school locations until after the pandemic ends. https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/resilient-mc/index.html

11

@happymomof1 I’m surprised you can pick and choose platforms. My campus is Canvas based, and everything goes through that. They bought Zoom to incorporate it in right after this started, but otherwise, it already has a video conferencing tool built into it. And email is there, too, along with assignments, gradebook, and everything else. Having these different programs, like “Edmodo” and Outlook mail rather than Blackboard which I assume is campus-wide, seems like the students must have to go all over depending on what platform the instructor decides to use. But maybe I’m just not understanding.

12

My son’s school uses Bluejean. Thinks it’s Michigan’s version of Zoom
Canvas also. Think some actually used zoom also . He had group class projects that had to be presented “in front” of the professors. Professors were always there if needed. Not an issue. All his classes were recorded also so he liked stacking his classes and studying one subject but with multiple classes at one time. His understanding of some subject material was just easier to grasp this way.

13

@garland -

I teach in two continuing ed. programs. Technically, all of the instructors in continuing ed. have access to Blackboard but most of us have never taken the training to use it. Instructors in the credit division do use Blackboard. The CC was in the process of setting up Zoom for staff meetings when the virus hit, and the decision was made to move continuing ed. classes into Zoom. It is my understanding that the credit division didn’t use Zoom. But I could be confused. In trainings since the end of the semester, I learned that at present Zoom is for staff meetings and continuing ed., and Blackboard (with Zoom add ons?? other add ons??) is required for instructors in the credit division. The process for claiming a student account and creating the logins to get to Blackboard is not simple for a lot of continuing ed. students, so I’m glad I don’t have to use it. Edmodo resembles Facebook but with options for setting up quizzes, and only needs internet access to join with a phone number or an email address.

Some continuing ed. instructors have been using Edmodo for Workforce English for the last few years. Most of the WE classes are taught at night in space rented from the public schools and we have no access to technology there other than instructor & student personal devices. Most of those students use smartphones to check Edmodo. Some are pretty good at sending email with smartphones. Many don’t have computers in their homes. Of the seven (out of 22 originally) who made it to the end of the spring term in my class, three were attending with smartphones, one with a tablet, and three with laptop or desktop computers. When we transitioned online, the coordinating team recommended that we stick with just Zoom and Edmodo.

Pre-Academic English classes meet on the community college campuses where students have access to a dedicated computer lab and instructors have PCs, projectors, and occasionally smart boards in the classroom. These students claim their college accounts and set up their passwords as part of a computer lab tour. Without access to the college system, they can’t get parking permits. :slight_smile: Two of the instructors who teach the most advanced writing classes have been using Blackboard. Others been using Edmodo, but most have just trusted to email to communicate with students. When we moved online, we had training for Zoom and presentations on Edmodo and Blackboard. As in the WE program, we were advised to keep it simple and stick with just Zoom and email unless we were dying to use Edmodo or Blackboard. All I did was set up a group email in Outlook for the students who found Edmodo too confusing. Of the eight (out of 16 originally) who made it to the end of the spring term in my class, five attended with laptops or desktops, one with a tablet, and two with smartphones.

My CC doesn’t have Canvas. I can’t recall the formal name for the system that we use to record grades and track students for advising. We have Microsoft OneDrive for anything we want to store or share in the cloud. People in administration do use Teams for some things, and everyone uses Outlook for official email. This summer there is all kinds of training going on to help us get our acts together. Instructors in the credit division will be re-vamping their courses entirely. My classes are much lower stakes. I will be fine with Zoom, Edmodo, and email for a while yet, so I am focusing on training related to Acrobat and Office now that I don’t have a real classroom whiteboard.

14

Also, try not to totally judge how online learning works based on experiences from this past semester. Its very different teaching a planned online course versus being thrown into one mid semester.
I teach a fully online course which is asynchronous and mostly discussion board posts but I also teach a previously face to face now switched to online synchronous course as well.

My students are still expected to read chapters, articles, and view videos prior to “class”. We are using Microsoft Teams for videoconferencing. As I have a Surface Pro tablet, I use the Whiteboard app to mirror what Im writing on the tablet with my stylus into the Teams meeting happening on my laptop so my students can see it.

Most of what I teach is typically face to face in the hospital setting with small groups of students 10 hours a day. Now that course is me meeting via Teams for a short 30 min or so videoconference with the students in the morning. They are then given assignments to work through and turn in by the afternoon where we all meet again for 2 hours to discuss. I am fortunate to have very small groups of students (8 or less) and participation in discussions is still required. While not ideal for my course content and objectives, the students do say they still learn a ton and the videoconferences help them feel connected to other students.

15

@happymomof1 – Of course, in a continuing Ed scenario, what’s available would not be the same. I should have realized that–thanks for explaining. :slight_smile:

16

I’ll share my DD’s experience, FWIW.

She was enrolled in an in-person summer class at a nearby college. It went online, which was, by then, expected. A few days before the first class, DD emailed the professor, as she didn’t know how to access the class or materials. Heard nothing back. The night before the class started, the professor sent everyone an email saying she would have her blackboard up in 24 hours… and the class was being run as an “independent study” because “that’s what she felt worked best in a covid world”. I had an inkling right then this wasn’t going to be the experience I hoped and paid for, but decided to hold off judgement until DD could examine the syllabus and Blackboard. The professor not only missed her own deadline, but missed the first two classes entirely. We heard from another student who stayed in the class it took her four days to post a welcome video. Surprise! There were, in fact, textbooks, even though she failed to post them in the bookstore. Students would scramble to get books, which the university bookstore had not been told to stock. The college wasn’t giving prorated refunds, even though all students missed out on a week of class through no fault of their own.

DD decided to bail after the professor missed the first class and her own deadline. Feeling uneasy about how Class #1 was unfolding, DD swapped into another class in another department. It is night and day. Her new professor does two-to-three recorded half-hour lectures a week. Detailed eight-page syllabus. The textbook is online and free. She has Zoom meetings scheduled several times a week, but students are only required to join one, and that’s where some of the discussion takes place. The remainder of the discussion takes place on a message board, and students are required to post one original message and respond to two other posts at least once a week. The professor also has Zoom office hours, which are line-up-and-ask-your-question meetings. Assignments and worksheets are posted by the week on Blackboard, as are tests and quizzes. While it isn’t the same as in-person classes, it has definite structure and a semblance of F2F time, both of which were important to DD and me in terms of an online experience.

So the lesson we learned was to ask questions. Specifically in regards to how the class will be run and what the expectations are, and especially if the course description and syllabus were written pre-covid. Our mistake was assuming the first class she signed up for would be run like the second. It wasn’t. There is a time and place for independent study classes. But in a world adrift and uncertain - even though I was confident DD could handle the work - I wanted her to have a structure-lite bridge between the chaos that was her spring e-learning experience and the rigid, rigorous schedule that her hopefully-in-person fall classes will have.

OP, I don’t know if this answers your questions, but both DD and I learned a lot from this experience. We’re hoping classes will resume in-person and it is knowledge we won’t have to use in the future… but one never knows.

17

Most schools have students in all different time zones so have to offer classes in an asynchronous way. I think it is an issue to provide interactive live experiences that aren’t available to all. Blackboard always does that but “remote” learning (as opposed to “online”) that has live lectures, breakout rooms, polls, quizzes, office hours, and so on needs to also be possible asychronously.

18

@Groundwork2022 - Even when classes do return to campus, what the instructors and students have learned from this adventure won’t be lost. Some classes that no one imagined could be taught in a distance format are being run successfully now, and this expands who can enroll in those classes and who can teach them. It will be really interesting to see how it all works out. :slight_smile:

19

I had a few students in different time zones, we still did synchronous class times with the change to online this past semester.

20

So just to correct a couple of my posts. The family member who is teaching is using Canvas as well as Zoom. She has spent a good deal of time, informally and in formal workshops and one course, learning how to do online classes well.

She lectures on Zoom live, in a synchronous manner, but it is still possible for those in other time zones to watch the lecture, since it is recorded. In fact, everyone can go back to it. People can answer questions and take polls at different times, it seems. Live interactions and chats would of course be limited to those able to be there while the lecture is actually happening.

So I meant to say that a class can be offered as a synchronous offering and still be available asynchronously.