Friday, March 27, 2020

Teaching in the time of COVID-19

A special Daily Bulletin report by Professor James Skidmore.

Disclaimer haiku:

This is what I’ve done

It won’t work for everyone

The students like it.

With the announcement that the University’s Spring Term courses will be delivered remotely, it has become apparent that some instructors will need to convert entire courses from a classroom setting to an online setting. The University’s Keep Learning site provides tips about certain aspects of online teaching and learning. I’d like to supplement that resource with some useful information that I’ve gained from teaching online courses for over 15 years.

Way back in the Before Times (as Stephen Colbert says), I developed and launched, and redeveloped and relaunched, three fully online courses. The latest instalments of all those courses are quite similar to what’s expected now for the Spring Term. Rest assured that we can set up these courses for remote delivery without losing our minds or spending more time on them than we would on regular classroom courses.

If you’ve been reading about how to stock a pantry during a COVID-19 lockdown, you’ll be happy to know that our “teaching pantry” is already amply stocked for us to create courses that can be taught and taken remotely. We can create good online courses largely on our own with easy-to-use tools already available to us, namely our computers and our learning management systems or LMSs (at the University of Waterloo, that would be UW LEARN).

This requires some adjustment to teaching style, of course. If we replicate a classroom teaching style online, that necessitates recording lectures in audio or video, which is sometimes technically challenging. A simpler approach - narrated slide shows - has been a staple of online teaching for years and can work well, but the fact is that students find these slide shows tedious over an entire term. (I’ve taken an online course, and the students are right.)

Instead, I think it’s better if we can adapt our style to the space in which we’re teaching. In the online space of an LMS, one of the best tools available to us is the discussion forum, as clunky as these forums (or fora for you purists out there) can be. So what I’ve tried to do is shift from teaching content (i.e. lecturing) to facilitating discussions about content. This won’t work for certain kinds of courses, but for courses with readings and videos and podcasts that can be discussed, structuring the course around discussion can work quite well. What I also like about this approach is that students don’t study for tests, they study for discussions, and the feedback I’ve had from students is that this shift in instructional focus improves their learning.

Here is a quick run-down of how I do this in my cultural studies courses:

• I organize my course content into topic modules, each module lasting a week.
• For each module, I create 5-8 content items. Each of these will comprise one or two readings/viewings/listenings.
• Each of the content items are embedded in separate discussion forums instead of being standalone pages. I will often add some commentary to contextualize the content.
• For each content item, a discussion task is posed. Since the students are already in the discussion forum, they then respond to the discussion within their discussion group (8-10 students per group is a good size).
• My role as instructor is two-fold: to frame the discussion (by curating and contextualizing readings etc), and then to facilitate the discussion. I’ll pop into the various discussion groups, ask and answer questions, encourage participation, correct outrageous errors, that sort of thing. I try to hit that Goldilocks sweet spot of just the right amount of presence – I don’t want to dominate the discussions, but I also want students to know that I want all of us to be engaging with the course ideas.

These discussions are all asynchronous, which is really the way to go. I’ve found that offering that flexibility is rewarded by more thoughtful engagement on the part of most students.

Students in the courses have three main “deliverables,” each weighted about the same. Their participation in the discussion forums is really their study time, so that is graded more for involvement than accuracy. Each module has a wrap-up module review essay; they need to complete a certain number of these. Finally, the course has a term-long metaproject, MyModule, in which they create their own module for the course where they research a topic and curate content about it. This project really helps them reflect on how the course has structured their learning. Three different weeks of the term are set aside for students to complete the checkpoints of this scaffolded assignment.

I’ve only skimmed the surface here, but if you’d like to learn more, there are couple of ways of doing so. I’ve set up a website – https://jamesmskidmore.com/teaching-online – that provides more detailed information on how I’ve structured my online courses along with some tips on good online course management skills (you’ll especially want to check out how I “flatten the curve” of student email, the volume of which is one of the banes of online teaching). Also, Victoria Feth from CTE and I have developed a webinar to give you a chance to learn more about this approach and ask questions (see the Daily Bulletin's sidebar for details).

Finally, please feel free to reach out to me – I’m happy to help. My email address is skidmore@uwaterloo.ca.

Introducing the Good Buddies of the University

An image from the Good Buddies of the Library Calendar for March.

So with many employees now working from home, routines have been disrupted, new links in the chain of command have been forged, meetings have gone virtual, and we are all adapting to a new normal. However, we're not the only ones who have had to adapt - what about our furry, feathery, and in some cases scaly companions who have had their daily routines disrupted by our continuing presence in their homes and on their turf?

Well, some of them have begun to help as adjunct employees, as Jordan Hale, digital repositories librarian and the person behind the Good Buddies of the Library calendar, quickly discovered. And by "help", we mean sit on top of our laptops or demand skritches or walkies while we try to get some work done, and most of all provide a much-needed distraction from the demands these new circumstances have placed on all of us. Hale decided to submit a photo of their furry co-managers to the Daily Bulletin and is encouraging others to do the same. Meet Pico, who is here to help you with all of your open access publishing needs:

So, if you've got a buddy who is helping you manage the University's affairs, send a picture of them to bulletin@uwaterloo.ca with their name and what they are doing to help (or hinder) your work and we will do our best to feature them in the Daily Bulletin.

Friday's notes

Dean of Arts Sheila Ager snapped this photo of two geese preparing for their co-op interviews.

Tor Books has announced the publication (and revealed the cover) of University of Waterloo Professor Sarah Tolmie's latest novel, The Fourth Island. From the publisher: 

"Huddled in the sea off the coast of Ireland is a fourth Aran Island, a secret island peopled by the lost, findable only in moments of despair. Whether drowned at sea, trampled by the counter-reformation, or exiled for clinging to the dead, no outsiders reach the island without giving in to dark emotion.

Time and again, The Fourth Island weaves a hypnotic pattern with its prose, presaging doom before walking back through the sweet and sour moments of lives not yet lost. It beautifully melds the certainty of loss with the joys of living, drawing readers under like the tide."

Tolmie, an associate professor in Waterloo's English Language and Literature department, teaches medieval and early modern literature, general British literature, and creative writing, and is also a poet and speculative fiction writer. Her latest collection of poetry, The Art of Dying, was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Prize. 

The book comes out October 20.

Please note the following campus service modifications:

The CIBC University of Waterloo branch will be closed to the public after 4:00 p.m. today. CIBC staff will be working inside the branch and will respond to clients via phone – 519-884-4760 – starting on Monday, March 30. Both Automated Banking Machines will continue to be available in the Student Life Centre.