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Key points
- As the pandemic dissipates, campus and classroom life will return to normal with the addition of occasional online meeting.
- When face-to-face meeting is not possible, virtual advising is a fine replacement.
- Features of virtual teaching and learning are likely here to stay. We can utilize them to improve teaching and learning.
Well, what a difference a vaccine makes. A few months ago, we looked ahead with uncertainty about what the next academic year would be like—more remote teaching and masks or a return to some new normal?
As I write this blog entry, things are looking up as Covid-19 cases, and deaths go down in the United States. We may (or may not) obtain herd immunity, but it is clear the virus is in some form of retreat, which means when faculty and students return to campus in August and September, they will, in fact, be returning to a physical campus.
My own institution has indicated that most pandemic practices will disappear on June 1, 2021, and that administrators, faculty, and staff can return to campus. What does this mean for fall term 2021, which seems far away as we have a pleasant summer about to unfold?
Educators can learn from their pandemic experience and retain some of the things that worked well or were once necessary. Here are some ideas and observations I plan to keep.
Advising students via Zoom or similar can be a sometimes substitute for face-to-face meetings. Not only did I learn to teach classes online via Zoom, but I also made many advising appointments with students. Sometimes to discuss their class performance or an assignment, and other times individually to help plan the course schedule for the next semester.
Normally, these sessions would have been in person or (once in a blue moon) on the phone, but I learned that Zoom was a great way to get such conferences done – no endless chain of email questions and answers needed. I don’t think I will Zoom daily or even weekly, but when face-to-face in the future is not possible, virtual advising is a fine replacement.
Perhaps there is a place for hybrid classes after all? On my campus, many of my colleagues and I avoided online teaching until the pandemic hit. Why? We assumed—largely erroneously—that it wasn’t good pedagogy. Well, it may not be as dynamic as face-to-face teaching—at least where smaller enrolled classes are concerned—there may be some advantages in having a remote class meeting from time to time. I suspect many college and university instructors will use online elements in their classes in the future, a reality that may be for the good of all concerned. Just as some classes meet three times a week—two big lectures and one small recitation section—perhaps there will be two face-to-face meetings and one remote session.
Learning platforms like CANVAS, Blackboard, and similar should be used--even embraced--hereafter. Before Covid, my only experience using CANVAS—the learning platform on my campus—the only thing I ever did was post my syllabus, as required to do. Thus, a student could always see reading assignments, exams, or other work and due dates.
This past year, n CANVAS, I learned to take roll, post grades, grade, and comment on uploaded assignments. I may never collect physical papers again. And because students can see their grades and where they stand at any point during the semester, they do not incessantly ask or email asking—they can go look.
So, I will be using this organizational class management tool henceforward for all my face-to-face classes (and will also be teaching asynchronous online classes in summer and winter terms). I admit it—I am sold on its utility and efficiency.
Maybe some future Zoom meetings for faculty and administrators are ok. Zoom can wear one down, and I believe “Zoom fatigue” is real—at least after a year of solely Zooming for teaching classes and faculty, department, and committee meetings. But if I judiciously used it, some face-to-face meetings may be changed to virtual ones without much fuss or regret. In general, Zoom meetings should be fixed in duration—no more than an hour—and a set agenda should be followed to avoid rambling. Less is more, but a few Zoom meetings here and there would be effective.
We may have to face that snow days are a thing of the past. Educators and students may be upset that sudden snowfalls mean a day’s classes are canceled because the instructor, for example, can’t make the slog to campus. Sigh.
Now the instructor can be (virtually) on time despite in-climate weather, and students have no excuse, either—they can be in bed with laptops open. Like life—class meetings will go on!
Are there any new skills, tools, or techniques developed during the pandemic that you intend to keep once things return to more or less the way they were before March 2020? Which ones and why? Perhaps you can use them to plan your return to normal.
