Or their own preferences. An instructor who put visuals on slides may not need anything other than an internet connection to plug his/her laptop into. But one who writes on the boards may need better camera equipment to capture the boards with sufficient resolution for remote students to see the content properly on their computers. The instructors may also differ in terms of how comfortable they are working with their computers – some may be able to do all of the setup themselves, but others may need more instruction from IT.
In the past few decades, I’ve known professors successfully developing online classes for their universities. Those professors had computer and technical skills most of their colleagues lacked, and the courses had trial runs so they could get the unexpected glitches worked out. It was a multi-year process from first planning to successful implementation. And it was only for introductory courses. And they were paid for all the extra work.
I don’t know much at all about online education, just enough to know this situation is probably more complicated than we can guess right now.
Sylvan: so sorry you have this unexpected responsibility. Thank you.
Yes, open book exams would be advised in many cases. Note that this year’s AP exams will be open book free-response-questions only.
Perhaps some of the methods that University of North Dakota used for its distance engineering programs (which existed before virus) could be used. Note that students would go to campus for accelerated summer sessions to do labs. If distance final exams are not cheat-resistant enough, then the final exams for the spring terms could be held on campus adjacent to the on campus summer sessions for labs. Of course, there could still be problems with travel restrictions if the school draws students from beyond its local area.
Some colleges are already very familiar with open book exams. It’s actually a good thing that more colleges would start to offer such exams, even if they’re by necessity because of distance learning. Exams should compel students to think more deeply and apply what they learned more creatively, rather than just regurgitating.
For labs, arguably the most important part of a lab course is to learn how to draw valid conclusions, not fallacies, from quantitative and qualitative data. That can still be achieved via distance learning.
@1NJParent – Yep. My D’s LAC has strong honor code and has always had take-home exams and self-scheduled finals. Sometimes open book; sometimes not.
The key is faculty learn how to write exams so that it doesn’t really matter if it’s open book or not. You ask questions that show students’ conceptual understanding of the material – not regurgitating facts and figures. I’m sure it’s not easy at first, but they get the hang of it. My D just finished ‘writing’ a genetics test. It was all about exploring various possibilities related to genes – hard to explain b/c I don’t understand the topic but the fact that she’s writing essays about genetics is the point.
Granted – this is hard to do if you have 50+ students in a class unless you have TAs to help grade.
This is true for some labs. Definitely not true for organic chem labs - at least at my school, it’s all lab techniques, yields, and final purity.
Chem labs via distance learning can be pretty dismal.
^I agree with that and I was referring to in my prior post intro lab courses that are part of general education at many colleges. Specialized lab courses where learning techniques are critical aren’t suitable candidates for remote learning.
The O chem labs are really tough for online learning. My D is taking O chem II this semester and while I get the TA’s are doing the best they can, she is struggling taking this lab at home. She will probably end up with a high B. That’s not great for someone wanting to apply to med school.
Our (grad level) school where I teach moved to exclusive online teaching in mid March. I’d say it’s been a mixed bag.
Workwise, it was a lot for me as an instructor. I created new slides and PowerPoints for both courses, as well as additional “out of classroom” discussion on our class computer portal. I do a lot of FaceTime office hours and do find it difficult at times to treat my bedroom as a makeshift office. (I live in an apartment).
Has my online persona gone over well with the students? I hope so! Zoom is a pretty decent platform and our classes have never been interrupted or undermined by bad WiFi. Several students have made comments in class that are as astute and insightful as any of the comments/questions I have heard in my in-person classes. So that’s good.
Other students, however, have just disappeared. I know they are attending class, but they no longer seem “present.” Something about the platform has caused them to stop volunteering.
One of the reasons I wanted D to attend a LAC is that she shines in more intimate classroom settings. Online learning deprives the teaching experience of that kind of face-to-face interaction. It isn’t a terrible stopgap, but it alters the teaching experience in a number of ways.
@Auntlydia my daughter stayed in her off campus apartment with two roommates. One of the reasons she stayed is because her classes are all synchronous and if she came home, she’d have to deal with a three hour time difference. She told me that she occasionally has issues with her WiFi when both of her roommates also have class and they are all using a videoconferencing platform. She was getting booted out of one class. She figured out if she turned off her own camera, it used less bandwidth and she was able to join the class. She emailed her professor to explain the problem and her prof agreed it was okay for her to turn off video so she could still be present but her prof can’t “see” her. Fortunately it’s only that one class where she has had a problem, I think b/c her roommates both have class at the same time and their bandwidth is not strong enough to handle all of them.
Agreed that o chem lab is suboptimal online. My D is also taking o chem II this semester. She’s super frustrated with the drop off of learning.
Yep, it’s one of the many reasons I don’t require students to turn on their video. Why should they have to allow me to intrude on their privacy as a condition of attending class?
Something else we do to deal with different time zones and bad WiFi: we tape every class on Zoom. And I permit students to watch the tape asynchronously, provided they also participate in our class discussion board.
There are lots of ways to make this work for some who is older and has already been in undergraduate/graduate school for a number of years. But for college kids - especially freshmen- it’s a huge change.
Many of the school districts here gave their kids chrome books to log into classes. Those do not allow zoom, just google classroom or other approved programs.
The provost at Stanford said they are currently considering six main options for next quarter and one of those options is to just cancel their fall quarter outright, and have them all come in summer quarter to make it up. I don’t think they will do this because it will seriously disadvantage students wanting internships, but the provost said it is being considered along with the other five main options. She did not specify what the other five options were.
@ChemAM If there are 6 options and she only discussed one of them that’s probably their first choice. She’s floating the idea to get feedback…positive or negative. If it’s negative she’ll float other ideas.
Or it’s their last choice and she’s working her way up the list. Either way that’s how the PR game works.
@chmcnm She didn’t bring it up out of the blue; she said there were five or six main options being considered and somebody asked if one of the options was cancelling fall quarter and she said yes. Nobody asked about any of the other options. Or at least that is what it sounds like to me from the article. I don’t know exactly what the provost says, I just know what the Stanford Daily reported in their student paper. I linked the article below.
^Colleges on quarter system do have that extra option. However, there’s no guarantee that the following winter quarter and/or spring quarter won’t be affected. In fact, it’s more likely that infections in the fall, if the virus is still around, wouldn’t be as bad as in the winter and spring, assuming vaccines aren’t available then.
Also, something to keep in mind, this is a student-run newspaper and not an official university communication. So take it with a grain of salt.
Not just for Stanford but why not just a slower integration back to school? Many upper level classes are much smaller then freshman classes. So delay the freshman from coming in by a month or semester. Integrate online learning in some fashion to all grade levels to decrease class size. Even though not optimal many students actually like the prerecorded classes and the ability to watch them at their leisure. But it takes a different study management skill set, no question. I think too many schools want an all or nothing approach and that just won’t work for the next year or two. Kids like my son’s internship were canceled this summer. Don’t want to do that again for next summer. This will actually start to impact the workforce going forward. Keep as normal as possible with making changes to accommodate. Freshman will be impacted the most but this will be their new normal