Transitioning a class to online midsemester

[polly_mer]

Teaching in the context of covid-19 shared Google doc

[FishProf]

Thanks Polly, that will be very useful.

[Mobius]

[. . .]

I keep on seeing suggestions for faculty to use Zoom for their online classes.

[. . . ]

This is based on several very faulty assumptions, like:

• Students will attentively watch a badly-lit talking head stationed in front of a podium or at a desk for 50 minutes to 2 hours when the average YouTube video is less than 4minutes.
• That faculty have and know how to properly use equipment that produces video and audio of sufficient quality.
• That faculty can quickly caption their self-made videos.
• That video content of better quality doesn't already exist elsewhere. (I dare anyone to try to independently produce something that matches the quality of John Green's Crash Course World History.)
• That video is the only or even best way of getting students to learn when classrooms aren't available.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Our job is to make sure learning outcomes are met. We can do that with content made by others. It's going to be better quality for survey classes and covers much of what we would already.

[Puget]

[. . .]

I keep on seeing suggestions for faculty to use Zoom for their online classes.

[. . . ]

This is based on several very faulty assumptions, like:

• Students will attentively watch a badly-lit talking head stationed in front of a podium or at a desk for 50 minutes to 2 hours when the average YouTube video is less than 4minutes.
• That faculty have and know how to properly use equipment that produces video and audio of sufficient quality.
• That faculty can quickly caption their self-made videos.
• That video content of better quality doesn't already exist elsewhere. (I dare anyone to try to independently produce something that matches the quality of John Green's Crash Course World History.)
• That video is the only or even best way of getting students to learn when classrooms aren't available.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Our job is to make sure learning outcomes are met. We can do that with content made by others. It's going to be better quality for survey classes and covers much of what we would already.

I agree with this for lecture courses, but for seminars Zoom, while not perfect, seems like the best way forward.

Another reason to do it is that I don't think class is just about learning objectives right now-- it's also about helping students keep a sense of normalcy and social connection at a time when they are feeling displaced, uncertain, anxious and isolated. Watching mass produced videos alone in your room can't do that. Some safe real human interaction and learning together twice a week may help a little. If that doesn't work for your course that's fine, but perhaps think about other ways to build community and connection, like a check-in forum.

[downer]

Some sort of human interaction does make sense for small online classes, and I guess seminars are generally small.

My expectation is that a lot of students will just drop out. The world right now is just overwhelming, and for students now stuck at home, they may not be able to motivate themselves to working in an online class.

Other students may really put a lot of work into their online classes because they are stuck at home, they can't see their friends, they have lost their job, and they have nothing else to do.

[dr_codex]

Some sort of human interaction does make sense for small online classes, and I guess seminars are generally small.

My expectation is that a lot of students will just drop out. The world right now is just overwhelming, and for students now stuck at home, they may not be able to motivate themselves to working in an online class.

Other students may really put a lot of work into their online classes because they are stuck at home, they can't see their friends, they have lost their job, and they have nothing else to do.

This is my fear, too.

I just got an email from my Chair that I had to let students know the plan. In the past week, I've had about a 50% logon rate for my courses, and these have all been blended from the start (assignments and grades run through it), so I know that they know how to log on. If they don't do it, and if they don't receive/open/respond to my emails, I cannot go and hunt them down. There's an evacuation of the dorms going on, and I'd treat my courses as low priority, too.

I'm reconciled to submitting a huge number of incompletes, and dealing with them over the summer. Assuming that they come back at all.

dc

[spork]

I'd say if your courses have been blended from the start, and you've only had a 50% log in rate recently, I'd say an F is an F if a student doesn't complete the course.

We now have a two-week spring break. During this time faculty are supposed to spin up fully-online versions of all their courses that will run at least through Easter. The university says it will make a decision during that time span about whether on-campus will resume after Easter. Well, that's not going to happen. Students aren't going to come back to campus for three weeks of classes to finish out the semester.

[Puget]

We now have a two-week spring break. During this time faculty are supposed to spin up fully-online versions of all their courses that will run at least through Easter. The university says it will make a decision during that time span about whether on-campus will resume after Easter. Well, that's not going to happen. Students aren't going to come back to campus for three weeks of classes to finish out the semester.

This dithering is bad for all sorts of reasons. Just psychologically, people do not do well with uncertainty, and there is enough uncertainty without universities adding to it. Practically, maybe this works if all your students are basically local, but how are students supposed to make travel plans if they may or may not be coming back? Moving online through the rest of the semester now may seem drastic, but that's probably what's going to happen anyway so its better just to give everyone the certainty now and let everyone adjust. I'm grateful that my university went this route.

[spork]

We now have a two-week spring break. During this time faculty are supposed to spin up fully-online versions of all their courses that will run at least through Easter. The university says it will make a decision during that time span about whether on-campus will resume after Easter. Well, that's not going to happen. Students aren't going to come back to campus for three weeks of classes to finish out the semester.

This dithering is bad for all sorts of reasons. Just psychologically, people do not do well with uncertainty, and there is enough uncertainty without universities adding to it. Practically, maybe this works if all your students are basically local, but how are students supposed to make travel plans if they may or may not be coming back? Moving online through the rest of the semester now may seem drastic, but that's probably what's going to happen anyway so its better just to give everyone the certainty now and let everyone adjust. I'm grateful that my university went this route.

Some of my students are from places like Spain, Japan, Brazil, and Afghanistan. If they've left the USA, they are not going to fly back just for three weeks of classes.

[mamselle]

If they can even get in.

M.

[dr_codex]

I'd say if your courses have been blended from the start, and you've only had a 50% log in rate recently, I'd say an F is an F if a student doesn't complete the course.

My students are currently being evicted from their dorms. Some are being deported. If they cannot log in, you'd fail them all?

[Parasaurolophus]

My institution only conducts course evaluations in-person and on paper.

So... looks like I'll be conducting mine via Moodle this semester. Has anyone attempted this before? (I know that Moodle makes it possible to do this. I'm just wondering what unforseen hurdles I might face.)

[spork]

I'd say if your courses have been blended from the start, and you've only had a 50% log in rate recently, I'd say an F is an F if a student doesn't complete the course.

My students are currently being evicted from their dorms. Some are being deported. If they cannot log in, you'd fail them all?

Your courses are structured in a way that missing an assignment deadline results in an F? Or is this the university leadership pronouncing that no rescheduling/restructuring of course content is allowed?

[dr_codex]

I'd say if your courses have been blended from the start, and you've only had a 50% log in rate recently, I'd say an F is an F if a student doesn't complete the course.

My students are currently being evicted from their dorms. Some are being deported. If they cannot log in, you'd fail them all?

Your courses are structured in a way that missing an assignment deadline results in an F? Or is this the university leadership pronouncing that no rescheduling/restructuring of course content is allowed?

My courses were structured to run in a way that is no longer possible.

I might not have been clear.  Since we were encouraged to shift everything online, many of my students have not -- for reasons unclear to me --  been accessing the alternate mode of delivery. I guess I'm asking the hive mind if anybody else is in the same boat, and how all y'all are handling that.

The first person to bring up the subject of F's was you, Spork. Why did you think that was the best response?

[apl68]

We now have a two-week spring break. During this time faculty are supposed to spin up fully-online versions of all their courses that will run at least through Easter. The university says it will make a decision during that time span about whether on-campus will resume after Easter. Well, that's not going to happen. Students aren't going to come back to campus for three weeks of classes to finish out the semester.

This dithering is bad for all sorts of reasons. Just psychologically, people do not do well with uncertainty, and there is enough uncertainty without universities adding to it. Practically, maybe this works if all your students are basically local, but how are students supposed to make travel plans if they may or may not be coming back? Moving online through the rest of the semester now may seem drastic, but that's probably what's going to happen anyway so its better just to give everyone the certainty now and let everyone adjust. I'm grateful that my university went this route.

Our local municipal government sent conflicting messages yesterday about whether City Hall was open for business.  First they announced on their social media that the doors would be locked.  They would only handle phone calls and drive-through utility bill submissions.  When I called to check on them, I was told that they had decided to open the doors after all.  But the social media post didn't change.  I called to point that out, and suggest that everybody needed to be on the same page.  The social media message apparently still hasn't changed.  Since people ask us at the library about these sorts of things, we don't know what to say.