Since we started this podcast four years ago in November 2017, we’ve taken a break from our usual interview format at the end of each fall semester to reflect on the evolution of our own teaching practices. In this episode, we look back on our experiences in the fall 2021 semester.
Shownotes
- Lumen Learning Waymaker – the provider of the OER-based personalized learning platform used in place of a textbook in John’s intro class.
- Greenlaw, S. (2019). Iterative OER Development. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 67. February 6.
- Grant, A. (2021). Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It’s Called Languishing. The New York Times. Updated October 4.
Transcript
John: Since we started this podcast four years ago in November 2017, we’ve taken a break from our usual interview format at the end of each fall semester to reflect on the evolution of our own teaching practices. In this episode, we look back on our experiences in the fall 2021 semester.
[MUSIC]
John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
Rebecca: Hey, John, it’s been a while. [LAUGHTER]
John: It has been, we’ve had a few guest hosts filling in. With your new position you’ve been kind of busy recently.
Rebecca: Yeah, I still have a bit of a teaching load as well as my shift to being in the Division of Graduate Studies. Hopefully things will start smoothing out over the next few weeks.
John: Our teas today are…
Rebecca: I have English afternoon tea.
John: Excellent. That’s a return to an old favorite.
Rebecca: It is.
John: And I have, on a snowy, cold day here in Oswego, spring cherry green tea, bringing me back to a warmer time.
Rebecca: A time that we all wish for. [LAUGHTER]
John: And because we still have this big pile of tea left around in our conference room, because we haven’t been doing too many workshops in person this year.
Rebecca: Yeah, definitely.
John: So we thought today would be a good opportunity to reflect back on pandemic teaching part 3, 4, 5, whatever it is.
Rebecca: Yeah, we’ve lost count, I think.
John: 20 years or so of pandemic teaching, and what our experiences have been like this semester.
Rebecca: So maybe we should first start off by just indicating the kinds of classes and modalities we were teaching in. So I was teaching two sections of my web media classes, which are stacked classes, so 300-, 400-, and 500- level web design courses, and I was teaching entirely synchronously online.
John: And I returned to a classroom with the smallest large class I’ve ever had here, with about 186 students, as well as an asynchronous class, which I’ve been doing for a number of years. They’re both introductory economics courses.
Rebecca: I know one of the things that I have been experiencing, I’ve heard a lot of other faculty talking about, and that we’ve seen through polls of our students, is the mental health challenges that they’re facing. I’ve had many students report extreme depression, anxiety, heightened stress, complete focus issues. We were just talking this week about memory issues. And it’s really taking a toll on their learning.
John: The good news is that students are much more willing to discuss mental health issues than they have ever been in the past. The bad news is they’re just so incredibly prevalent. I’ve heard from dozens of students who’ve been reporting their experiences with depression, or anxiety or stress, as well as, as you said, difficulties in focusing and just problems with being motivated to do their work.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think that motivation issue is an important one to underscore. It’s not even necessarily that they’re not interested in the subject matter, because when they’re in class, they might be fully engaged. It’s what’s happening, or maybe what’s not happening outside of class, that I think is really the challenge that students are facing.
John: I think administrators throughout the country were very optimistic about a return to normalcy this fall. And I think we all were hoping for something closer to a normal experience, our students as well as us. When we had the vaccine come out, that looked remarkably effective and we were assuming that everyone would very rapidly be vaccinated and this whole pandemic thing would be completely under control. And that’s not quite the experience that our students ended up with. And it’s not quite the experience we ended up with.
Rebecca: I think, even if we take the emergency remote learning out of the equation, spring of 2020, and we just look at where we’ve been over the last three semesters. I moved to teaching synchronously online. I’ve taught the same way with the same classes for three semesters, and I’ve really seen a shift between fall of 2020, and fall of 2021. In fall of 2020, although students were kind of bummed out that they might not be getting the same college experience that they had hoped for, they were still in fairly good spirits. I definitely had some extra students struggling that I may not have had previously. But they were engaged. They asked for things like more practice assignments so that they could dig in. And a lot of them were taking advantage of the creative nature of the kind of studio classes that I teach to just escape all the things that were causing stress around them. And I’m really experiencing perhaps the exact opposite this semester [LAUGHTER], where all the things that the students requested and needed and wanted in fall 2020 are not the things that the students need in fall of 2021 and now moving into spring of 2022. How about you, John?
John: My experience in my asynchronous online class was in fact, more of a return to normalcy. Because last year’s asynchronous online class was one where a lot of students expected more synchronous components, which in a few decades of teaching online had never been a common request. And a lot of students were really not that happy about an asynchronous course last year, they were expecting more of a synchronous experience. And now that we have so many more face-to-face classes, including the one I’m teaching, the people who are taking this are mostly adults, they’re mostly working. Many of them are parents and they’re very much back to the normal sort of experience of an online class. My face-to-face students, though, are not doing quite as well. They’re younger in general, and they’re experiencing many of the problems that you’ve described. And they’re having a lot of trouble just completing even simple weekly tasks. And I’ve been providing a lot more structure, I’ve been sending them a lot more reminders with emails, with announcements in class, sending reminders to individual students, and it’s not getting through. There’s a remarkable amount of work that’s just not being done. Even things that would only take 10 or 15 minutes are just simply not being done. And it’s really frustrating to see students struggling and not doing the basic work that they need to to be successful in the course.
Rebecca: I know you teach a lot more first-year students than I do, I teach mostly upper-division students in the classes that I teach. And it’s interesting, because they may be students that I’ve had before who have a track record at that college and have done quite well in the past and have hit an all-time low. It’s like the grind is over. [LAUGHTER] There’s no more grind left to kind of move through this pandemic in a way that they need to if they want to have the academic achievements that they’ve had in the past. It’s interesting that you say that these what we maybe classify traditionally as “non-traditional” students in your online class, are quote-unquote, “back to normal” ish. In part because maybe people who are parents, their kids are back to school, and they’re back to work in a way that maybe feels a lot more normal to them. But school still feels really different for students that are more of a traditional college age.
John: Many of the students in the asynchronous class are part time, they’re taking a couple of classes at a time. But even there, I should note that they are reporting stress at higher levels than I’ve seen in the past. But they’re doing the work, and they’re being very successful. But a lot of that, I think, is age because many of them have been in college at various times for the last few decades, or in some cases for several decades, or have returned to school after being out working for a while, and they’re very well motivated to be successful. And they have a very specific goal they’re often working towards… a very specific career goal… and they see the course as being essential towards meeting that. Our freshmen, though, have been through some pretty rough learning experiences. The quality of the education they received in high school was quite often not very good, but it certainly was very mixed in quality. And there’s a lot of research about some of the learning losses that people experienced with remote instruction. And when you’re 18 years old, and you’re entering college, and you spent a year and a half or so with a pandemic, that’s a non-trivial portion of your life, in terms of pandemic learning. And I think people need to get used to learning how to be in the classroom. And it’s been a challenge for many.
Rebecca: You know, I haven’t been physically in the classroom, but I’ve certainly heard stories of folks who are face-to-face and have students just saying that they don’t even know how to interact with other humans [LAUGHTER], and actually just coming right out and saying that. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s been like to be in person and some of the challenges that you and your students have faced in that environment?
John: One thing I think everyone was hoping was that masking requirements might be gone if the pandemic had been under more control. I’m in a classroom that seats 420 students, but I have 185 students in the class and they’re spread out. There’s often a lot of distance between those students, and they’re wearing masks. And they are participating so much less in class discussions. And when they do, because they’re wearing masks, it’s really hard for anyone to hear them. And that is really frustrating for them, and it’s somewhat frustrating for me too. And it’s been a bit of a challenge. And the mask requirements in theory would be really good, but one of the things I’ve been observing is that some students, at least, have been very reluctant to actually wear their masks over their mouth and their nose. And I’ve had a few students who’ve had to be reminded of that every single class day from the start of the semester. And that is a sort of environment that’s just a whole lot less pleasant. They’re not very happy because they’re being told to wear a mask, and they don’t believe there’s any need to do that. And I’m not very happy because I picked up COVID, most likely from this class earlier this semester. And I’d rather not see it spread any further. But it’s certainly a much less engaged classroom environment than I’ve ever seen in the past. Because students are spread out more, they’re not talking to each other, it’s harder to hear each other. And there’s just not the same level of interaction that I’m used to seeing in that class.
Rebecca: I’ve had some students talk to me about their in-person classes and just the anxiety that they feel and the fear that they feel of potentially being exposed to COVID-19, and that it just really makes them quite anxious to just be around people. And when people aren’t abiding by the policies set, that just heightens the anxiety but also really makes it not safe for particular groups of people, students who might have compromised immune systems and things like this. And so for some students, they were really, really, really looking forward to being back in the classroom but are saying, “Hmm, what online classes are available in the spring so I can stay away from people?” [LAUGHTER] …which is interesting. That’s definitely not the experience of all students, but definitely a subset of students.
John: Our institution, along with the rest of the State University of New York, had a vaccine requirement go into effect at the end of September. And in the first month, there were a lot of students in my class who either had contracted the virus and had to miss class for 10 days or so, or they were in close contact with someone and went in quarantine. So the class began with often a dozen or two dozen people in the class who were not able to attend in person. So I was running the session in Zoom, which is not something I was hoping would have to happen. Because as everyone noted last year, having a class where you have some students in Zoom, and some people in person, it’s just much harder to do. There’s just a much higher cognitive load. I got more proficient at it as this semester progressed, but I certainly would prefer never to have to do that again. And as you said, more and more students were getting nervous about this, and the number of people attending remotely has been increasing, particularly in the last few weeks as people were reporting they were more and more nervous and were staying away to avoid the risk of getting an infection.
Rebecca: I think one of the things that we’ve been experiencing, at least on our campus, is certainly there are some cases of COVID-19, but there’s also a lot of cases of other things going on. [LAUGHTER] There’s mono, there’s illness, there’s stomach bugs, but all these things initially may present themselves as seeming like they’re COVID-19 at first, and then many students are sick. And I think, culturally, there’s much more of an expectation to stay away if you’re not feeling well. Which is a good thing, right? That’s a good public health thing, to not make everyone else around you sick. But that does impact what’s happening in classes and who’s in class and who’s present and who’s able to keep up. And so I don’t think that’s going to change, we’re going to need to start responding and thinking about, “What does that mean when students aren’t able to be present in class? Or they’re really too ill to even attend synchronously online or whatever.” So Zoom isn’t always an option if someone’s actually sick.
John: What other adjustments have you made in your classes, given these circumstances? Or what adjustments are you planning to take forward into the spring?
Rebecca: I’ve been taking some mental notes and having conversations with my students about, really, the barriers that they’re facing in success, like what’s keeping them from succeeding in the way that they hope. And I had moved into having more low-stakes assignments that were structured and scaffolded, really in response to some of the things that students had wanted prior to the pandemic. And then also, really, in that first fall semester when I was first teaching synchronously online. And the students now are like, “Whoa, there are too many things to keep track of!” Even though it’s structured, having to do more than a couple of activities in a week just seems completely overwhelming. Because they’re reporting memory issues and other things that are likely side effects of the mental health struggles that they’re facing. I’m finding that they’re pretty engaged during class, and I want to seize the moment on that, and continue doing some really engaging activities. I’ve ramped up community-building activities in every class period. I’ve even had them submit ideas and have implemented them, and they get so excited when I’m using one of their ideas. And switching some things around, I had some review assignments that were Google Quizzes, then I did a Kahoot!. And all of a sudden, somehow, even though it’s practically the same thing, that’s way more amazing. So I’ll likely shift more of those over to Kahoot!. And I’m also thinking of, instead of doing low-stakes assignments, I may just do no-stakes assignments. Those are the things that we’re working on in class, it gives them the opportunity to do things. I’ll probably reduce how many of those we’re doing, because the students are just not able to get through as much as they had in the past. Their capacity of being able to do that has been lessened, as it is for all of us. Things are taking longer amounts of time to do things. So I’m trying to respond to that and really think through ways of structuring the class so that there’s options, too. So one of the things that I did just recently, like literally last week, I was noticing there was a lot of assignments still missing. And for some students that might mean 15 or 20 things. And even though they’re small things, that’s a lot of things. And then that almost paralyzes a student from moving forward. They’re not able to move forward, they just don’t know what to do. They freeze and they’re unable to move forward. So I offered the option of doing a small project instead that would demonstrate the things that those assignments were meant to do, as an alternative. And so some students have responded that that seems way more manageable because it’s one thing even though it has a checklist of things that they would need to do in it. It’s a little more creative, it’s an alternative option. And I think I may just start with having an alternative option from the beginning [LAUGHTER] next semester so that they just have a couple of different pathways that they can choose. Group work is also at an all-time struggle this semester. Although if you’re doing collaborative work, there’s always a team or two where things need micromanagement, you need interventions. That always happens as students are learning to work together in how to be a teammate and how to be a collaborator, but it’s at an all-time high this semester. And so I’m thinking of ways that we can still do collaboration, but in a way that really doesn’t depend on another person to follow through on something, especially follow through on something outside of class. So it’s a major rethink of a couple of things that I do in my classes. But I think it’s necessary in order to respond to the moment and really, where students are right now. How about you, John?
John: Well, I had shifted some last year and more this year to more low-stakes assignments, including some short videos I created with embedded questions. And the main issue is many of the students are just not doing those. I’m using a Lumen Learning Waymaker package, which is a personalized learning system, which is very well designed. We actually talked to the primary author of that, Steve Greenlaw, on an earlier podcast, and one of the basic things that students have to do is just read some text with embedded questions, and they get a small amount of credit just for completing those questions. And that should be the first thing that they do each week, but it’s often the last thing that they do. So reading the basic readings before coming to class is something that probably a majority of students just are not doing. And in the past, I got a much larger proportion of the students doing that. Because when they’re in class, we work on problem sets. I do a lot of work with iClicker where I give them problems, and they work either individually or in small groups on those and half to three quarters of them, depending on the day, are coming in without the basic concepts that they need to have understood to be able to participate in that flipped environment. So it’s been a challenge. And I talk to them about that every day, and it just hasn’t been making a difference. And I’m not sure what to do about that in the future. The next time I’ll be teaching this class will be in fall 2022. And I’m hoping we’re in a better environment and we get back to more normalcy. For my spring classes, I’m teaching very different classes, and I had revised those quite a bit last year. And I think I’m going to move more in the direction of more group work on all of those classes than I had used in the past.
Rebecca: I know flexibility is something that I have continued to try to embrace more and more for students. And this semester, it’s meant accepting more late assignments or just not really paying attention to when things are submitted. And although in some ways it’s good for students, in other ways it’s not. In some ways, if they’re not completing things by a particular time, then it’s not helping them build the skills either. So I’m trying to find ways to be flexible in a way that gets them excited about what they’re doing so that they become really interested in what it is so that they want to do it, and that they want to get lost in it outside of class. And sometimes smaller assignments, or smaller homeworks and things, are harder to get invested in in that way. And given that I’m in a creative field, I have this opportunity to perhaps seize the desire to find that space, but also recognize that some students may find it very difficult to be creative in a time like this, and offering different pathways for those students where that’s not a good option for them. So I’m going to really need to find a couple of different pathways for the information. And what I’ve really been reflecting on and thinking about is, “Well, what are these course objectives? What are they meant to achieve, and can they demonstrate that at the end of the semester?” I’m really moving in this ungrading direction for sure, I can feel it. I’m easing in slowly, not all the way there yet. But I think that’s definitely the framework that I’m thinking through and wanting to embrace because I want the learning to happen. And I don’t really care how it is that they’re demonstrating it to me, other than they can demonstrate it to me. So I just need to figure out a structure that will work for all of us moving forward.
John: In my asynchronous class, I’ve been doing a lot more work with student reflection. And with making connections where, in weekly discussions, for example, I often used to give them some readings and ask them to analyze the readings and discuss it using the terms and concepts that they had just learned. And I’m leaving those discussions much more open-ended, where I’m asking them to make connections to things that they’ve read or stories in the news. And that’s been much more productive in that class. The other thing that’s worked really well in my asynchronous class again, which has been working much better in general is, again, doing a podcast project and the connections that they form when they work on it together is just coming through as a really positive experience where they do get to engage with each other in ways that they don’t always get to do when they’re taking an online asynchronous class. But it’s a lot harder to scale that when you’ve got a couple hundred students.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think that the scaling of things is what becomes a challenge. Even scaling flexibility can be a problem in a relatively small class, in comparison to the classes that you’re teaching. Allowing fluid deadlines and then everybody waits until the last minute to do something, means you might get hundreds of things all at once. So you have to really think through what’s also going to work for you as a faculty member as we’re making some of these decisions about how to adjust. But I think the key thing to underscore here is that we can’t just keep doing the same thing, because our students are in a different space than they were before. And they’re coming with different backgrounds. We need to respond to the moment which may mean things that we have traditionally relied on are not working, and that we need to come up with new things.
John: And I think we’ve all seen that to some extent, that ways in which we have taught in the past just are not working that well. And I think most of us are experimenting with new things. But, it’s a challenge.
Rebecca: Yeah. I do like what you were saying, John, about reflection. And I’ve also been doing more of that in my classes, too. And I’m finding that really valuable on many levels. It’s a really great way to connect with students when they’re sharing their own experiences, and the ability to even just make one comment on one thing that they say, I think, connects us a little bit. And they feel more willing to be open and have real conversations about what it is that they’re working on, instead of an artificial or transactional relationship. So, it’s meaningful, and it’s also helping me see where they really are getting stuck, or how they have misconceptions, or the way they see themselves as makers in the world. These are design classes so it’s also, how are they seeing themselves? And I think it is helping to move in that direction. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I kind of seized the moment of the pandemic to move more in that direction. And I’m really glad that I have and I think that’s one thing that is working particularly well, as you also noted.
John: And another thing I’ve tried this semester is building in more growth-mindset messaging. It’s not working quite as well as I’d like, because people are faced with a lot of challenges. And all those struggles make it a little harder, perhaps, for them to see that sort of growth taking place. But it has inspired a few students to not give up, to stop by and talk about ways in which they can improve. And I keep hoping that by continuing that messaging, even if it doesn’t work for everyone right now, it may help them in the future.
Rebecca: I’ve also been really uplifted by some of the observations I’ve made of students. Bringing students along, really accepting the fact that other folks are struggling for a wide variety of issues and really approaching each other with a very non-judgmental approach, and just meeting their colleagues where they’re at. So they’re working collaboratively with someone who’s seemingly very unprepared and they just say, “Okay, let’s get you through this,” or, “Here’s a thing you can do, how about you do this thing so that you have a way of contributing?” And I’ve witnessed it in many different occasions this semester, and it does restore my faith in humanity.
John: I’ve seen the same with the podcast project, where there were groups where one of the people were not participating at all, and they’d submit their draft. And then a day or two later, they’d submit a different draft with someone else integrated into it. It may have been after the deadline, but I’ve been more flexible on those deadlines. And the people would show up, and they’d go back and redo it, integrating them into it. And I’ve been really pleased with how well they’ve all worked together, especially where they’ve been recognizing the challenges that other students are facing.
Rebecca: Of course, that’s not to say that some students aren’t frustrated.
John: The frustration has come through, but it always ended up with them not abandoning their fellow students, but ultimately supporting them.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think when students have been nudged in that direction, like it’s a collaborative assignment, you have to collaborate, they’re definitely pulling through and figuring it out, and having tough conversations. I’ve been using a thing called a “retrospective.” I’ve mentioned it before, at the end of a part of a project that asks students to think about what their team can start to do, stop doing, and continue doing, and using that as a way to facilitate a difficult conversation about a relationship that’s not working. And I think that that tool has been helpful to provide some structure around that and to deal with it. I’ve also noticed that when collaboration is optional, then they’re just kind of opting out. And I haven’t overly pushed it and accepting the fact that maybe there’s moments where we need to not be collaborative or we really don’t want to be and that’s okay, too… and so, leaving space for both activities to happen. But it’s exhausting, huh?
John: It certainly is. I feel like I’m not working as hard as I was last year, but I’m more exhausted than I was last year. And I’m not quite sure why there’s that perspective, but it’s one I know I’ve been feeling, and I think many people have been feeling.
Rebecca: I know I read a New York Times article, I think it’s a couple weeks ago now, about languishing. The feeling that we’re having that’s just kind of numb is called languishing. And I shared it with my students, and they responded like, “Yes, I understand this thing.” But I think we’re all experiencing the emotions and mental health challenges of the people around us, and that’s weighing on us. It becomes an emotional labor that we’re not thinking about or not realizing that’s eating up our time, it’s eating up our energy. It’s necessary work I think right now to support our students, but it’s also incredibly tiring in a way that maybe a more traditional non-pandemic semester doesn’t have. So naps? Time for naps.
John: In theory, that would be great.
Rebecca: Yeah, neither one of us are nappers for sure. [LAUGHTER]
John: Yeah. So what’s next for you, Rebecca?
Rebecca: Well, I’m looking forward to rolling a little bit more into my role in graduate studies, and maybe bringing more graduate studies topics to the podcast occasionally, but also finding a little bit more balance in my time. We’re talking a little bit about how exhausting this semester is, and I’ve gotten away from some of the things that bring me a lot of joy, like taking walks and reading and writing. And that’s in part just because I’ve moved to survival mode at the end of the semester. I was really good at preserving all of those things at the beginning of the semester and that was really helpful, and then it just started falling apart. And I know that many other faculty probably can relate to that. So I’m looking forward to being able to, after the semester, trying to rebuild some of those things back into my schedule, and getting to do a little more deeper thinking about things that I just haven’t had the capacity to do during the semester. How about you, John?
John: Well, in terms of providing more balance, one of the things that I really enjoyed this fall, for the first time in quite a while, was I had started playing some music with a band this summer and we did a three-hour show. That was just a tremendous amount of fun. And I’m hoping I get to do some of that again, moving forward. It was so nice. It was at a location where everyone had to show proof of vaccination, it was outdoors. So I felt pretty comfortable there, pretty safe there, and it was just a really wonderful escape from being cooped up on Zoom all the time.
Rebecca: Yeah. It’s a good reminder to kind of get back to the things that we love to give us the energy to do some of the other things that we need to do. And to provide some of that support that we need to provide for our students when some days it feels like I just can’t do one more thing.
John: And I think many of us have reached that feeling at this stage of the semester.
Rebecca: Well, I’m looking forward to another year of episodes with you, John.
John: I am, too. The podcast has always been one of the bright spots for me each week. It’s been so much fun talking to so many people doing such amazing work.
Rebecca: So let us close by cheerleading all of our listeners on, you can make it to the end of the semester, you can do it! And thank you so much for listening and supporting this work. And I hope that you continue to listen and that if you have suggestions for things that you want to hear about, please let us know.
John: Well, thank you for listening, and we’ll be back next week.
Rebecca: …right on schedule.
[MUSIC]
John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer. Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle.
[MUSIC]