My institution of higher learning continues to barrel ahead
with its plans to open. That said, some
funky things have begun to show up. Because
teachers have invoked ADA as a shield, many of our classes are being offered
only online, so 75% of our incoming first year students will have at least one
online class. Only 10% have three or
more (of four) classes online. Some
students are trying to decrease online classes, but others are trying to
INCREASE them. These students do not
want any more exposure than they have to have, and I continue to think this is
wise. One student that I know of, known
for her devil may care attitude and impulsiveness, is surprised that school is
going on at all. Can you imagine that?
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball has started up again. Even though teams are limited to 30 players
and about 10 coaches, at least three teams have at least one player
infected. The Nationals and the Reds
have at least one, though the Reds may have more – two players are on the
disabled list for unspecified reasons, and the Marlins have so many players
infected that they have suspended play (in a season shortened from 162 to just
sixty games), and the team they played against is also not playing as a
precaution. Yet the games go on with the
Reds continuing to play the Chicago Cubs (and perhaps infecting them) tonight.
Speaking of Chicago, the reluctant son was slated to go back
there for his senior year, but all four of his classes this fall are
online. Does it make sense for him to go
and sit in his dorm room to take classes remotely? Especially because he comes from a state
that, by the time school starts, may have enough cases that he would have to
completely quarantine for the first two weeks?
We think it likely that he will be taking classes from home.
Some Universities are coming to their senses – I hear from
reluctant cousins that George Washington has decided not to have students on
campus in the fall. I assume that they
will be offering courses online. The
cousins wonder, “What is the sense of this?
How should we manage this?”
First of all, I don’t think this is all bad. When not writing these Chronicles, I am
learning about how to teach in this environment. There is a seminar tomorrow and I am reading
about optimizing zoom rooms. Courses
will, for the most part, not be true on-line courses. Except maybe in California and the Ivies, we
really haven’t had time to prepare for truly on-line classes because we have
been in limbo preparing to teach in person, in a hybrid classroom and
online. My hope is that this will mean
that courses will include at least some synchronous work – meaning working with
a live teacher – interacting with him or her – and, my guess is, a lot more in
class interaction than is usually the case.
Look, as faculty, we all know that when we get lazy, we
lecture. Because it is live and, at
least at my University, classes are small enough, we interact with our students
– and I think that, by and large, this makes for a somewhat interactive space –
where students are more active than they would be watching T.V. This is good, because we KNOW that students
learn better the more actively they are engaged.
The challenge this fall, whether with all remote or hybrid
classes (which all of ours will be at first because some of our students, if
they are sick, will be encouraged to participate from home or the dorm room),
will be to keep students engaged. Break
out rooms and one on one encounters, not to mention chat functions can be
creatively used to help students discuss with each other aspects of
assignments. This will improve their
engagement – and will help me be a better teacher when I can be in a
traditional classroom again.
Will this be the same experience? No, but good teachers will be focused on
helping students get to know each other and work together in ways that they
have never done before. Some of the “college
experience” will now be happening in the classroom. As an ice breaker, I am planning to ask my
students whose face they would paint on their mask if they could assume that
person’s identity while wearing the mask.
If we can bring the “college experience” to life more fully in the
classroom, college will be a better place.
Will it? Last spring,
three of the reluctant son’s four classes, when they went virtual, became
asynchronous. Teachers posted canned
lectures or just had students do readings and turn in busy work. One of the classes remained synchronous. He was excited about each of the classes and they were going well before they had to turn on a dime and go virtual - it was
a quarter that he was really enjoying when it changed. Two of the three asynchronous classes were allright. The synchronous class was tiring to attend, but kept his
interest.
In fact, at the end of the semester when the University
decided to make final exams and other late assignments (term papers, for God’s
sake) optional if the student was OK with the grade that he had at that point,
the reluctant son finished all of the assignments in the three courses that were going well. He didn’t need to
in any of them. And he did finish the
readings in the fourth class, but he didn’t bother doing the scut work that he was assigned as a final project. He told me he wouldn’t remember what that
work was about in a year so why bother? In the other class, he felt he had been given a contract to achieve a certain grade and that he needed to fulfill that obligation to receive the grade. The three classes that he finished included final projects that helped teach him important concepts and he also decided to do them, even though he didn’t need to, because
organizing the concepts for the exam or in the paper would be a useful exercise. Even though he felt some obligation in the fourth class, he was able to override it as it didn't feel like a worthwhile exercise.
Btw, the teacher in the synchronous class sent a note when the
University put forward the policy of not grading the last bit of the semester apologizing
for this stupid decision. The professor
noted that University classes rely on the confluence of multiple motivational
factors to optimize learning – both the excitement of gaining new knowledge,
but also the competition inherent in trying yourself against the standard of an
examination or having your writing evaluated.
While I want to think that my students are motivated by the desire to
learn, I know that he is right, and I really appreciated his articulating this
idea to the students, to the reluctant son, and by extension, to me.
“But what about the total college experience?” the reluctant
cousins want to know.
Students choose a particular college these days because they
go on a visit and it “feels” right.
There is a culture, there is a sense of belonging. Oh, sure, they care about the aid
package. They care about the “value” of
the diploma – what is the prestige level of this or that school. But they want to belong to a group and to
connect with the people – and they
want to work out in a nice gym (but I digress).
For students, especially first years, who don’t get to go to
schools this fall, they will miss out on important aspects of this
experience. They will be part of the
COVID interrupted generation of University students. This will become part of the narrative of
their experience of going to college.
Some will use the connections that are afforded through the
classroom to develop virtual relationships that they will follow up on – or not
– whenever they are able to actually get to campus. At the University where I teach,
relationships often get cemented into place the first weekend, when students
create their cliques. Fortunately the
school I went to as an undergrad was much more fluid than that. Some of the people that I hung with at first
just weren’t a good fit for me. We
actually had two campuses and I was able to “start over” on a second campus
(though a lot of us from the first campus made the trek together and formed a
kind of base to explore the second campus from).
The point of my meandering in the last paragraph is that
every student creates their own narrative of their “college years”. It is a lived experience that varies
tremendously and, as much as we would like to plan it, the true delights are frequently
the random elements that we get exposed to as the result of a variety of chance
events, including that some of the people who become our lifelong friends could
very well have chosen to go to another institution, but for whatever reason didn’t.
The scenario we are looking at this year is, "Remember my first year in college when they shut down the school after we all got sick and then it took me six months to be able to breath right again?" (This example is on my mind after talking with a student yesterday who is still recovering from a bout of COVID that she caught right before we shut down in March).
Two of our children are choosing to go to school and I think
will stay there come hell or high water.
They are welcome to come home, and it was a truly unexpected delight to
have them here in the spring. Living
together as “nearly adults” required navigating different rules and exploring
different roles and relationships amongst ourselves.
For a first year student, learning how to structure one’s
time is one of the most challenging aspects of being away at school. Is it going to be good for some students to
learn this in the context of a home where parents are available as
consultants? Might their sleep cycles be
improved by having parents who are going to bed at a reasonable hour? Am I beginning to sound like an old fuddy
duddy?
One of the books I am currently reading is Sapiens – a Brief History of Humanity. I have found it
readable and useful and likely will post on it soon. But the part I found particularly salient
today is notion of chaos theory. Simple
chaos systems, like the weather, are hard to predict, but double chaos systems,
like the human reaction to the COVID virus are even more difficult to
predict. Because we can read the charts
from Johns Hopkins University we can see the effects of not wearing masks and
not social distancing and this can change our attitudes and therefore our
behaviors. I am hopeful that our
administrators are baseball fans and will learn from what is happening in this
already bizarrely shortened season. The charts are, I think misleading. Today they are headed down in the South and West. That is not because we have beaten this thing, but because the people in the South and West are reading those charts and have hunkered down (I'm willing to bet).
Bringing a few thousand people together from all over the
country to live, eat, sleep, and learn together is riskier than just playing a
ballgame a day together, out of doors, with the sun shining. I hope that other Universities, mine
included, join George Washington in coming to its senses. One of the results may be helping our
students put academic learning back at or near the center of the “college
experience”. It may help the faculty
take their responsibilities as teachers more seriously as it becomes apparent
that academics really are at the heart of the academy. These are the things that I think it makes
sense to hope for in a time of chaos. We
should also attend to keeping the campus culture – whatever that may be for our
different campuses – alive – so that we can be in touch with each other during
these times of social distancing and the consequent possibility of isolation.
PS Just found out that one of our local competitor schools is not going to open. Will that bode well for us? How many dominoes need to fall? Our President has refused to have faculty at the decision making table...
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