Teaching in the Time of COVID-19

A key step in the design process is to consider the user’s perspective. In our case, as teachers, our users are students whose access points to our online content can’t be broadly assumed.

We can’t assume they’ll all be sitting at a desk on a laptop or desktop computer for as many hours as they need to say, watch videos, post on discussion boards, work on Google Docs. I’m thinking, in my case, a good portion of my students will be accessing their learning through mobile devices with small screens. That they’ll be doing work catch-as-catch can as their lives are disrupted more and more with travel bans, quarantines, parents working from home, siblings sent home from college.

My school? We haven’t shuttered yet, but we’re preparing. The faculty of my school gathered yesterday and today to share ideas for how to approach distance learning wisely.

Our leaders advised us to consider the following:

• Keep it light. Our goal should really be to provide our students with a sense of normalcy under extraordinary circumstances. I for one, am planning a unit where the students will review albums of pop music. It’s a great way to talk about aesthetics as culturally-defined and evolutionary, dialectic, hegelian synthesis and all that — without all the up-front conceptual baggage.
• There’s no need for “synchronous” distance learning. Really. Model your distance instruction on one-on-one interaction, not teacher-on-whole-class. Plus if we’re all trying to do video “hangouts” at the same time, because half the schools in the developed world are closed, well — as my colleague put it — “internet go boom.” We don’t have the bandwidth.
• Stagger due dates. For example, our English department will use Tuesdays as our day to collect work; History will use Fridays.

I want to add a couple thoughts here, and invite further discussion.

• Keep it simple. This applies both to your curriculum, and your reliance on technology.
  • I’ll be avoiding any kind of assignment that, if I were delivering it orally in class, I could predict getting multiple clarification questions. This goes against my grain as a teacher — I’m usually one to co-construct parameters with my students in class, or say “we’re not writing a five-paragraph essay, you’ll need to develop your own structure dependent on your argument,” and so on. I’ll need to pull back, and rely on the kind of assignment parameters my students don’t have to think too hard about.
  • In terms of technology — just think about all the times the projector in your classroom just didn’t feel like working. For distance learning, multiply Murphy’s Law by a factor of 10, because now you’re totally reliant on technology both on your end and the student’s end, geometrically increasing the potential for tech SNAFUs. I refer you, for further consideration, to my favorite list of Murphy’s laws.
• Communicate redundantly. I don’t mean overwhelm your students — but send the same, simple, clear information through multiple channels, because you don’t know which channel will be a particular student’s access point. For example, my plan is to post an assignment on the class’s online calendar, but also email that same assignment to everyone on the roster, and post it as a bulletin on the class’s group page. Even so, since I know my students communicate peer-to-peer via GroupMe or Messages groupchat on their Mac devices, I have to assume some students may ask each other what the assignments are — so, I plan to make my assignments copy-pastable (brief, simple text, not embedded in PDF, Word, etc.).
• Lean on pre-existing well-designed things. Don’t go crazy trying to reinvent the wheel. But also acknowledge that document design and information design are going to have a huge impact on your students’ comprehension and workflow. Here’s a simple example: if you want your students to read and respond to a poem, don’t send them a PDF attachment. Many of them will be completing homework on their mobile devices, and PDFs are not mobile-friendly. Instead, send them a link to a poem on poetryfoundation.org — which has mobile-friendly formatting. The folks at Poetry Foundation have done the design work for you. Use it.