initial thoughts on teaching in a time of crisis

For those reading in the future, this is the week that the reality of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic struck the U.S. Hundreds of schools announced that their campuses would be closing, and students would be expected to continue their studies from home, or wherever else they might find to stay. The president of our university and the dean of the college announced on Wednesday that face-to-face instruction would continue through Friday, students would have to leave campus by Sunday afternoon (unless they received an exception), and instruction would resume remotely the following Wednesday. That leaves Monday and Tuesday for redesigning courses and implementing them in a new format. Some instructors managed to get an earlier start before the week ended, but my mind and time were occupied with trying to wrap up well with students in person, and also home life obligations (I have a two-year-old daughter, and my wife is a graduate student with a full-time job), so I’m really just beginning to collect my thoughts.

I am entirely in the camp of those who describe this new mode of teaching as “remote” rather than ”online” learning (and I am grateful that is the language our administration has chosen to use). I do not plan to create an online class, and I do not have any pretensions that I could make a good one in the time available. Even in ordinary circumstances I forget to update course pages on our LMS half the time. I’m focused on what’s going to happen during the class meetings. I’m probably going to have to record a few lectures, but I’ll also look for other video resources that already exist, because me making a video will be either entirely off-the-cuff or hours of planning and scripting. I’m focused on the “remote” part, as a substitute for focusing on class meetings. Students are going to be studying on their own, in a wide variety of settings and living situations. The global upheaval and concomitant personal stresses make it likely that calculus or abstract algebra is not the primary concern in their lives. I want to give them the best chance to learn despite those conditions. The “online” element is present strictly to mitigate the isolation of self-study. Thus I plan to use online elements in ways that will maintain our community and help students feel like their study is meaningful. We’ll have online discussions, to the extent possible given the geographic diversity, and I plan to formulate new projects that will allow students to implement new knowledge in ways that directly affect their understanding of the world. Ideally, these projects themselves will enable assessment of the relevant skills, and I’ll be able to rely less on traditional test formats.

I am not in either camp regarding whether this switch to remote teaching is beneficial or detrimental. In fact, I would describe myself as wholeheartedly ambivalent on that matter. On the one hand, nothing about this situation is normal. Literally the entire world is focused on containing a disease that could kill tens or hundreds of millions of us. Many social institutions (schools, religious groups, local government) have shuttered their brick-and-mortar locations. Friends are instantly made distant, and any challenges to family life are made proximate. On the other hand, I believe my students truly value education. Continuing classes means maintaining some measure of normalcy. It is an element of life where one has some control, unlike almost everything else around us. And I have seen learning of complex mathematics happen in truly extraordinary circumstances, such as during the time that I taught in Peace Corps. (I do not support the argument, made by some in our community, that we can manage this “because we’ve done it before.” A year and a half ago, our college switched to remote instruction for three weeks due to wildfires; that was a more traumatic time, though a briefer one. This represents a fundamental shift in how we complete our courses, not just maintain progress in the short term, and its ramifications for higher education and our university in particular should not be minimized. The fact that, at the administrative level, so many decisions seem to be driven by the threat of future problems with accreditation exceeds my ability to worry.) For now, it is my job, and it is one way that I can contribute to bettering the world.

I am mindful of those for whom this time presents even greater challenges: people who already suffer from loneliness and isolation; people without homes, for whom the loss of public spaces and services will fray an already thin network of support; people in prison, who are neglected in the best of times, despite being in custody of the state; people in immigrant detention centers, who are constantly treated shamefully and forced to live in appalling conditions. My job and my position do not exonerate me from doing what I can to aid them, as well.