Resources by Sandie Gravett

Indignant. That word sums up how I felt at a recent departmental Zoom meeting when our chair mentioned that the Dean wanted to know about–and highlight–faculty who made the transition from face-to-face to online learning well. Who, we were asked, had gone above and beyond? My indignation focused on two assumptions behind this request. The first is the failure to see that everyone who is continuing to work with students in this time is going above and beyond, and the second is that the remote options most faculty around the country were asked to throw together in less than a week are not the same thing as online learning. Let me start with the first. The remarkable capacity of my colleagues in my program and around this country to adapt quickly and effectively should be lauded. When life changed suddenly, and while struggling to figure out living situations with partners and children and parents and friends, getting access to needed equipment and bandwidth, figuring out the challenges of groceries and prescriptions, making masks, and coping with the stress, faculty mounted classes and supported students who have often been displaced, are frequently frightened, and sometimes are sick or are struggling with others who have taken ill. Even more, we kept holding virtual committee meetings to determine whether or not students should have options with regard to grades this term, to do the routine but necessary work of our departments and programs, and to consider ways to mark graduations that would be missed. No, we are not the frontline healthcare professionals, first responders, or even the “necessary” workers in our grocery stores and pharmacies, but we are keeping the educational mission of our schools alive. And at many institutions, leaders forgot to say “thank you” to the faculty for doing what was demanded and doing it in the best way folks could manage from the places where they were. Many faculty also simultaneously found out that what works well in the face-to-face environment in terms of preparation and activity is not often what works best online. I have been teaching fully online courses in a primarily face-to-face department for more than 15 years and so my classes this term were set. But what I saw at my institution and in online forums when helping others get ready to go remote was faculty quickly recognizing that the tricks of our trade in the traditional classroom do not transfer readily to the digital world. Indeed, even when faculty want to do some of the “simple” best practices, like making useful short video lessons, it is not as easy as it seems. Then, for those “live” sessions, there are the joys of losing connections or having things freeze up or drop at key moments. And lots of faculty now know that our supposedly digitally savvy students are less so than we might think. That is before you even get to structuring and pacing sound learning activities and assignments that evaluate student progress toward learning goals or planning for meaningful student interaction or group work. In pondering these pedagogical learning curves, it becomes clear that if this pandemic keeps us physically distanced from one another into the next academic year, many faculty will need more help thinking about how to mount classes that make the best use of the platforms and materials that are available to do a fully online course. And more help to feel less swamped. In addition, we are also now also seeing that the policies of many of our institutions are not geared appropriately to this effort. How we think about seat time and contact hours, faculty workload, office hours, evaluation, or even the academic calendar itself, are for a world we are not living in right now. Indeed, they are for a world that has been disappearing for a long time. These concerns prompt even more about other areas of our work life. What about the health and well-being of the journals and publication houses? What about the conferences where we interact with our colleagues and learn? What about our granting agencies? How will changes in these areas impact tenure and promotion considerations? Will this economic environment sound the final death knell for tenure? Will we have students? Will we have support from our states?  We do not know. Many of us remember all too well the struggles of education post-2008. Now we must also wonder for ourselves: Will new contracts even come? What will the post-pandemic economy hold?  We cannot control much of what happens. But many of these issues are about academic governance. And while we have all been working hard while worrying not just about our immediate health, we also must think ahead. If that future is not to be dictated solely down the administrative chain, faculty are going to have to be ready to lead, and perhaps must do this work in the near term--likely over the summer. Now is the time to realize that faculty who adapted quickly and capably in the classroom can also offer some powerful insight into how to plan for the next phase. And so indignant is my word. Indeed, I could not help but think that many of our leaders should be less worried about calling out who we should give a gold star to for the best transition, and more concerned with marshaling the expertise at their fingertips to start planning for the future. Don’t give us pats on the head. Use our knowledge, listen to our voices, and practice sharing governance. Now is the time to call us together to work toward a future in higher education. There is much to be done.

Selecting reading and viewing material for any course can be challenging. Institutional policies may limit instructor’s options to titles adopted by a department or to a program’s contracted curricular materials. Some schools require use of a rental system and/or impose cost parameters. For the online instructor, additional complications arise. The obstacles might be logistical. When students live at a distance from a campus, they may not have the foresight to order books or course-paks in a timely manner or may lack access to library reserves. If a class requires video content, a student might not subscribe to a particular streaming service. But more common concerns relate to format and learning purpose. I want to consider these items and explore the relationship between what we opt to assign and our pedagogical practice. In courses taught fully online, the instructor must decide whether to make all of the class materials available electronically. I find that my students increasingly prefer reading on their devices and appreciate the opportunity to click directly through to an assignment. That reality is getting easier to make happen. Appropriate translations of religious texts are readily available. The ability to download articles and chapters in a pdf from library holdings also offers options. When requiring movies or documentaries, an institutional subscription to a streaming service like Swank permits a single-click viewing experience. Additionally, some publishers, like Point of View ) specialize in 1500-word pieces on specific topics that can be purchased inexpensively in Kindle-ready form. And scholars in the field are producing free content such as The Religious Studies Project’s podcasts  (https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/), Andrew Henry’s Religion for Breakfast videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/ReligionForBreakfast/featured), Bible Odyssey (the Society of Biblical Literature’s site for short articles, videos, and other materials focused on critical examination of various subjects related to the Bible and its study; https://www.bibleodyssey.org/) that are usable in a classroom setting But research has demonstrated that students resist clicking on too many different assignment links and frequently lose energy before working through them all. They know that a significant number of short readings or videos can be just as time consuming, and feel just as burdensome, as one longer assignment. Thus, strategizing about what resources to employ and how to get students reading or viewing must always be grounded in what information we want mastered in a class. For example, many of us–online or not–no longer emphasize testing on dates, names, places, and similar specifics once typical of lecture and textbook-based learning, even if the study of a subject may demand familiarity with such details. When one can access factual information with a few, swift keystrokes, asking students to devote significant out-of-class time to reading or viewing, taking notes, assessing what is valuable, memorizing, and then reproducing it all on a quiz feels antiquated. We instead seek to reduce the onerous qualities of learning foundational material and target, in brief, acquiring knowledge of key topics or concepts. In the online environment, how to achieve this requires going beyond simply providing links to assignments. For example, we can construct reading and viewing with embedded “check-ins” that ensure student contact with basic terminology and concepts. Indeed, this practice can be formulated to provide immediate feedback and personalized suggestions of linked resources for a term or an idea a student does not grasp. This practice thereby expands learning (while reading or viewing) by teaching both content and how to identify and seek further clarifications regarding important material. Good design can also move beyond students answering simple feedback questions and toward demonstrating understanding, interpretation, and application. This approach is particularly important with longer readings or viewings (such as novels or movies), as well as with assignments that may be difficult going (reading theory, for instance). Again, technology permits querying students as they work, thus promoting not only completion of reading and viewing assignments in full, but also comprehension via critical immersion in the material that can then be integrated into class discussions, paper writing, or research activities. Without doubt, building these resources requires additional time for the instructor (and can involve the need for some technical expertise depending on the learning management system utilized). Links for more in-depth study also require regular updating. The investment at the front-end, however, can formulate assignments that are a better fit for the online environment given students often work asynchronously in diverse locations and may benefit from guidance not available through regular contact with other students or the instructor in the classroom or on campus. Moving away from familiar learning practices might feel strange to instructors who come to the online world from face-to-face classrooms and may not be digital natives. But there are two important points to ponder. First, we are more and more teaching students who have grown up attached to devices that have shaped their learning habits. We want to capitalize on the potential of what is already in their hands. In fact, figuring out how to maximize the strengths of the available technologies in service of our goals is what every generation of instructors does, even if not quite at the same rapid pace required of us today. Second, we need to be more intentional about cultivating our own pedagogical awareness. Graduate schools focus on producing scholars rather than classroom teachers. As new instructors, we thus often replicate teaching that worked for us until we figure out our own styles along the way. But in navigating today’s changing landscape of higher education, we should seek deliberate matching between where we want to see our students end up and how we develop assignments (reading, viewing, and assessment activities) that get us there. That work starts with the pedagogical choices we make about the content for a course, how students access it, and what we do to help them navigate it.

Evaluations of faculty, both peer and student, can be a valuable part of the teaching landscape. Without doubt, faculty peers see strengths and weaknesses an individual instructor might not otherwise notice. Similarly, asking students about their experiences yields important insight into how learning happens--if one poses the right questions. Well-designed instruments interpreted with a critical eye by employers should be standard. For online instruction, however, particular downsides emerge that often prove dicey for faculty whose merit pay, tenure and promotion considerations, and, most especially, contract status depends, even if only in part, on the results. Online faculty must proactively design processes that handle the challenges of the online environment appropriately. While I have by no means mastered making evaluation of my online courses helpful, I do have observations about what I have tried and what I am planning to do to negotiate this required process more thoughtfully. When a peer evaluator lacks experience with online learning, or does not have familiarity with best practices for creating, mounting, and running an online course, the utility of the evaluation can come into question. Too often an idealized imagination of the traditional classroom remains the model by which a course is judged, rather than looking at the online experience for what it offers. If a university employs a given standard, like Quality Matters, for online course development, having peer evaluators look through that prism can be useful (https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/rubric-standards/higher-ed-rubric). The elements outlined provide clear criteria for assessment. Additionally, affording a faculty member the opportunity for peer evaluation from other online instructors or learning technology designers, even if they are not subject matter experts, can also be valuable. My university is now doing “teaching squares” for online instructors where we get together and work through one another’s courses. Seeing how other online faculty structure learning, and hearing feedback about my course format and assignments generated new ideas and helped me see where I needed to improve. Indeed, I would welcome a combination for peer evaluation that blended the insights of other online instructors with respect to the medium and what departmental colleagues would note about content. In the end, these options all stress one thing: that the purpose of peer evaluations ought to be to improve student outcomes by focusing on pedagogical practice. Regarding student evaluations, online instructors already know what studies demonstrate: online courses tend to yield lower ratings for faculty than face-to-face courses. This result likely stems, in part, from the lack of personal contact built up in weekly face-to-face meetings. Relationship mitigate against harshness in evaluation. But this also serves as a reminder that faculty presence, however it is accomplished in online classrooms, is important. While faculty members cannot completely alleviate the electronic remove, students still need to see faculty members in videos and engaged in discussion. They continue to want personal interactions, whether it be through email, text or video messaging, or phone calls. Structuring that contact into the course is vital. Returning work and inquiries promptly also proves important. The urgency of our online lives drives expectations here, so faculty must set up precise standards for communication and stick to them. Students might not be able to get an answer to a question posted at 2:00 a.m., for example, but it is not unreasonable to expect an answer to come within the next 12 hours in most cases. Many students evaluate faculty based on expectations about online courses and they often anticipate online options will be easier than face-to-face classes. Institutional messaging around online options can plant that idea. “Learn anytime, anywhere” our promotions might say, as if students can successfully navigate a class while strolling the aisles of the grocery store or pausing briefly between serving customers on the job.  Faculty, therefore, must establish detailed instructions for assignments and specific rubrics for grading that can help learners understand what they need to accomplish. Still, disappointments in this arena can lead to frustrations expressed via end of term evaluations. More helpful options might include evaluations geared to each assignment, perhaps even completed when the assignment is turned in. What did a student learn from completing that task? How did the assignment relate to the goals of the course? If faculty include these elements in their course design, it can alleviate problems along the way and serve to remind students at the close of a term about what they achieved. Likewise, making students partners in their own learning asks for a higher level of reflective awareness. Foregrounding why a student enrolled in a course, what the student wants to gain by completing it, and how it might relate to overall academic goals can be a great starting exercise because it makes students clarify expectations. Instructors get a snapshot of why students show up and the opportunity to engage in discussion of where faculty expectations may correspond to those of students, where they may differ, and why. Modifications, even if only mental, can happen through this exercise and students can come to see faculty as partners and guides in learning as opposed to obstacles. In the end, we must acknowledge that evaluations will remain a fact of faculty life. How to make them less punitive–not focused on faculty shortcomings or “consumer satisfaction” measures–and more formative, aimed to achieving educational purpose, should always be a goal for faculty and administrators. Adapting the evaluation form to the delivery method of a course is a part of that process.

Last year, my university offered online instructors two video tools on a trial basis: Flipgrid and VoiceThread. While VoiceThread’s features did not suit the classes on my schedule, I might incorporate it with advanced students in the future. Flipgrid, a Minneapolis-based educational startup (acquired in mid-2018 by Microsoft), uses an intuitive interface to allow students to create and upload videos on “grids” established by an instructor. First adopted in K-12 settings, the social media savvy generation can navigate the process with ease. It intrigued me enough to use it in both summer and fall General Education classes. As a mechanism for class introductions, Flipgrid is a slam dunk. Although my previous practice of asking students to post a brief introduction with a photo worked just fine, I enjoyed receiving candid video footage of students in their dorm rooms or apartments, as well as with their roommates and pets. The mobility of the app gave the students options and many decided to have fun. Other backdrops included hiking on the Blue Ridge, work sites, or even in the car with friends (no videos were filmed while driving). Moreover, all participants can easily access other classmates’ videos and they got interactive without being instructed to do so.  Another helpful function was as a conduit for questions about the class or the parameters of an assignment. Instead of fielding a number of separate private emails on the same topic, students made video queries and I posted answers for everyone to see. Using Flipgrid as a discussion board produced more of a mixed bag. First, the positives. Even though the videos were graded, I wanted lower stakes assignments than writing, and many students embraced that informality. I could therefore hear a student processing the questions I posed and thinking through the assigned materials. Because I also asked them to engage with the video of another student, I caught glimpses of how they negotiate differences. Additionally, the platform allowed me to build a scored rubric suited to the assignment and I could send individual responses (point totals and comments in writing and/or video). I liked that videos showed the personal. For instance, listening to posts with young children screaming in the background made the challenges of parenting as a student obvious. And Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night contributions, with folks getting ready to head out the door on dates or to parties (or, sometimes, coming back in) taught me a great deal about the social scene as well as fashion in clothing, hair, and jewelry . . . and preferred drinks which were quite visible.    But it did not prove all smooth sailing. Many students carefully curate their online identities and want control over their public personas. Even in Flipgrid’s private and password--protected space, evaluations indicated some students experienced anxiety about their self-presentation in this format. Unexpectedly, one way this concern manifested was through an uptick in plagiarism. While students on traditional threaded discussion boards sometimes cut and paste content without attribution, I never anticipated videos featuring students reading directly from websites as if the words were their own. But they did, and did so in significant numbers. My conversations with offenders about this behavior indicated fear about appearing less than knowledgeable in ways that amplify differently from a typed post. Workload also became a problem. While I thought video posting would prove less onerous for students, I hoped it might equate to grading traditional boards for me. Again, the results varied. Many students appreciated the chance to make contributions in this new format, but others reported choosing an online course because of a preference for writing out thoughts and were disappointed not to have that option. Still others refused to post a video until they thought it looked and sounded perfect, resulting in lots of takes and time sunk into the production. As for me, although I limited all videos to a maximum of 3 minutes, that meant listening to 2 posts per student weekly could run three hours straight for a single class of 30 students–extended, of course, by the need for breaks and to compose and enter feedback. It was the latter that truly took up time because grades assigned in Flipgrid did not automatically integrate into the learning management system gradebook. Instead, I recorded separate grades in Excel and then again in Moodle gradebook for the students (in addition to emailing my feedback through Flipgrid). Many days toward the end of the term, I longed for my old threaded discussion boards I could grade in an hour or so. Still, I do not regret being experimental with a new technological option. Learning how to incorporate a new pedagogical tool effectively always takes time. I will not abandon Flipgrid, but I do plan to modify my future use. It’s certainly a keeper for introductions and class questions. But instead of using it like a traditional discussion board, I am mulling over incorporating grids at the completion of a unit, or perhaps after a reading or a video, in order to allow students space to pose questions about an idea or a theory where they need additional clarification or to push on something I may not have stressed. I can also see assigning a student to make a short video presentation on a given topic where others will ask questions or pose challenges. Finally, using this tool helped me as a teacher. I became less uptight about posting only perfected content made when I was dressed in a certain manner and every hair was in place. In fact, I often posted from wherever I happened to be, including on the treadmill at the gym, while at the grocery store, and even from a friend’s hospital room. My students got to see me as a person with a life, too. That kind of interaction can get lost online. So even when this new toy failed to live up to my hopes, or I failed to use the resource to its best advantage, it nudged me to keep stretching as a teacher, to seek more effective ways to communicate. That outcome is never a bad one.

Course design in online learning juggles a range of factors to produce an effective learning environment. For instance, most of us who teach online must navigate the expectations of our institution. Maybe a requirement to adhere to some external standard, like Quality Matters, exists. Perhaps the learning management system defines what one might do. Some schools require the use of a design consultant, while others throw faculty into the deep end of course development without any support. And, then, of course, we always must account for the students. I tend to boil online class structure down to the following: consistency matters, less is more, clarity in all things, and never lose the personal, and course design is never done. Consistency matters speaks to the basic principle of setting the same pattern week in and week out. The freedom of asynchronous online learning (work on your own from anywhere, anytime) differs markedly from a student knowing to turn up on specific days, at a given time, and in a set location. Many undergraduates still need the discipline built in. Setting repetitive due dates, for instance, allows a learner to integrate the class into her or his calendar and to schedule other obligations (e.g., work, childcare, recreation) accordingly. Organizing the course materials via a weekly agenda in a fixed place enables the students to know where to look for readings/videos and how to determine what to turn in, where, and by when.  Less is more applies in several areas. Only the rare student will read every line of my syllabus, carefully parse my directions, or watch every video. I try to help here. Creating my syllabus using Moodle’s “Book” for example, allows me to generate a Table of Contents. Students then might skip to what they prioritize (like grading) and only refer to policies (academic integrity, disability accommodation, etc.) when needed. I also use this function for the weekly assignments. Students can bypass the learning goals the University wants posted and immediately access the readings/videos and the worksheets.    Similarly, in video presentations, if I can do 2-4 minutes rather than 10 or 15, I stand a better chance of a student listening all the way through. But even when I go long, I cannot waste their time. Good video production requires thinking through what is most important, planning out my commentary and visuals, and speaking at the pace of something like a Crash Course lesson. Students then tend to stick with it and even re-view when they need a second or third shot at an idea because it is not burdensome or scattered. Clarity in all things means avoiding confusion by providing step-by-step instructions for every assignment, a rubric for how it will be assessed, links to technical support for what students might need to accomplish it (such as how to make a video), statements about when precisely to anticipate feedback, and a forum to pose their questions–again with response time being key. Online learning lacks the luxury of chatting face-to-face in class about what I want to see or how the grading is coming along. Instead, I must anticipate, as well as draw from experience, what kinds of questions students raise and plan accordingly to answer them at the outset. Never lose the personal takes me back to when I first started out in online and most of my students brought with them the expectations of a face-to-face environment. They wanted to see my face and hear my voice. They wanted not automatically graded assignments, but my personal comments. I also learned the value of students hearing from me “live” every week, even when everything might be running like clockwork. A weekly note to the class or a quick video about the connection of a current event to what we are doing reminds them I am there and active and paying attention. Sending individual feedback on something as mundane as a discussion board post says I take their ideas seriously. I also, then, get more students making appointments with me to work through issues or to chat about their interests. These interactions make use of my expertise in more areas than content delivery and that is, as we all know, where most authentic learning happens. Finally, course design is never done. Each iteration of a class teaches us something new about what works and what we can do better. Making the time to reflect on the specifics, or to learn new tricks by engaging with other faculty, brings pedagogy to the forefront and that, to my mind, always benefits the learning experience.

I love the face-to-face learning environment. Even when I stood before my first class, uncertain if I knew enough to teach for 10 minutes much less 75, I thrived on the energy in the room. I also felt somewhat at ease with the basics, given I could draw on a lifetime of experience as a student.  When we become teachers, most of us start by emulating the best we have known and their classrooms. In my career, I have handled the auditorium lecture, the seminar, the project-based learning course, and on-site education in the streets of another country. I had good models for them all. Then came online. Until I started working on a system-level “e-learning” committee, I knew little about this mode of delivery. It did not exist when I went to school. And at my institution, there was a decided distrust about the whole enterprise. Most faculty thought online education ran counter to the best of what college instruction should be. Many administrators thought it ran counter to the ethos of the institution itself. But I needed a change and a challenge.  Out of curiosity, I enrolled in an online course at another UNC-system institution. The course was well thought out, beautifully mounted, and, with an engaged instructor, I loved it. I wanted to try teaching in this format, although I recognized that I was an advanced adult learner and my students were largely beginning undergraduates. Luckily, my chair and colleagues said okay. Even with no institutional training or incentives, I dove in. My first time out, I taught three different fully-enrolled general education courses. Miraculously, I survived and some fifteen years later, I have no desire ever to go back to a traditional classroom. The reasons for that change are complicated, but I want to focus on three ways in which I found myself becoming a better teacher online. First, online teaching reinforced that learning happens when students invest in pursuing questions that intrigue them. Thus, when conceptualizing my classes, I chose to position myself as a mentor and a guide instead of the authoritative voice or the day’s entertainment. By creating opportunities that assist students in understanding and formulating the kinds of questions scholars ask, I watched the learning space become less about transmitting knowledge and more about helping students find their own academic voices in line with their interests and learning goals. Rather than mastering a set of facts, we spend our time on skills such as locating appropriate academic resources, analyzing primary and secondary texts, crafting better arguments, and making persuasive and polished presentations. Second, being attached to a computer all day produced greater diligence with my own research. The pressure of setting up an online course (and I change my courses almost every term) feels intense while it is happening. But once class gets underway, the structure of each week produces a rhythm. The teaching tasks (answering questions, grading, interacting in discussion) come in predictable spurts and get accomplished more efficiently. I am not constantly scrambling to get materials together for the next class session. This calmer and steadier pace allows me to build in the time I need for my scholarship, which, in turn, feeds back into my teaching and makes for improvements on the next course iterations. Third, I see student needs and challenges more clearly. Believe it or not, evaluations prove key here. Do not get me wrong. Feedback about online courses invites trolling. And many students, most likely due to the physical remove, tend to be harsher with their assessments. But if you look past the complaining, you see that they are frequently saying “we are ill-equipped for self-directed learning” (especially if the expectation was for something rote). My students are smart and capable. But they have often not been pushed by an increasingly impoverished K-12 system to ask their own questions, to evaluate resources analytically, or to make cogent arguments in sound grammatical form. They are also not accustomed to seeing professors as partners in learning, who will work with them. I have to do considerable outreach and encourage students to ask for the time and attention they might need. I still have spent more of my life in a face-to-face educational environment as opposed to online. But I now know more about the mechanics of learning because of leaving my comfort zone and teaching online. I was forced to think through my pedagogical choices. I stay current with and adapt to the available technology. And I have to work to construct a learning community, rather than counting on shared space to do the job. Teaching online is making me a better teacher. Questions for Consideration: Who am I in the classroom? How do I define my role and how does my pedagogy reflect that position? Do I make time to review my classes over the duration of each term, making certain that my assignments correspond to the learning goals I have established, including the skills I want to help my students develop? How can technology be helpful to me in my instruction? What do I use outside of the classroom (e.g., to stay in contact with family and friends, to shop, to organize my life) that might be useful in the classroom?