To My Colleagues, Who Must Now Teach Differently (1)

I sent this message to faculty at one of my institutions. Perhaps you can benefit, too.

Hello Everyone,

 Just ended a quiet Saturday morning by the fireplace. It is sunny, but temperatures are still cool here in the Ozarks. I read a few chapters from George Santayana’s “The Last Puritan” and skimmed through one of my daughter’s textbooks, an anthology of world literature. And at this moment I’m envisioning you (the plural form) rolling your eyes, asking, “Do people really spend Saturday mornings like this in Missouri?” And to add even more shock value, I am a business prof! So, there’s that. Well, as a matter of fact people do become interested in other fields and develop the habit of reading outside the canon because, many years prior, their college faculty demonstrated directly through the general education core and indirectly by example and illustration in class, an appreciation for the beauty, size, complexity, and wonder of God’s created order.

Students officially begin Spring Break on Monday. As evidenced by my own college student upstairs, they already are deep into break-mode and may be tempted to remain there for quite some time. We, on the other hand, just saw our down-time slip away. When they “return” from break, how much of them will we have at our disposal?

 As you consider how to go about delivering the same level of quality to your students, may I suggest you turn the question around and ask “How can I get the same (or better) quality of work from my students?” Here are some suggestions:

1.  The old adage (adapted): Tell them what your going to do; tell them what you’re doing while you’re doing it; and, tell them what you did after you’ve done it. In other words, without the visual cues associated with face-to-face class sessions we run the risk of being just another You-Tube video. Ambiguity frustrates people, allows them to fabricate reasons to explain lack of information (usually negative), and permits opportunity for competing interests/interruptions to promote the idea that class-time is the life-interruption rather than the other way around.
2. Plan questions and insert them into your Zoom/BigBlueButton sessions ranging in quality from simple to complex. Prime the pump with easy questions and move up the Bloom Taxonomy with more complex questions. You may not go beyond “apply” or “analyze” in very many class sessions, but can hit the lower levels nearly every time. Because of time limitations, one luxury we don’t have during a live class session is expecting every student in class to answer a questions or two. In a chat screen, however, everyone can participate in the Q and A process. No need to respond to every student’s post. Personalize the questions to get original input from students. Copy and save the discussion thread before terminating the session.
3. Require completing a quiz, not just reading, before class/discussion begins.
4. When using asynchronous/threaded discussions set them up in two parts: initial post (answer a personalized question by mid-week-ish [70%] and post a follow-up to (an)other student(s) by the end of the week [30%]). Why 70/30? Because at 50/50 there is no reason for students to value one stage as more important than the other. They reason, “If I’m busy it doesn’t matter if I skip the initial post, since I can do just as well by agreeing with someone else’s post.” (Set access to the discussion to “Users must post before seeing replies”.) For faculty, the first post typically is of most practical importance since it requires original thinking and gives students more to choose from/respond to during the follow-up section of the discussion assignment.
5. Teaching math/statistics? Use on-screen marking tools, of course, but here is a special one. In PPT draw a circle/square then format the shape to have a definite outline and a colored-but-transparent shade inside. This gives you a movable “lens” or highlight to use when focusing on a specific term of an equation. You can reshape it to cover areas of a different size and you can quickly copy the shape and change its color to highlight multiple terms and outcome figures.

 There are many more suggestions for assuring quality of instruction, whether face-to-face, remote synchronous, or asynchronous online. You’re experienced faculty and I am certain you already knew most or all the ones I posted above. Yet they still are worth mentioning if only to remind you of what you knew or to provide a different approach to some method you’re already using. What methods are you using that can help your peers? I always learn from others, so reply and share your skills.

 I’ll check in with one of these messages from time-to-time. Neither I nor anyone else expects you do adopt these suggestions just because. The classes belong to you. If you find them helpful, they’re yours.