We are now nearly three full weeks into our fall semester. My teaching duties include two fully online synchronous undergraduate courses that contain a total of fifty-five students. I reformulated these courses for online delivery because of the pandemic; in-person instruction has been, until now, the norm for undergraduate education at my university. Here are a few early-semester observations:
Given the faces that appear on my screen and Zoom usage reports, class sessions have been well-attended. I do see a few students connecting from their beds; obviously they are not fully awake. One student is connecting from her workplace, while on the job. But while some students might be less engaged than they are in a physical classroom, at minimum they are “present.” I regularly teach early in the morning, and for face-to-face classes, typically 5-10% of my students are absent on any given day.
I’m a believer in assessing early and often. I provide all assignments and deadlines to students at the start of the semester — via the syllabus and the LMS. Both of my courses have had five assignments due so far. Five out of the fifty-five students chose not to submit at least one assignment by its deadline. Four students did not submit two assignments. Three did not submit three, and one student chose not to complete any of the five. This matches what happens when I teach face-to-face. My courses often end up with a bimodal grade distribution; while it’s really hard for students to achieve D and F grades, a few always manage to succeed, and they are invariably the ones who do poorly at the beginning of the semester. Probably this pattern is consistent regardless of instructional delivery method.
Learned helplessness seems to have increased compared to past semesters, but only slightly, so I don’t know whether this is associated with online instruction. I’m getting the usual excuses: I can’t submit an assignment to the LMS. I can’t upload a photo to an asynchronous online discussion. I didn’t know the class was on Zoom rather than Webex even though you sent three emails with instructions before the semester started. As I state in my syllabi, these are not my problems. Figure it out.
In sum, my experience so far this semester hasn’t been that different than previous semesters. Yes, there have been a few technical glitches on my end, and there are some new complexities that I’m still learning how to manage. But at least from my perspective (which might be different from that of my students), things are going ok.
We would like to hear what you’re encountering this semester, especially if you are in a “hy-flex” environment simultaneously teaching in-person and remotely-connected students. How is it going? Send us a potential guest post at alps@activelearningps.com.