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As much as we’re all focused on getting through the pandemic, and predicting its next few twists and turns, it’s important not to lose sight of lessons learned. No sane person would have chosen this, but if we can learn from it, we should.
In that spirit, then, I offer a few early indicators of what we may be learning.
On the whole, students have been great sports about the shift to remote live instruction. They understand the reason behind it and that it was nobody’s first choice. Some have even thrived in it, as it can give, say, more introverted students a level of structure to live interaction that makes it easier for them to participate.
But, if early enrollment patterns for the summer are any indication, most prefer fully asynchronous online instruction to the remote live format. They gave Zoom classes a pass for the spring, but given the option, they’re largely steering away from synchronous remote sections.
To be fair, that may be a function of comparing one format that has been honed over more than a decade to another that was built on the fly, over spring break. That’s not a shot at anybody; reformatting five classes in 10 days, halfway through the semester, is a bear of a task. And even those who did it masterfully still faced, through no fault of their own, the basic truth that it wasn’t what students had been expecting.
Whatever the reason, though, the pattern of voting with their feet is fairly clear.
That said, I’ve heard from several faculty that the combination of asynchronous online classes with Zoom office hours works really well. Given that Zoom was originally designed for meetings, that makes some sense. (I’m referring to Zoom because that’s what we have. That said, I’m platform agnostic; if your program of choice is WebEx or Skype or the new Google one, I would guess the same would hold.)
A full faculty meeting held over Zoom went quite well, and I’m told that a faculty union meeting held over Zoom had the highest attendance in years. Even if we went “back to normal” tomorrow, I could see keeping Zoom around for certain kinds of meetings.
On Monday I was pleasantly surprised to discover that comparing the mid-March to late-April period last year to the same period this year, the number of students who dropped at least one class dropped by 40 percent.
Forty percent! If that holds, it’s a game-changer. It certainly raises some questions.
We don’t know yet whether that indicates what it seems to indicate or whether some of the difference is from students simply ghosting rather than formally dropping. We’ll have a better handle on that in another month or so, after the grades are in. If even half of the improvement holds up, though, that’s dramatic.
It’s hard to know what’s behind the change. We’ve made the pass/no credit option more available, so some students who might have dropped before may have decided to stick around and see what happens, on the theory that they can always opt for no credit. If that’s correct, then we may want to think about expanding the pass/no credit option when the emergency resolves. And/or, between the quarantine and the loss of jobs, students suddenly have more time available to devote to classes. And/or, being shoved online resolved transportation issues that sometimes get in the way. And/or, professors cut more slack on deadlines in light of the madness. And/or …
It wasn’t designed as an experiment, so it’s hard to isolate a single variable.
Still, I’ll take good news where I can find it, and this is good news.
Wise and worldly readers, what early indicators are you seeing of lessons to carry forward?
