They will manage. In my experience, there is great diversity in teaching quality within the same format as well. It is not the case that all professors excel at in-person teaching either. Some will adapt better to hybrid or online than others. Some are primarily there for their research anyway.
The state regents required all colleges to make mask wearing voluntary. The regents finally felt the pressure to remove that rule, and now masks are required at GT. GT always wanted masks.
Some colleges already had experience with hybrid classes, such as when the introductory CS course has more students enrolled than will fit in the college’s largest classroom.
I’m scheduled for a course that meets twice a week. If the enrollment is small enough, I hope to be allowed to meet in-person. Or maybe in-person once and online once. Unfortunately, it appears likely that I will not know until at least mid-August unless the department chair just dictates that we have to be online.
I don’t think time zones are an issue for us, since most of our students come from our time zone.
@homerdog With the Bowdoin plan, if student pick which hours they want to take the class, does that mean that most of the lessons are a pre-recorded format? How does that with for classes that normally would be rich with student discussion? Or for a math class where there would be questions from students and hearing others questions is useful to the learning process? Are you saying that half the class might tune in at one time and half at another depending on their time zone? Of course it’s great to offer flexibility for kids in different time zones, but lots of trade offs with just about any plan.
I agree but I think you have in your mind what you think remote classes are. There are different variations of it from recording your classes, which my son’s school does anyway to “live” classes with discussions. Those can be run exactly the same if done correctly. Especially with smaller groups . Even at my daughters Lac everything was “live” and not prerecorded. They did record those "live’ sessions.
Of course it won’t be the exact same but really not that far off. We are planning major Medical conferences and lectures now and have actually “been” to some. Not really that different and I can be in my PJs also doing it…LOL…
So switching from one format to another is really just not that hard. It’s being done everyday with all types of businesses. The schools have to have the software and technology and the innovation to do it. My son had major project groups that had to meet together virtually and then present to the professor as a group the next week they went"live" . It just wasn’t an issue for them since they have the technology, their own software to make it happen. Learning didn’t stop and in fact became more intense. Same with my daughters small Lac. Group presentation and she was working on her 70 page thesis and presented it as she normally would but of course virtually. Again, learning doesn’t stop. .
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2009/credit.html indicates that the definition of credit hour is flexible in terms of how much of the time per week the student is expected to work (3 hours of work per week per credit hour) is in-class versus out-of-class.
The students have to choose the whole class and all of the time slots. Then, when class starts, the professor will design the course meeting times based on who is in the class and the time zones involved. It sounds like, if a class involves lectures, they will be pre-recorded and kids watch them whenever they can but can also watch them in those blocks of time and when they are not live. So, yes, there will be overlap in who is in class when but that will be figured out in the first week. Sounds like all kids will still get at least three hours of synchronized classtime either with a larger group or with the groups of three and questions can be asked during those times. I know it sounds complicated and I don’t understand all of the details. Think of it like this, during those six hours for each class, there will be some time that you can watch lectures (but you could also do it whenever you want), there will be live time with the professor with likely most of the class and then there will be time for very small groups to meet with the professor. And the kids in Europe or China don’t have to take class at 2:00am. Likely two of the three time slots work for most kids so the kids here in the states will still have their international friends in some of their class sections.
@knowstuff what you are describing is an in person model being made available online. Remote teaching - the way to do remote teaching - is different. See all of the ways it’s different in that Harvard link.
@sylvan8798 Same with your situation. You’ll meet in person and run your class and then “meet” online to maybe have class another day. That is just having in-person set up online. Like a work meeting. It’s not changing the pedagogy.
For a view on using credit hours as a determination of course curriculum
http://higheredstrategy.com/credit-hours/
It will be interesting if this emergency pivot to an online only course environment will drive a similar shift in course design to learning outcomes rather than credit hours.
All of DS19’s courses will be online for the fall which has led me to thinking about what impact it will have on his learning. He is a STEM major and attends a large research intensive university that has your typical large first year lecture courses. It’s not the Oxford/Cambridge (or small LAC) experience. He’s going into second year in a program where many of his courses would have been smaller but not all. From that perspective it doesn’t really matter whether or not his lectures are in-person or online. There isn’t a whole lot of interaction going on in the lectures any way (iclickers aside). What he will be missing are the in-person tutorials and labs and the ability to collaborate with fellow students and connect with faculty. If they can find a way to replicate those experiences then academically speaking it shouldn’t make much of a difference (other than missing hands on labs) that his courses are online. What it then boils down to is that what he really will be missing is the opportunity for personal growth and development that comes from being physically on campus. Academically he will be fine.
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I have to believe that a majority of schools, at least those with strong resources are engaging with outside firms to enhance online learning. I know several Nescacs are and would bet in fact that all eleven are, as are many, many other schools.
I was giving one example. Kids can stay home/ in their rooms. Watch prerecorded sessions , which has always been available btw etc. There will be different ways to skin the cat per se. Again, learning will happen. Groups discussions will happen. Some live, some not but why do you have to change the pedagogy (nice word…) if it is working well?
So what is your perfect online structure? Just curious. (being in person live can’t be an answer…LOL)
@knowstuff I’m not an academic. My husband does, however, know a lot about how online learning works and there are best practices that can make it very effective. I mentioned just a few things that make remote learning more effective like very short lectures instead of long ones, closed captioning, many many ways to make it better. I could go back and read through that Harvard article I posted but, if you’re interested, just go back and read that. Here are just a few ideas.
Discussion boards for asynchronous forums:
Not all classroom discussions need to be synchronous. In these cases, Canvas has a discussion forum feature. Decide what kind of discussions will be most beneficial to your course: topic-driven or social-driven. Your discussion prompts and how you evaluate your students’ responses should reflect that decision.
Topic-driven: this type of discussion board works especially well for highlighting readings or helping your students focus on key parts of your course content. Provide specific conversation points and prompts that may relate to a reading or a lecture. Make sure to build in space for reflection or debate in your discussion prompts. Students should want to know what their classmates are thinking about!
Social-driven: this type of discussion board works especially well if you want your students to connect the course with current events or their own projects or work. Your discussion board serves as a digital “water cooler” for your class. Your discussion prompts can be more general, such as asking them to post about the specific topic of the week.
OR
During Class
Encourage community: the sense of presence will be enhanced when everyone shows their face via their webcam. Consider requiring students to turn on video as a key part of participation, since it is easier to engage with the class if you can see them, and students are more likely to pay attention if they know they’re on camera. The gallery view can be helpful here.
Stretch times: consider permitting students to “stretch” every 20-30 minutes for 30 seconds. It can be harder to focus attention on a screen than in a classroom!
Polls: Zoom’s polling features to see the distribution of perspectives on a particular question. When used well, this can be a powerful complement to the lecture or discussion.
Chat: Zoom’s Chat feature can be either very useful for the instructor, or a distraction if it’s used continuously, so thinking about how and when to engage students is helpful. Additional tips can be found here.
Breakout groups: if you want students to reflect in smaller sized “buzz groups”, you can consider using Slack or twitch as a chat platform that complements Zoom. Alternatively you can use Zoom’s Breakout Rooms functionality.
Writing on the board: if you usually do “board work” as part of a class session, you have a number of options.
Within this text, there are a lot of links to click on to get more detailed info on how to set up your remote class. They don’t show up when I cut and paste.
In Bowdoin’s case, all professors are using one interface (I guess that’s what it would be called) so kids aren’t jumping around looking through their professor’s emails to get directions on what’s going on this week and which links to click and some teachers are using Zoom and some using other avenues. They will log onto this one interface and be able to get to all of their classes. At least that’s the way I understand it. It’s a cleaner experience.
@homerdog wrote:
Well, that’s not true. Didn’t Bowdoin go through a process similar to this? I’m sure other NESCACs did:
https://www.wesleyan.edu/ofcd/dosanddonts.html
Um. Of course!
@homerdog wrote:
So, maybe, it’s possible we can let academics do their jobs?
It just seems like you don’t think these idea’s are being implemented. They are as you state. Different professors/ teachers will use what they think is effective for them. You just seem to state the negatives and not the positives. I am sure the professors will try different things to see what works. I don’t know about this myself but know that canvas, bluejean, blackboard and a multitude of other software are being used. Since the schools have had this summer I am kinda excited to see what they come up with. There will be successes and failures. Zoom/Slack and the like was being used already. Kids like Slack no question. At my son’s online conference this is what he did and the first time I used Slack…now I am kinda cool…LOL.
Stretching??? HMM…interesting. I am sure students can get up at anytime and move around but ok…
My D is seriously considering a gap year as a rising sophomore because either the college experience will be closer to “normal” in fall 2021 or the colleges will have had a year to tinker with online/hybrid learning if that’s the path for the foreseeable future.
Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s not in their wheelhouse - and their big benefit has always been small, in person, interactive courses. Some kids we know from LACs said the [older] professors struggled with online. I know most profs have been working diligently on their plans, but sometimes its really hard get out of your comfort Zone.
@homerdog When I think hybrid, I think flipped – lectures to be watched at home asynchronously and active learning in the classroom. If a shift to remote is required, the active learning would be via Zoom (if possible) or asynchronously (if not). From the teacher perspective, hybrid teaching can be potentially more time consuming than either fully face to face or fully remote.
We have a lot of academic friends who teach at a nonselective public college and have undergone extensive training to deliver the best possible instruction for the fall. Some have prepared three different versions of the same course so they can shift to another mode if required. Yes, it’s a lot of work. But shifting to remote delivery is not the huge hurdle you imagine. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that people with doctorates should be able to learn and apply best practices for online learning.
I also think that the level of detail about instructional planning that is shared with the public may not correspond to the depth of preparation that is happening behind the scenes. These institutions may simply have opted for concise messaging.