Many of us are having to navigate our teaching this fall into wild new lands. Almost from the beginning of the pandemic, one of my concerns has been that most of us do not have experience with truly excellent quality distance /blended learning. For that reason, everyone seems to be having to reinvent the wheel which is fine but not very cost and time effective.
It would be excellent for someone to set up a website outlining the structure of various courses around the country that seemed to have worked well so we can all gain practical ideas. I have heard plenty of theoretical ideas about teaching during a pandemic. However, I want to hear from people in the trenches who have been in the battle and shown some level of success.
Last week, I received an email from Dick Minot at Loyola
Marymount. He was kind enough to
describe a class of his from over this summer that seemed to be quite
successful. He agreed to let me
share this description just to provide you with some practical thoughts. I do not mean
that every teacher and every class should replicate his approach but there are
many great ideas here that you might want to try for your own classes.
Thanks Dick!!!
**
This is Dick Minot. I am a clinical assistant professor at Loyola
Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles. I teach Advanced Accounting and
Managerial Accounting.
Needless to say, the rapid transition to online/remote learning
was a shock to the system for most of us. I had done some online teaching for
the University of California at Irvine (UCI) sometime ago in summer sessions so
the shock to me was not as great as it probably could have been. I volunteered
to teach a summer session online in managerial Accounting as I was sure –
sometimes I am a bit off – that we would be back in the class in the fall and I
wanted the University to see that we could offer online classes as part of what
we do for the students. Well here we are all online for the Fall semester.
My whole thrust in teaching online – and I did it for this summer
session – was to treat the experience just as if we were still in the
classroom. Sounds a bit crazy but if I was to be “down in the mouth” about
online as an instructor so would the students. I believed and still do that the
students will follow our lead and strive to be what we expect, for the most
part, if we still challenge them. One of my recent summer online students
offered this comment,
“I can easily speak for the rest of the class when I say that you
really made this class worthwhile for us, and just as you say we would make
your day, you would always make ours. …Again, I wouldn't have succeeded in this
class without your motivation and help and I truly thank you for making me work
hard and prepare for every class.”
While another student offered this comment,
“Just wanted to say thank you for calling on me a lot in class. It
made me feel comfortable knowing that you cared about my learning.”
Sometime ago another professor and I were talking about what is
most important to me as a professor and I said obviously getting the students
to learn and understand the material but also to care about the students as
people that will enter the accounting profession that I still participate in
through my small accounting practice. I think that this is or can be pretty
easy to do in person while face to face with the students but can be an issue
when with long distance, remote/zoom classes. CAN BE! But it clearly does not
have to be.
I have made it a part of my teaching to send numerous e mails to
my students well before class actually starts. This allows me to introduce
myself to the students well before the start date and I let them know what they
might expect. Generally, for semester sessions I will send an e mail at 60
days, 45 days, 30 days, 15 days and then the day before class starts. Along the
way in these messages I will let them know about assignments that I will want
them to have done prior to the actual start of class so we can just move ahead.
I have no way of knowing who actually reads the e mails way ahead but they
certainly do just prior to the class start by the work that is turned in.
In keeping with my practice, I did the same with my Summer Session
2020 class in Managerial Accounting. I sent the class various messages at 45
days, 35 days, 30 days, 25 days, 20 days, 10 days and the day before class
actually started. In doing this by the time class actually started they pretty
much knew me and how I think about accounting, this class as well as life
itself. Included in the 35-day message was the following assignment for them to
do:
ASSIGNMENT: Please reflect on your last semester online classes
and then do the following: · send me an e mail and list 3 (only 3 max)
suggestions for the class considering the following issues:
o appearance for class - in bed; in pajamas etc.
o how should we relate to one another?
o should we all be muted when not speaking
o or left unmuted as we would be in class
o how and what you might expect from me as the leader of this
class.
Thank you for your time in this matter and it will be helpful in
making this class a great time for us all.
__
I remember you saying on one of your blog postings that “learning
is like dancing and I can lead but if you do not follow neither of us will have
any fun.”
I think more than ever this learning is very cooperative now
between professor and students. We are all learning.
So, I am looking at a computer screen as my students “arrive” in
class. The student that is always a couple of minutes late for class is still a
couple of minutes late. So how does all of this work? It’s really pretty easy:
I greet students in person and I continued to do it with the
online class. This may seem odd and I was asked by another professor how I
handled the “noise” of everyone showing up 1-2 minutes before class with some
of them being shy. And that is a great question as that is the reality of how
they appear for class. I had students from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Nepal,
Indonesia, New Orleans and up and down California in this class and only a
couple of the students knew each other. My greeting them by name in those first
couple of minutes allows them to leave the “real” world behind and hopefully
become part of the internet family of students in the class where they cannot
“see” other but know that they are there. After a few classes, the students
actually would greet each other especially if I brought up something from the
last class. They actually did become a class and not just a group of faces on
the computer screen.
Most of my classes start with a quiz. In the beginning of the
course I would simply prepare a quiz in Word and I would share the screen with
the class via zoom. They would then send me an e mail with the answers only. We
actually did the quiz in class so they had the answers as soon as we were done.
I understand that you do not want a bunch of e mails but the quizzes were not
that involved so the answers were a computation or a sentence. And it allowed
me to know who was there.
After a few classes I would actually send an e mail just before
class with questions for the day and the quiz. By doing this I could use the
breakout rooms for group quizzes that were more involved and I would receive
only a few emails. Then I would have groups volunteer to answer the quiz
questions. This got everyone involved and it was just like being face to face.
In going over the quiz I would be able to talk generally about the
chapter material and relate how and what we were covering meant in their career
major. They quickly realized that in going over the quiz arriving at an answer
that they felt confident in was only part of the process. When they had
answered the question the inevitable question from me was always there, WHY is
that the case. My favorite line here is from the movie The Paper Chase when Professor Kingsfield explains the Socratic
method of education to his class. That is me in person or online. Get them
engaged. And they become a class.
We then do a series of problems that looks at the material in a
variety of ways to analyze and review and then decide what is taking place and
then the WHY again.
The students are expected to have read the chapter, review the
power point slides and do a pre-class assignment that has a small overall point
value but is important enough to garner their attention. This is no surprise; I
refer you to my many messages that I have sent to them.
I always give a FINAL QUIZ to the class and ask them a few
questions about the semester. This time I asked the students what advice they
would give to the incoming students in the FALL 2020 class and one student
offered the following:
“Every student entering managerial accounting should always
· Study for the materials before class to better understand and
ask questions when doing class work and in class quizzes.
· Never procrastinate and leave the work for the last day.
· Mcgrawhillconnect.com gives great studying notes for the book,
utilize everything you have.
· Never miss what the professor is saying, he usually gives hints
to exam questions.
“What worked for this course was my participation. The first
couple of classes I was not understanding what the content that was being
discussed in the class, due to just reading through the chapters. I realized
that I had to study it before class, then restudy it after the class to make
sure I haven't missed anything. This is what I did for the remainder of the course.
In doing this, I got more chances to answer questions in the class and not be
put in the spot and end up saying ‘I don't know’ in the class, and actually
have the information needed to put 1 and 2 together.
“What I'll take away from this course is
· To not procrastinate
· Always try to answers even if you're wrong
· Never stop asking questions even if it seems silly
· Always participate to break that barrier between you and the
classmates/professor.”
__
This summer class turned out to be probably one of the best
overall experiences in my teaching career. The students knew that this was
going to be an online class so no issues about not knowing this. Attendance was
virtually 100% for the term. And, that did amaze me. At about week 3, there was
a situation in class and one of the students made a comment and I could see
almost all of them laughing. They had become a class.
This class was run in a synchronous fashion throughout the course,
unless I made a supplemental recording as needed. The class was also set as a 3-hour session,
just as it would have been in a face to face course, and the sessions flew by.
The students can do this! They will do pretty much what we expect
of them.