Things Matt Wrote

One of the most rewarding things I do is teach a class at the local community college. I love teaching and sharing my knowledge. I do not like the overhead or drama that comes along with it (that should be a post itself) but I absolutely love leading a group of students to the better understanding and appreciation of the criminal justice system. Like everything so far in the year 2020, this semester was the best of times and the worst of times all at once.

The class started in the classroom and ended online. The last time we physically met on campus was for the mid-term exam, so the class ended up being an equal mix of fifty-percent on campus, and fifty-percent online. Actually, we met one more time online than on campus, so I’m considering it an online course thereby allowing me to tick the resume checkbox of “online teaching experience”.

Teaching a class at a community college is the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. The students vary greatly in age, educational background, life experience, and economic status. But they are all there for the same reason, well most of them, to achieve learning which will lead to professional success. This class was one of the largest and most diverse I have instructed which allowed for the opportunity to push discussion and student interaction. The students challenged me with pointed questions that in turn lead to some fantastic classroom interaction. Until, at least, Covid-19 arrived and shut the campus down.

The sudden and immediate transition to online teaching did not catch me quite as off guard as it did many other instructors since I had already been using the college's learning management system (LMS) anyways. I use the LMS to organize the class and keep classroom materials such as PowerPoint slides available for the students to review. I also post important documents like the class syllabus and updated class schedule, so the students always know where we are in the class. Unfortunately, many instructors did not even know how to sign on to the LMS let alone how to load content into it.

Online school means online class meetings and we accomplished that through Zoom. Again, some instructors were fine with the technology and some required an assistant for the first few sessions to facilitate the meetings. I think all of us struggled with delivering lectures through live video. Sitting in a room by yourself and speaking into a computer screen is unsettling at first. The lack of immediate feedback makes lecturing difficult. In a live classroom session, you can see the student’s reactions to your delivered content. You know, immediately, if it is being received and understood or if you are way off base. You know when to slow down and dig deeper into a topic and when you have bored them into near neurological shutdown. It is also more natural for the students to engage with questions. There is no barrier such as the apparent physical assertion of typing into the chat box or, heaven forbid, turning on their microphone, and actually speaking. It is so bizarre to see the most vocal students become paralyzed when it comes to talking through the Internet. And even more bizarre is that I know they all use Facetime or some other video chat application every day to communicate to friends and family. But turning on their cameras and microphones during a college class lecture is way, way, outside of the comfort zone.

I provided the students with an opportunity to earn five bonus points by completing a short five-question survey. The questions were designed to provide feedback on my ability to deliver content remotely and assess my strengths and weaknesses as an “online instructor”. I encouraged them to be brutally honest and explained that I strive for continuous improvement and the only way I can achieve that is to become aware of my weaknesses. I also wanted to know if they had ideas that would help students to better receive the presented material. If they were struggling, then chances are other students were also.

Twenty-one of the twenty-five student completed the survey. And they were honest. Maybe not brutally, but they pointed out some personal weaknesses and provided positive suggestions to better facilitate the delivery of content through the LMS and video lectures. The number one suggestion was that I need to slow down the pace of my lectures. I already knew this, and it is something I work on. I speak fast and at a deliberate pace. Lecturing to students face to face helps me correct this tendency since I can read the room and see when students seem to be struggling to keep up with their notes or one will eventually ask me to return to a previous slide. This interaction does not occur when lecturing through a video feed. Sitting alone in a room speaking into a computer screen with no barrier or speedbumps to slow me down seems to exacerbate my quick delivery.

Teaching remotely also removes the ability to see which students are having a difficult time grasping the material. I need to figure out how to compensate for this. If the students do not reach out for help there is little way to know how they are doing, at least until test time. Two of the solutions I’m exploring is to break larger classes down into two or three smaller cohorts and offer meeting times for each. Much like virtual office hours where we can meet in a smaller and less intimidating group setting. This would allow more individualized conversation and allow me to see who is grasping the content and who needs some extra attention. Another tactic I’m going to try is to offer more quizzes. Instead of having one 25 point quiz that covers three weeks of lecture, offering several spontaneous “pop” quizzes worth only ten points that cover the material presented the previous week. This will provide more visibility into which students are reviewing the content presented in the online class session and those that aren’t looking at the material until cram time occurs right before the next major test.

All in all, I completely enjoyed being a “virtual” instructor and teaching an online college course. It can be done successfully when the teacher and students are devoted to making it work. I certainly like being in the classroom better, but see the appeal and benefits of remote instruction. The fact that I can effectively deliver high-quality content to students anywhere, and at any time, is intriguing. A search of online instructor jobs finds no shortage of future opportunities and after all, my resume is looking pretty good.