Like many, I'm now teaching online. Is this a good thing for you?
Yes
Except for the fact that there's always one side of the keyboard I can't see well, so I have to check fingerings more carefully, yes.
And I wanted to do theory classes but could never convene them easily and now I can.
I have other projects in the works as well.
So, yes.
M.
Yes. I no longer have a commute.
I've loved it since teaching my first online classes in Spring 2005--and even more now. (And like Spork, the elimination of my long commute is a nice extra benefit.)
My preference is for in-person teaching, but I would much prefer online teaching to hybrid teaching or teaching in-person without sufficient testing or immunization.
Yes and no.
Yes, because I'm working less and working less hard, and don't have to commute.
No, because I just can't duplicate the classroom experience for my students, and online education does my student population no favours. And because it has far fewer rewards than in-person education. I wish I had the energy to work more on my online pedagogy and to put a more concerted effort into making my classes online classes, rather than the replacement remote-learning classes they currently are, but the incentives currently only stack up to 'do a better job than your colleagues'.
I'm not in love with my job in the first place, so I lean more towards 'yes'. If I liked it more, I'd lean more heavily towards 'no'.
No.
It's all of the boring stuff like grading, and none of the fun stuff like hanging out with cool, interesting students.
I miss commuting, people watching, getting coffee and chatting with the nice people at Starbucks, going to the gym at lunch and saying "hi" to all my gym friends.
I miss grabbing lunch and running into colleagues at the local spots, or just walking over with a few folks and dishing the latest. I miss running into colleagues and getting current with them.
I can tell you one advantage. Whereas in the old days if I wanted credit for the attending the lecture by The Chair of 'Why White people Suck' Studies I'd have to sit there in the large room and stay awake. Now it's on zoom.
Quote from: AmLitHist on January 19, 2021, 11:17:30 AM
I've loved it since teaching my first online classes in Spring 2005--and even more now. (And like Spork, the elimination of my long commute is a nice extra benefit.)
Ditto (although I started online teaching in 2003). As mahagonny notes, it's nice not to have to attend meetings in person, and I'm more likely to attend them now. I've also participated in more conferences this year because they are virtual and there's no travel.
In short, online teaching and now working at home fits my generally reclusive personality.
Hell no, and neither are the students. I taught hybrid last semester and the in person students were so much more engaged. I'm the only one teaching in person in my department next semester-- guess who's seminar filled up first and is now over-enrolled?
We did great with covid safety last semester-- 2x week testing, masks, spacing, zero classroom transmission and very low overall positive tests-- so I'm comfortable doing in person.
NO
It is a lot more work. My students are not learning as well as they do in person.
Perhaps this term will be a little different. I will keep better tabs on their progress and the provost has changed the stance on attendance. (NOW we can require attendance at the webex meetings - we were not allowed before.) We can also NOW require that the students turn on their cameras. (It was a privacy issue, or so we were told, but we now have available to the students a background so that we can not see their rooms).
Bottom line:
A LOT MORE work on my end.
Students are not doing the work to keep up, thus not learning the material as they should.
Students were not attending the lecture times, and relying on 'watching the WebEx recordings' that were posted, but they were really only trying to skim them looking for key terms in the transcript to watch snippets of the recording.
MORE WORK on the Students' part (though they have always SUPPOSED to have read the chapters, NOW they NEED to read AND UNderstand what they read!... and they dont!!)
Anyway, We SHALL SEE what this term has in store!!
I prefer teaching in-person, but there are some things that I like about synchronous online teaching (e.g. no commute, sweatpants).
I am currently teaching in the classroom with a handful of students attending in person and the rest zooming in. This is the worst of both worlds: Commute, lecture to a mostly empty room, mask on, hard to see if/how students are absorbing the material, difficult to facilitate group-work... it is terrible.
Quote from: clean on January 19, 2021, 04:12:31 PM
We can also NOW require that the students turn on their cameras. (It was a privacy issue, or so we were told, but we now have available to the students a background so that we can not see their rooms).
That seems to take care of some privacy issues, but not all. For instance, the background wouldn't cover other people who are present, including kids who wander into the frame. There's also a privacy issue due to recording capabilities, even if it's not possible to see what's behind the student. This is directed more at your school than at you, but I'm not quite following their reasoning here.
Teaching seminars online was fine for me. I'd prefer to do it in person with no pandemic, but given the presence of a pandemic, online wasn't terrible. I'm more nervous to teach a lecture course online, though.
Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 19, 2021, 08:11:22 PM
I prefer teaching in-person, but there are some things that I like about synchronous online teaching (e.g. no commute, sweatpants).
Those parts aren't great for my mental health. Sure, lots of days getting dressed in my teaching clothes and coming into campus wasn't particularly exciting many days, but it provided structure. I don't get the charge of nervousness and excitement teaching on Zoom. Still preferable to worrying about exposure and having to deal with uncertainty. I was very glad I'd opted for all online when a week before the start of this semester hybrid classes moved online till February.
I do miss teaching in person, but I'm fine to be teaching my full load online. I started teaching online in 2004 and have trained and mentored others, so I made the transition last March without issues. As others have said, the lack of a commute is great, and I certainly enjoying wearing sweatpants and slippers as I work!
I don't like it at all. I teach engineering and engineering technology courses that are heavy with hands-on lab work, so when students cannot be in lab using equipment, they are not getting out of the courses what they should. As a colleague said, would you trust someone to drive a car if all they had ever done was watch videos of people driving and read the theory on road safety, how to shift gears, how to brake, and so on? Heck no! The change to online last spring was horrible as most of us were not prepared - yes, we could use the LMS, doing lectures on Zoom worked for the most part, but not being able to be in the labs made it very difficult to teach the content the students needed to learn. We did manage to have most of our lab courses have at least some in-person work last fall, same this spring. But is it enough? Am I happy with it? Are my colleagues happy with it? Generally no.
I also do labs, and my own courses have a heavy lab component. Each course has been handled differently. (Everything is remote.) Some courses only use simulations for labs; others use a kit the students either purchased or had mailed to them.
While it's not the same as in-person, doing all of the labs asynchronously has had a lot of advantages over in-person, since students don't have the same scheduling or time constraints. And I really don't miss giving the same explanation a dozen times each week for different lab sections of the same course. I don't miss having to get up before dawn if there's been a snowstorm to shovel before I go to work. I like being able to run errands during the day.
Overall, the more time I work this way, the less eager I am to get back face-to-face, although there are some courses for which the in-person labs are probably better.
(Note: I'm not training in medicine, or running a nuclear reactor, so lives don't depend on the lab skills people get. Also, there are things that can be done in simulations that can't be done in-person, so there are actually some things that can be added to remote labs that wouldn't be part of in-person labs.)
Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2021, 05:42:56 AM
I also do labs, and my own courses have a heavy lab component. Each course has been handled differently. (Everything is remote.) Some courses only use simulations for labs; others use a kit the students either purchased or had mailed to them.
That may work for someone in say, EE, or EET, or Computer/Software engineering, but we can't supply students with impact hammers, CMM machines, Tinius Olsens, SEMs, and so on. Some of them may have 3D printers at home, but they can't print the same dog bone on multiple machines with different parameters and then test the specimens. They learn so much more doing it themselves, making the mistakes, interacting with the equipment. And that is one big selling point for our graduates, and the feedback we receive from their employers and our industrial advisory board, is that the students they hire as interns, for co-ops, and for full time work know how to actually use the equipment and have more than just an understanding of theory so that's why I feel we are not only failing our students, but their future employers. But for now, we do what we can.
Quote from: EdnaMode on January 20, 2021, 06:24:38 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2021, 05:42:56 AM
I also do labs, and my own courses have a heavy lab component. Each course has been handled differently. (Everything is remote.) Some courses only use simulations for labs; others use a kit the students either purchased or had mailed to them.
That may work for someone in say, EE, or EET, or Computer/Software engineering, but we can't supply students with impact hammers, CMM machines, Tinius Olsens, SEMs, and so on. Some of them may have 3D printers at home, but they can't print the same dog bone on multiple machines with different parameters and then test the specimens. They learn so much more doing it themselves, making the mistakes, interacting with the equipment. And that is one big selling point for our graduates, and the feedback we receive from their employers and our industrial advisory board, is that the students they hire as interns, for co-ops, and for full time work know how to actually use the equipment and have more than just an understanding of theory so that's why I feel we are not only failing our students, but their future employers. But for now, we do what we can.
I think we probably agree quite a bit. The point is to understand
why we're having students do a particular lab exercise. Some of those "why"s require physical lab presence. In lots of disciplines, "because that's what we've been doing for years" is the main "why" for a disturbing number of things. Even for the simulations I use, 10 years ago there wouldn't have been anywhere close to the same capabilities as now. (And choosing the kit contents was definitely challenging; not being able to use the equipment in the lab is a real limitation, but having students spend more time trying to figure things out on their own versus just asking the TA had some advantages.)
Nope.
Yes and No.
I love the chat feature in my synchronous classes. I get much more participation that way in required class nobody wants to take (Advanced Basketweaving Methods). They are more willing to ask and answer questions in the chat than to raise their hands in in-person classes.
But, similar to the statements by EdnaMode (though an entirely different field), I'm also teaching a lab class that should not be taught online. In fact, this class is one of the courses which prohibits programs from offering an all online degree. They are not getting the same experience no matter how innovative I'm trying to be. I think I'm doing the best I can with the resources at my disposal, but my students are missing out this year.
Like OneMoreYear, both and neither. I agree that there's more participation---especially in my baby intro class---when I have a friendly grad student collect questions through chat. When I taught that class in person people rarely had questions. Now the intermediate recipient who collates and reports them when I pause for question makes them bolder, and that's great.
For my technical classes, it's really convenient to be able to just post a link to a google doc and have them directly record their data from a little experiment. I can share files for them to download and run on their machines, which means things like gathering reaction times or accuracy rates across different conditions is really feasible, and then they can input their results in real time and we can see patterns emerge for the class. That would be much harder to do in a classroom. Also for the programming class: They can post their code commands directly in the chat window when we go over exercises and then there's no more of that awkward 'saying the code aloud' issue that comes when teaching coding in a classroom and sharing exercise solutions. Sharing screens also means we can point out exactly where the comma is missing, or see exactly what caused the error much more easily.
Online 24-hour exams, rather than in-person 2-hour exams are actually awesome! There's no issue with handwriting, and the students don't end up missing an exam because a train was late or something. They just need to download the exam when it's available and upload their solutions within 24 hours. I would be a bit fan of keeping this format even after we return to in-person teaching.
But the motivation is harder. Chatting with students is harder. Staring at a screen all day instead of using that teaching energy to stand up and deliver a lecture or demonstration is harder. Maintaining a mental separation between work and home is harder.
I'll probably import some of the tools I've been using to teach online into my classroom teaching when we go back, but there's no doubt in my mind that going back to in-person teaching will be a relief.
Yes.
It is more work, but I'm able to spend less time doing it because I don't have to commute or participate in mandatory fun.
Yes and no.
I like that I am allowed to choose to work remotely to keep my students & myself safe(r) during the pandemic. I like that I can spend more time in my gardens and with my cats.
No, I am not happy with the learning experience for my students. Our students are very likely to be: first-to-college, Pell eligible, balancing work & school & family obligations. They are unlikely to have reliable internet or own a computer that isn't shared with others in the household. Many of them HATE online classes because they have to be so much more organized and responsible to not miss class/assignments/exams. I know that in-person learning works better for the vast majority of our students. They don't care about the "flexibility" of online learning. They want to live on campus, make friends, join clubs, etc. and feel like they are part of the campus community.
I want to be back to in-person teaching for my own selfish reasons too. It's much less work for me, I miss my work friends, and ironically I get less interruptions working in my office than working from home.