Article by Victoria Hock (’23)
As we all know, many changes have been brought to Houghton’s campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, not only are some students learning remotely, but some professors are teaching remotely.
Professor of Religion Kristina LaCelle Peterson discussed that she misses “being in a room with actual human beings,” and she also added that she’s “grateful for technology that allows us some amount of interaction, but obviously it’s not the same.” As for how she’s changed up her classes to an online format, she mentioned that she has structured her courses with “weekly independent learning opportunities,” which means that “each course is a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning.” She noted that this “puts some of the responsibility for learning back into the hands of students. This also gives her the chance to “hear a little of what’s going on in each student’s thinking,” which she added is “particularly helpful in big classes.”
Professors Heidi and John Giannini expressed similar sentiments. Professor of Philosophy Heidi Giannini brought up some of the positives to teaching remotely. “In some ways, I think working remotely has made my job easier than many of my colleagues’: I don’t have to worry about delivering the same course in as many formats at once, I don’t lose class time to sanitization procedures, and I can more readily have my students engage in small group work because I don’t have to worry about maintaining social distance.”
However, she also added that there are a few “significant drawbacks” to being completely online too. Some of the drawbacks that she mentioned include having “less of a personal connection with my students. I worry that when I return to campus, I won’t recognize many of the students I’ve taught this semester because they appear only in little boxes on my screen, a few at a time, and many of them masked.” She also added that the “online dynamic is different from what you have in person,” specifically discussing that it is much easier to start a conversation during in-person classes than online. Professor Giannini also added that students can sometimes be “more frequently distracted” when they are participating in a Zoom class session, and that they can also “seem more hesitant to reach out and ask for help” when a professor is only accessible online.
Professor of Philosophy John Giannini discussed that there are both well-known and less common differences between teaching online and in-person. “Some of the differences in online teaching are pretty obvious,” he mentioned, bringing up differences such as not being able to give quizzes on paper, that everyone is on computers for the whole class, and that technical issues can sometimes hinder communication. As for some of the more subtle differences, he explained they were things he wasn’t able to foresee. For example, he mentioned that a lot of communication goes on surrounding class time between him and his students, explaining that he chats with students, people ask him “questions that wouldn’t fit in class,” and he compliments people on their work. He then added that “while teaching online a lot of that communication just doesn’t happen.” Professor Giannini has also found “many other subtle ways in which being in a room is different from communicating via an online lobby,” mentioning things like “decreased ability to read body language, or much less fluidity in conversational back-and-forth.” He then added that “Even if you can technically do a lot of the same things online as in person they do not feel the same–and that matters.”
Overall, much like online learning, online teaching appears to have benefits, such as not losing class time to sanitization procedures and more readily being able to have students engage in small group activities, and drawbacks, such as a higher likelihood of distraction and technical issues sometimes coming up. Online professors have been working their hardest to innovate and create an engaging, beneficial class. Given the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching may continue, so professors may need to continue innovating, creating an online learning environment that students can benefit and learn from.
Do you have any professors teaching remotely? How have they handled it? Well? Comment below or get in touch with us via Instagram, Twitter, or email (star@houghton.edu)!