I’ve received official word that classes at Bemidji State University will switch over to remote learning for an undefined amount of time starting on Friday (3/20). I’d assuming this was going to happen when I talked about this stuff a few days ago, so it wasn’t a surprise. And that means all my little preparations for such an eventuality were spot on. Not that I planned to have in-person classes during a pandemic that has a decent likelihood of killing me (asthma FTW!).
With that in mind, I’m scrambling to rework my syllabi, put together online resources for instruction and for student activity, and doing my best to work with the technologies I have available to me. So far, I’ve got the following in the pocket:
- A Discord chat server for each of my classes for student questions, engagement, and discussion. My hope is that this will improve the amount of interaction between myself and students (and among themselves) so they aren’t lost in the woods. So far, I really love having a Discord chat server.
- I’ve begun setting up Zoom meetings for classes. My guess is that we’ll keep this to once a week and add more digital engagement elsewhere. For three of my classes (Rhetoric of Social Media, the Honors course on Scifi and Infrastructure, and Digital Fan Communities), this will be fairly easy because we’re already using a basic wiki for that. I’m setting up a test this week.
- Considered setting up Skype for 1-on-1 office hour conversations for students who prefer direct interaction.
This will probably only be part of what I’ll need to do for the remainder of the semester, so I’m keeping my mind open to other possibilities, whether suggested by other professors or by students themselves.1
The biggest problem now is making sure we have all the pieces in place for March 23rd. We need systems that work. We need a process to follow, and it needs to make sense. We need new assignments and different ways to complete existing assignments. And we need a way for me to provide feedback. That will be a tad difficult because I use a rubric-centric model for grading and follow a “learn through failure” model that allows for rewrites — and rewrites, in my pedagogy, require students to meet with me for 1-on-1 conferences. We can still use Skype for that, but I don’t know how helpful it will be. Then again, I might be worrying over nothing.
So, things are in full swing. We’re moving quick. It’s a bit stressful. It’s a big scary.
How are you weathering this storm? Are you a teacher moving to remote learning (K-12 or college)? Are you in a different profession do a similar switch? Feel free to comment below.
