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Posts from the ‘Teaching’ Category

13
Apr

Our PLC is Wizzy WIGging It With 4DX

I have to be honest. When people started throwing around the term 4DX last year, I tuned them all out. After teaching for over 30 years, I think I’ve pretty much seen everything come and go over the years. It wasn’t that I’d planned to not participate. As I’ve said before, I’m a team player, so you want to play 4DX? I’ll play. I may not like it, but somebody somewhere thinks this is worthwhile. So I’ll play, but I’m going in blind.

So our department set up two professional learning communities (PLC), and apparently, we’re doing a good job of making and keeping our goals each week. Our team lead informs us that we are at 94% for making and keeping our goals. That’s good. Attendance is not so great, but seriously, I think we’ve all figured out that meeting once a week just to say you’ve done what you were supposed to do is a bit of a waste of time. That’s indicated by our 41% attendance last week. But overall, I get a sense that our team really wants to reach our goal.

What is our goal?

Well, apparently we have an overall college super goal and then 3 Battle WIGs. A WIG is a wildly important goal. Each departs chooses a WIG to align with any of the three institutional Battle WIGs. Below are our goals.

GCC SUPER GOAL: Increase completion with equity from 23% to 33% by Fall 2024.

  • Battle WIG #1- Increase headcount of the new-student fall cohort with equity from 3,395 to 3,500 by October 2022.
  • Battle WIG #2- Increase student successful course completion with equity from 62% to 65% by October 2022. <–WE ALIGNED TO THIS ONE
  • Battle WIG #3- Increase Fall-to-Fall retention with equity from 54% to 57% by Fall 2022.

Our Dept WIG: Because we value learning, we will increase student successful completion with equity from 67.3% to 70.3% averaged across all department course offerings by October 2022.

Each week we’ve come up with some really good interventions to help our students be successful in our courses, but I’m getting a sense that most of us are not seeing any changes in student success. All the things we are trying can’t help a student who is just over his or her head. I think many students have this unrealistic view of what it takes to be successful in college. Our students have jobs. They have families. They have a lot going on. And then they register for 3-4 college courses and think they have enough time to be successful. Well, we’re all learning that these students are not set up to succeed. We’re doing all this outreach only to discover that many of our students are never going to be successful because they are already behind the 8-ball.

We recruit them and tell them to register. It’s affordable. We have flexible courses. You can take online courses or live-online. What we should be telling students is how much time it takes to be successful in a course. They need to be told to map out their time on a calendar and see how much time they have left for a course. They need to be told about support on campus before they start a class and perhaps given some suggestions for how to ask for help and/or how to read the course syllabus. But the most important skill they need is how to motivate themselves to do their work.

With all the weekly interventions we’ve tried this semester, most are met with silence. Students don’t even reply. After just two weeks into the semester, I was ghosted by a number of students. And those who did reply had excuses and promises to submit the missing assignment which never did materialize. Those that I could get to talk to me said they just didn’t have enough time to do all the work and seemed surprised that they had so much to do in one class, which is the case when you register for an 8-week or even a 12-week class.

Sadly I think we’re wizzy WIGging to no avail. I think the best interventions are those that could happen before students register for their courses. I think it’s too late for most after the course has started. They can’t quit their job. They can’t quit their family. So what’s left? Not doing their coursework. Basically quitting school before they’ve actually started.

25
Mar

Just Be Happy About Your Progress

I have to laugh at myself this morning as I sit staring at my blank computer screen, thinking this must be what my students are talking about when they say they can’t think of anything to write about. I always think how can that be when I gave you the topic. I was given the topic of growth, yet I still can’t think of anything to write. Well, nothing beyond not being able to think of anything to write. I tell my students when this happens to just write and see what comes out. It may not be good and may not fit the assignment, but be happy about your progress. It’s something. Yeah, it’s working.

At what point do faculty stop growing? Is growth a continuing process? or do we at some point stop and say I’m good. Been there. Done that. I remember when I was younger, we would complain about the older faculty and how they never wanted to try new things or do anything. They would say, “oh we tried that already. It didn’t work.” Being the smart alec that I was, I always wanted to reply, “well, the 2000s are nothing like the 50’s so perhaps another try is in store?” Of course, I never said that. I also always wondered where half our faculty were. When you look around campus and take notice about who’s running things, it was always the same faculty in charge of things. When I first transferred to GCC, there were faculty in my department that I didn’t see for years and had never met. That’s just weird.

But as I start to finish up my 32nd year of teaching, I think I get it. I am starting to feel like we’ve done ALL this before, and to be honest I can’t remember if it worked or not or why we stopped doing certain things in the first place. It’s easy to just step back and let everyone else do all the work, hide out in my office (which is home right now) and do nothing and just be happy about my progress. I get it now.

Nah, that’s not for me. Growth takes progress. Progress is advancement and development through time, doing things, helping people, getting better at your craft, and finding new crafts. You never know where you’re going to end up, but you can guarantee you’ll end up somewhere if you just try, or in this case, just start writing. See, look at that. I have a blog post. Progress!

7
Mar

My Heart Just Wasn’t In It After Day 1

I taught my first face-to-face class in two years 3 weeks ago. It’s a late start ENG102 hybrid that meets once a week in LA108. I didn’t really want to teach the class face-to-face, but my chair said that admin would like us to have more on-campus classes this semester. “The data show that is what students want.” I saw the data and had a completely different interpretation, but I’m a team player, so I agreed to teach the class. It is one of the two classes I previously taught on campus in 2020, so the class was prepared and ready to go.

The first indication that things were going to be different is when I noticed I wasn’t teaching in my preferred space. Apparently, HT2 classrooms were not big enough to accommodate our class sizes (18). I was bummed but verified I’d have a Chromebook cart in my new teaching space. On the first day, I arrived about 15 minutes early just so I could familiarize myself with the technology in the classroom. I’d promised students I would do a live-online class so students who couldn’t make it to class for whatever reason could attend live from home. I also have the same course as an all online and thought it might be nice to offer the option to them. Turns out LA108 is a cave with no cell service. You might think that fact is not that important, but trust me it is.

I began by trying to log into the teacher station computer, which I haven’t had to do since Duo Two-Factor Authentication was introduced into our lives last year along with having better log-in passwords. I had found a loophole and was successful in using the same password for probably 3 years. I should be ashamed, but I wasn’t. I actually knew my password back in the day BC (Before Covid). Today, not so much. My souped-up 17 digit numbers and symbols are a solid password now. So I looked up my password on my phone using my LastPass app; I have offline access on my phone, and I typed it into the prompt on the computer at the teacher station. The computer went into some weird realm that took probably 5-6 minutes before it stopped and prompted me for a user name and password again. Again? I looked it up again and typed all the letters, symbols, and numbers again. After another ridiculous amount of time, you know what happened. No, it worked, but our new friend Duo popped up. I asked Duo to send me a text. She goes into spin mode waiting for me to complete the action on my phone. Nothing appears on my watch or phone. So I kindly ask Duo to send me another text. And then again. By this time I have about 5 students sitting in front of me watching. Duo never complies so I give up on that endeavor.

I thought to myself, I don’t need your crappy technology. I’ve got a backpack full of it sitting at my feet. We are about 10 minutes into class time at this point when I realized I needed to log into the WiFi on campus if anything was going to happen today – my first day back in the classroom after 2 years. That wasn’t going to happen, so Maricopa net or whatever the open wifi is called was it. Fifteen minutes into my first class, with 5 students sitting in front of me, and one single person online, I was finally ready to teach. I learned later that several students gave up on the online class when I wasn’t there to let them in. Bummer. But hey I was ready. I say to the students in front of me. Let me just “plug” my laptop into the teacher station and you’ll be able to see my screen. I had already started teaching but had no visual for them yet.

Let me ask you a question before I continue. Does anyone have one of these plugs on their computer anymore? Oh, never mind. The whole point of this post is to point out how I was done after day one. And I can’t say that the following week was any better. I had a whole new set of problems. I’m so out of practice with trying to use someone else’s technology that my heart is just not into teaching face to face anymore. It ruined my experience. Technology should enhance, not prohibit. Apparently, you need cell service in order to get Duo prompts or be logged in to wifi on a computer to get a password to log into the computer. Or you need to remember to put your dongle in your backpack so you can connect your fancy technology to the old school kind in the classroom. Or…(fill in the blank). It’s just too much to deal with. I need to stick with what I do best and tackling GCC technology ain’t it.

P.S. Thank you Caryn Bird for hiding whiteboard markers in the classroom because of course you have to bring your own low tech too.

20
Nov

Have Students Engage with Guests in the Classroom via Video Discussions

Most of us are missing the normal student engagement we used to have in the classroom. Even I, who taught mostly online except for two hybrid courses, am missing those one day a week meetups in the classroom. What I miss most is seeing and hearing the enthusiasm and excitement about a topic or discussion from my students. You can’t really see or hear that in a regular asynchronous discussion. But you can bring a little of that back with a video discussion tool like FlipGrid. I’ve written about FlipGrid in the past, but today I want to share how I use it to bring guest speakers into the classroom as a way to have students engage with professionals in the field.

Luckily for me, I work in a wonderful district full of people passionate about teaching and helping students. One such person is the talented Sam Fraulino who works at PVCC as a Senior Software Developer. He works in the Center for Teaching & Learning helping faculty with their online courses, but his talents go far beyond that. Last semester I invited Sam to be a guest speaker in my JRN203 Writing for Online Media class. I thought he would have a lot to share with my students who are predominately Digital Media Arts students, and many are aspiring artists and very talented. We have a module on Citizen/Participatory Journalism where students learn how to capitalize on social media for their own benefits whether it be self-promotion or news dissemination. And Sam is a great example of someone who does that with his own artwork on Instagram.

After the pandemic hit and this hybrid course moved fully online, I didn’t want for students to miss out on this experience, so I invited Sam to visit the class virtually. But instead of making it a live webinar, I had Sam record a short video showing students his art studio and talking about his job, art, and experience using social media. Students were then asked to compose questions for Sam about his presentation and ask them in the discussion. To make all this flow, I used FlipGrid so both sides could see and hear each other. I hadn’t actually planned for Sam to respond to individual posts/questions, but he volunteered and it worked out better than expected.

Students were truly appreciative of his time and excited to engage with him online. And Sam had similar sentiments. He said,

All of them were so well-spoken, confident and so appreciative of my time; that was very nice and this was a very cool experience.

Sam Fraulino

Here’s a quick video showing how I set this up and how it works in Canvas and FlipGrid.

11
Sep

The Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy Guide

Recently I was asked to co-author an Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy Guide with Packback, an AI-supported online discussion platform that enables curiosity-based student discussion. The guide provides a starting resource for instructors who want to adopt an Anti-Racist discussion pedagogy in their own classroom, regardless of discipline or course subject matter. The guide also includes a foreword by the President and CEO of League for Innovation in the Community College, Dr. Rufus Glasper.

I really enjoyed working with the team to create this valuable resource, and I met some incredible people. The guide has been well received, and it’s branched out into some other opportunities for me around the same subject. We also had a couple of articles written about the guide. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education published “How Can Professors Bring Anti-Racist Pedagogy Practices Into the Classroom?” and the EdSurge Higher Ed Newsletter featured our work recently as well.

Guide Summary: How to build an anti-racist pedagogy in any discipline through instructor reflection, clear communication guidelines, and inquiry-based discussion. Get your copy of the guide.

We followed that up the guide with a live webinar about the guide at the end of August. The recording of this presentation is below.

6
Aug

3 Discussion Tools for Engaging Students in Online Courses

Last year I participated in a district pilot of a new discussion tool – Packback. It took a whole year to stop calling it backpack. 🙂 But I was initially intrigued by Packback because of its built-in AI moderation which meant less grading for me, but more meaningful participation from students. It took a bit to wrap my head around using it in ENG101, but it fit well with my literature course this summer, and students really like it. Check this video out to see what the concept behind Packback is: https://vimeo.com/163888277

They offer a consultant to each faculty using Packback, so you have someone who will work with you to get it set up and learn how to best utilize the tool. I found that very helpful. We already have the LTI integration in Canvas so set up and use is pretty easy. For more information on how Packback works, watch this “Engaging Students with Packback” video. The district has paid for a license, so it’s free to use with in MCCCD.

This next tool was introduced to me by Dr. Jennifer Lane, our CTLE Faculty Director.  Perusall is a social annotation tool that integrates with Canvas via LTI assignments. Perusall allows students and their instructors to collaboratively markup documents. Instead of reading a document and discussing it in person, Perusall brings the discussion to the text online. Learn more about how it works by watching this video: https://youtu.be/ODE6v4YOo0E And… wait for it… Perusall auto-grades effort and engagement with the text and scores are added to your Canvas grade book automatically. This frees up time for you to analyze the discussion students are having around the document and where you can help clarify or provide more instruction. It’s really cool and students actually like it (after they figure out how to score full points). It takes a few assignments before they figure it out, so it’s best to use it often and not as a one-off. This tool is also free.

Lastly, I’ve already introduced you to FlipGrid. See my last post. I’ll be doing two workshops for the CTLE in the next few weeks. They should be sending out information soon. Join me if you want to learn how to get set up and use video discussions this fall. My workshops are scheduled for next Thursday, August 13th at 1 pm and Tuesday, August 18th at 1 pm.

27
Mar

Okay, All Your Students are Online. Now What?

I still chuckle when I think about every teacher I work with is now doing some form of remote or online teaching. I know it’s not a laughing matter, but I can’t help it. After spending four years as eCourses coordinator at the college, I know the reality of that statement. I’m sure everyone is doing their best. However, I can’t help but think about that select few who wanted to teach online because they thought it would be easy. Well, it’s not so easy after all, especially when you only get two weeks to do it.

It’s easy to post content (documents) online, and most LMS’s make it easy to record video and audio. But the hardest part is engaging students. How do you even know they are watching, listening or reading what you put online? I hope I’m not freaking people out, but trust me, they’re not watching, listening and reading all that stuff you just put in Canvas. They are just looking for the stuff the “counts.” I know I sound pessimistic, but I speak from experience. When I first started teaching online over 15 years ago, the first thing I noticed was that if there was no point value attached, it got ignored. That included textbook chapters, handouts, content pages in Canvas, and yes, even YouTube videos. I was shocked. They don’t like my videos? Did anyone even watch them?

I couldn’t really tell if students were engaging or not with my content, but they were missing huge gaps in knowledge that would have come from engaging with that content. I constantly found myself asking in my feedback, “Did you watch the video?” or “Did you read the handout?” It was definitely frustrating especially since I made a ton of videos. Once I got fed up with that I decided to change the design of my courses. I now have several different formats depending on the course. I made a couple of videos showing how I changed things up that you can watch below, but I’ll summarize here first.

For my ENH114 African American literature class where reading is crucial (Duh!), I changed the course so that every reading is an assignment. Yes, you read that right. Every single reading is an assignment. I call them lessons, and each lesson either has reading handouts, video or audio and then something for students to do. For example, in Lesson 1.1.1 Origins of African American Language, students watch a YouTube video and then write a summary about what they learned. Simple. I create this by using Assignments in Canvas, embed the video, write my instructions and then set the assignment to accept text and uploads for submission. The best part is I didn’t have to make the video. Thank you internet and YouTube.

Another example from the ENH114 class is a lecture I wanted students to read. Again, I made it a lesson: Lesson 1.2.1 Importance of Negro Spirituals that included a recording of me reading the lecture as well as the text of the lecture, and then asks students to answer a question about the content. I use rubrics so the students know what I’m looking for, and it makes it easier for me to grade. The idea that everything I want students to do is graded in some way can be daunting, but using rubrics makes quick work of it. I’ll demonstrate more ways that I engage students in this class in the video below.

For my freshman comp classes, I have a slightly different approach. Not everything I want for them to read and do is made into a lesson, but I do wish that would work. However, I do consistently make some of the content into lessons. You really need to have something for students to engage with on a weekly basis. If you don’t, students get in the habit of “skipping” weeks. Having assignments with weekly due dates draws them into the course. They don’t have to be much, just something that says, “Hey, remember you have this English class over here.” You can see more from these courses in the video below. You can find the YouTube Series I mention here: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information.

Lastly, I teach a hybrid (used to teach a hybrid) JRN203: Writing for Online Media course. Luckily for me, I design all my courses as online courses, so I only had to make a few adjustments in this course to transition to online. The biggest change was adding more online discussions. Oh, I know. That sounds so boring, especially since students hate online discussions. But these discussions are fun. I use FlipGrid. It’s a social learning platform that allows educators to ask a question, then the students respond in a video. Students are then able to respond to one another, creating a “web” of video discussion. They’re fun and students really like these discussions. Some are a little shy at first, but they quickly get over it. I got permission from my students to show a discussion they are working on currently in class. See below.

The reality of the situation is I didn’t create all of this in two weeks. These are things I’ve added as I’ve taught over the years. For many faculty out there now rushing to move content online, my best advice is to pick one thing you can add now to help engage students, and as the semester continues on, consider what else you might be able to add. You can’t do it all now, but just one thing might prove helpful.

Engaging Students in JRN203 with FlipGrid
ENH114 Course Using Canvas, Softchalk, and FlipGrid
ENG101 Composition Course Using Canvas,
McGraw-Hill Connect & YouTube
26
Mar

Set Up Conferences with Students Using Appointment Slots in Google

Most of this week was spent getting students started on a research project in my 8-week ENG102s that started right after Spring Break and rallying my two hybrid courses to continue on and finish what we started. I also have a 12 week online ENG102 that’s just cruising along as if nothing has happened. I’m thankful for that class.

I scheduled online webinars for the usual class time slot of my two hybrids and I’ve surprisingly have had a pretty good turn out. Those students are doing great. But my new online students are a bit shell-shocked, so one of the things I did this week was give those students an opportunity to meet with me one-on-one to discuss their topics. In order to do that, I used Google Appointment Slots to set it all up and we met via Google Hangouts Meet. The video below shows you how I did that.

20
Mar

Where Do Great Ideas Go to Die?

People have great ideas all the time that they never share with others. They secretly harbor them in their heads. This is often where they die. We’re not always given a platform to share ideas, so that’s part of the reason. Another is we often feel our ideas might not be well received, so why bother. Or change is just hard for some and doing things the way we’ve always done them is commonplace. I tend to lean more on the side of people will listen if you bother to seek out the opportunity even if change never happens.

I have what I think is a good idea, and I’m going to share it with you. I don’t have any expectations for change, but at least my great idea is not going to die in my head. Also note, this post was conceived before our current situation with moving courses online. I started this while on Spring Break.

I’ve been teaching online for a long time – since 1998. I can see an inherent problem with how we offer online classes for our students. We open classes. Students rush to fill them, and all the online classes are full weeks before the semester begins. Sounds great, right? Well, it’s not. Not every student who signs up for an online class is prepared and ready for an online class. Many never make it past the first few days, finding it difficult to follow simple directions and get work completed. What do we do with these students? Some drop on their own, others stay and struggle for a while and eventually drop. The end game is that often after just one week a once full class is now left with multiple open spots. These are missed opportunities for students who were never given a chance to even register.

So here’s my idea. Open all online courses 3 days early and require students to complete an orientation. If students “No Show” or can’t complete simple to-do items, they are dropped as a “No Show” from the class. They were given an opportunity and failed. The student gets a full refund and there is now an open spot for another student to enroll. But we don’t allow late registration, so that doesn’t work. However, if we designated some courses as “rolling overload.” I made that term up. It means that faculty can designate the number of overload students permitted to enroll in their online courses. Presently faculty can teach an online course that doesn’t have the required max number of students (15) and are compensated from a rolling payscale, meaning I can teach ENH114 if I only have 10 students enrolled if I’m willing to be paid a certain percentage of the full load. That number used to be 2.04 load for 10 students. Five students would be 1.08 load. These are just examples at this point based on old numbers.

With this new plan, faculty could designate the number of overload students they are willing to teach, and the load for that class would increase by the number. Then after the three day period where students are given the orientation to complete, the actual course load is determined. Here’s the example: I teach ENG101 with a course load of 24 students. I designate 10 open spots for overload (2.04), so initially, my new full-time load is 15 + 2.04 = 17.04. After the three day orientation period, I only have 29 of the 34 students successfully make it through. My new load is 15+1.08 (5 extra students). We have technically helped 10 students. Five were shown they were not adequately prepared for an online class and were given a refund, and five more were given the opportunity to take a class that previously would have been full and closed. And I am compensated for the extra students in my class.

So let’s look at some real numbers, and I’ll show why I know this will work. For the last 5+ years, I’ve been keeping track of students enrolled during the first two weeks of my online classes. This semester I have 5 online classes. The two online 8-week ENG101 classes ended last week, and two new ENG102 online 8 week classes began this week. I already knew that at least 3 of the students enrolled in the ENG102 courses were not eligible to take the class, but I couldn’t drop them from the ENG102 because the semester wasn’t over yet for the ENG101. They hadn’t officially failed ENG101 yet, but trust me; they failed. So there were 3 wasted spots already. By the time all the official stuff happened, we are already in the no late registration stage. But let’s focus on the two ENG101 courses. I started with 48 students and I ended with 34. After the first week, I had a total of 43 students. So 5 enrollments were lost within the first 3 days. Most of the other 9 students were lost within the next two weeks.

Here’s the best part. I can predict after one week which students will not succeed in the online course. As they complete the 7 step orientation, I rank them in order of how quickly and successfully they complete the orientation. The names at the top completed it quickly with very little difficulty. Names toward the bottom are students who didn’t get started right away, required several emails to prod them, and didn’t complete things in a successful manner. The majority of the 9 students who dropped or were dropped after the first week were at the bottom of this list. Only 3 students in the top 32 have dropped or been dropped from the class, while the bottom 7 have either dropped or are failing the course.

Now let’s look at what is happening right this minute in my two ENG102 courses. The orientation was due last night. Both classes were full before we started. I add one off the waitlist and 2 students from my previous ENG101 that just ended, so I started with 51. One disappeared right when I opened the class on Wednesday of Spring Break. Poof. Vanished. Down to 50. Today a week later, three days into the 8-week session, I have 44 students. What happened to those 6 students? Two more dropped on their own. One said she had too much going on to handle a new class right now. Three were complete no-shows. I emailed daily and then called to no responses. They were dropped with a 43 (no-show) this morning. The last was a difficult decision but he was dropped with a 43 because he couldn’t figure out how to complete the orientation and never responded to any of my emails or texts offering help.

So even with all the intervention I still ended up for 4 open spots that didn’t get filled for this 8-week session. I bet there are a lot of students out there right now that wished they’d just signed up for an online class. But it’s too late now, as those 44 students are already deep into the course discussing personal freedoms and learning about writing arguments. Anyone who tried to join now would be too far behind for it to be a fair challenge. The system is just not designed well enough to give more students the opportunity to take online courses. Who knows if my idea would work. It’s certainly not without flaws. It’s just an idea, and now that it’s not dead in my head, I’m good with letting it go. Fly away idea. 🙂

And Write6x6 is a wrap. I hope you enjoyed my brain dumps over the past 6 weeks. I’ll try not to wait until next year to post again.

18
Mar

Remote Teaching: More Questions Answered

So I’ve gotten a few more questions from faculty about moving content online. The questions are good questions indicating that they have the right idea about adding audio and video. After posting on Instagram about using my iPad in some of my videos, Mary wanted to know if I could record live using Notability in a Google Hangout. I don’t usually do it that way, but I was curious too, so I tried it. Notability is a notetaking app on the iPad. It works like a digital whiteboard if you have an Apple pencil. I use it to show students how to correct errors in their papers. I’ll pull up a document that has sentences double spaced and use my pen to show how you can add a comma and conjunction to a run-on sentence and make it a compound sentence, for example. I usually just do these alone and record the screen using the built-in recording feature on the iPad. I can also do the same thing using Explain Everything Whiteboard, but that is not free ($25).

Anyway, this method of recording videos is perfect for the instructor who likes to write on the board while teaching. I don’t do that often, but when I do students like it. Here’s an example of How to Write a Basic Essay that I created in Explain Everything. Now back to Mary’s question. Yes, you can log into a Google Hangout Meet session on your iPad, start presenting, open the Notability app and start writing. As I tried this, I was also logged into the webinar on my desktop and could easily see what was going on on the iPad. I might have to try this in my next webinar class.

iPad and computer screen
Presenting from Explain Everything on the iPad in a Google Hangouts Meet session.

Another media question I got today was about recording audio in a Canvas quiz. Yes, you can do that. Canvas is good at giving the ability to record audio and video either from within Canvas or uploading it from your computer. Most already know you can record audio and video in assignments and pages, but even I didn’t know about adding it to quiz questions. So when you’re setting up your quiz and you add a question, just click the “record/upload media” button on the menu bar. You can record right there in Canvas or you can upload a file recorded earlier on your computer. This is a good solution for a class that is learning pronunciation or a foreign language.

The rest of the questions I got today were about the extended delay for beginning face to face and hybrid courses. I think the messaging just confused everyone who worked their butts off to be ready for next week and now we have to delay. It’s really not fair to those who are teaching 8-week courses that were to start this week. Essentially they are not only moving the content online but now they have to teach it in 5 weeks. That’s crazy. We don’t even teach 5 week online courses in the summer in our department. My advice was to just start now if you’re ready. Students will do what you tell them if you help them. I have two hybrid courses that didn’t skip a beat. We are moving on as planned. They’re showing up to webinars, submitting work, and asking good questions. We’re going to get through this and finish on time.