The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Association of Colleges of the South (ACS) faculty to completely revamp the ways in which they engage students and deliver course materials. Despite the sudden change, the pandemic has catalyzed productive experimentation with digital collections and multifaceted interactions both within and beyond the traditional space of the physical classroom. While their collaborative organization may eventually transform into a more permanent group, the goals of our collaborative endeavors were two-fold:
- Develop an ongoing inventory of pedagogical methodologies and digital resources to enhance student learning across the disciplines, and
- Encourage participants to revise their syllabi and classroom norms by incorporating technological resources and capabilities to stimulate new possibilities for teaching, scholarship, and service.
Throughout their monthly meetings, the committee assigned priority to digital resources readily available at all 16 ACS institutions. In surveying digital resources, moreover, faculty were encouraged to consider collections available through their libraries, as well as the digital environment of their corresponding learning management systems (LMS). For specific external needs, precedent has been given to free or low-cost, open-source tools that can be readily and safely integrated into any curricular experience.
In this vein, the ACS has promoted equitable tools that offer immediate enhancement to diverse undertakings in teaching and scholarship without the need for excessive additional funding. We should work to minimize the barrier to learning as much as possible, and digital resources can help faculty and students to push the boundaries of learning to the open frontiers of new media.
Fierce Education is going to run a series of these vignettes written from the faculty’s perspective.
Below is the testimony of Dr. Vince T. Gawronski, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Economics, & Global & Comparative Studies at Birmingham-Southern College
I study disasters and teach international relations. The viral outbreak in China was on my radar in December 2019. However, I only became genuinely concerned when I heard from one of my seniors majoring in Global and Comparative Studies. During our January 2020 Explorations Term, he traveled to China to gather data for his senior capstone project. In an email, he reported 70 infected people in Yunnan Province, where he was staying, while 5,000 people were infected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. “The streets are eerily quiet and everyone that goes out wears face masks. I have an app on my phone that provides hourly updates and body counts of people infected and/or dead across the country, and the numbers are rising everywhere.” Needless to say, he had a difficult time getting back to the United States in time to start the spring semester. After quarantining, he arrived on campus more than a week late to give us an early warning of what to expect: “It’s going to be bad, Dr. G. This is not a normal virus outbreak.” Six weeks later, we shut down the campus just before Spring Break.
Transitioning to online learning began on March 18th, and online courses started on March 30th. I had already completed an online teaching certification course. Therefore, I was not nearly as anxious as some faculty members were. Many senior faculty had never taught online, and some only knew how to use essential features on Moodle, our learning management system. Professors teaching entirely discussion-based courses were incredibly distraught. A few were in tears.
At first, I tried to teach online synchronously. But, with students in several time zones, it became apparent that recorded course content with self-paced learning modules was needed. I strived to create polished Screencast-O-Matic PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos. However, I was wasting time on the second, third, and fourth takes. Unless I really screwed up, I decided not to worry about minor flubs and my weird gesticulations in the videos. After all, my in-person delivery and interactions with students are rarely scripted and polished. We needed to be nimble and get through the term as best we could. Additionally, I utilized Poll Everywhere to gauge how my students were coping or adapting and how well they comprehended the course material.
All my students were suffering to varying degrees, so I tried to accommodate their needs. Rather than stressful high-stakes evaluative exams, I created timed, open-book, open-resource low-stakes quizzes, reflections, and online learning activities, some with YouTube videos.
Summer 2020, I taught Environmental Hazards and Urban Social Risks online because of the global pandemic – one big teachable moment. How we prepare for and respond to disease outbreaks is similar to how we deal with other types of geophysical and hydrometeorological hazards. We examined how the pandemic affected physical, direct, symbolic, cultural, and structural violence, how it generated opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs, and how it influenced push-pull migration factors. We comparatively analyzed the performance of specific countries at flattening the curve. I used many YouTube videos, and we played the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s Stop Disasters!, a simulation game.
It became apparent that teaching and taking an online course during the lockdown was far from ideal. Students had difficulty focusing on the Zoom meeting as siblings and parents argued in the background. Pets, especially cats, did what they could to interfere with teaching and learning, and the strength of the Wi-Fi connection varied depending on how many people in the household were online at the same time.
By mid-summer, we knew we would not be returning to normal in the fall. Classrooms were rearranged, and venues re-purposed to provide social distancing. The administration gave us the option of learning and teaching remotely, hybrid, or mask-to-mask. Since strict testing, contact tracing, daily health checks, and quarantine protocols were implemented, I chose to teach in person.
It was the most stressful semester ever. You could almost smell cortisol in the air. Compounding matters, I taught an overload. As department chair, I was stretched thin.
Concerned, anxious, if not frightened, everyone wore a mask, making it a challenge to recognize students. Hand sanitizer dispensers were everywhere. Communication was difficult, as the masks muffled speech. We had no idea which direction the virus was headed. Vaccines were in development. At any given time, one-third to one-half of my students were quarantined for testing positive or exposure to someone with the virus. Several students lost relatives and family friends to the virus. It all seemed insane.
Everything took more time and effort, but we kept our positivity rates low. I tried to accommodate students in quarantine by Zooming them into class. I added Flipgrid videos to my repertoire to see students’ faces. I scheduled several synchronous class meetings entirely on Zoom to simultaneously be in the same virtual space and utilize the breakout rooms. Group work in the classroom was prohibited.
Spring 2021 was not as stressful. We were getting used to the abnormal situation, and the vaccination was a life-saver. But pandemic protocols disrupted how I have been teaching for over 25 years. I was forced to adapt. My “idiosyncratic Socratic” teaching style relies on spontaneity and improvisation during normal times.
Eventually, the abnormal becomes normalized. We made it through the 2020-2021 academic year, with students, faculty, and staff going in and out of quarantine. Faculty and students who could not adapt and were only in coping mode became frustrated. However, those who could adapt had varying degrees of success with their learner-centered teaching experiences.
The Omicron variant is currently raging in Alabama, and it finally got me in January 2022, despite being boosted and following all the protocols. I expect we will be dealing with new mutations for some time to come.
Dr. Vince T. Gawronski is Professor of Political Science, Chair of the Department of Political Science, Economics, & Global & Comparative Studies at Birmingham-Southern College.
For related articles in the series, go to:
First in a Series: Leveraging Digital Pedagogies to Energize Learning