Dublin Core
Title
Katie Clonan-Roy - Audio Reflection
Creator
Katherine Clonan-Roy
Date
5/7/2020
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Format
mp3
Language
English
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Transcription
My name is Katie Clonan-Roy and I'm an Assistant Professor within the Department of Curriculum and Foundations, in the College of Education and Human Services and I am happy to participate in this Reflection and Action Series.
Before I get into answering some of the questions that were posed. I want to tell you a little bit about what I teach within the College of Education. So, in the fall I teach graduate students. Traditionally or in the past three years that I've been at CSU, I have taught master's students in a course called Social Issues and Education. And most of those students are practicing teachers or other educational professionals who are coming to get their master's degree.
The other course that I have just started teaching in the fall is a doctoral level course. It's Introduction to Qualitative Methods and then in the spring I teach undergraduate courses. So, I teach two courses that are part of rotation one, which is an introduction to the social context of education. This is student’s first clinical experience in their teacher preparation program, and so we do feel field based work. Those students are in local schools and learning from K-12 teachers and students. And so, I just wanted to set that context, before reflecting on how some of my teaching within those different courses has changed.
Alright so first I'll reflect on the question, “What are the most challenging parts of the transition that we are all making right now?”
So, of course over the past couple of months, I have felt like my teaching as well as life, has been turned a bit upside down by COVID-19. But I also feel like, in making this transition I've learned a lot about teaching, teaching online, and kind of expanding my vision of different innovative methods that I can use to best serve my students in the classes that they're taking with me. So, I think the most challenging part of this transition, when we were starting to make this transition was first just determining what students needs, strengths, and preferences were.
First of all, for my undergraduate students that I'm teaching this spring, they come from pretty diverse backgrounds, and so I did not know which students would have access to laptop computers, to webcams, the ability to do video conferencing. I wasn't sure that folks would have high-speed internet connection, where they could participate in something like a video discussion group. And so, determining what folks needs were, and making them feel comfortable in expressing their needs to myself, as well as the faculty member that I'm co-teaching with, was tricky.
I also felt like it was hard to determine what students’ preferences would be, as it related to creating synchronous learning experiences or asynchronous learning experiences. I'm teaching two different courses this spring, and it just so happened that one group of students preferred to do more asynchronous activity and the other group of students actually requested weekly meetings, so we do check-ins every week. So, taking the time to kind of put those feelers out there and understand what those needs were, I think was crucial for having a successful past couple of weeks of the semester. And certainly, I feel really lucky to be at a community like CSU where I think faculty are so committed to accommodating student different, and making sure that we are teaching and serving our community in a very equitable way.
The other issue that was very challenging this spring in terms of transitioning to online learning, is that my two courses that I'm teaching this spring are field based courses. So that means that in the College of Education, those students are working in local schools, volunteering almost as teacher's assistants, and learning a lot from that volunteer work. From being in the classroom, seeing how teachers are teaching their students and kind of learning about how they structure lessons. And so, when we realized that we would not be holding face-to-face classes, and that K-12 schools across Ohio were transitioning to online learning, it then became very difficult to think of, okay how do we kind of remove that field-based component of the class? And how do I make sure that I'm giving students really rich opportunities to still come to the same types of understandings and conclusions, that they would have come to if they were still working in local K-12 schools?
So that's been a challenge, just trying to provide through videos, through accessing different types of media. It's been hard to give students that type of experience that they would have gotten within their field based, course work.
So, the next question that I'll reflect on is, “What are the most common needs expressed by your students?”
So, multiple students first have expressed to me that they have felt pressure, to learn multiple forms of technology really quickly. I think often times as older faculty members, and certainly I am still very young in my career, but I grew up with technology in a different way than my students did. So, I think we often times think of our student population as Millennials or as Generation Z, I believe they're a part of, and we think that they are so adept with technology. And certainly, they have a multitude of technological strengths, but I still think that they need a lot of support when transitioning to use technology, such as Zoom, such as maybe Microsoft Teams, such as the Microsoft Office suite that we have. Other things that my co-teacher has tried out this semester has been Blackboard Collaborate or VoiceThread. We've used Panopto, and so some students have communicated with us that, “okay we're having to learn all of these new technologies in your class. Now, multiply that by five for all the different classes that we're taking,” and that all of a sudden becomes such a burden to those students to have to learn the content in their courses. But also, to have to learn these new forms of technology that we are asking them to master and to use. And certainly, I think that students are going grow through this and come out on the other side, with a broader technological skill set.
For our students within the College of Education, they will now be able to use those technologies in really innovative ways with their students in the future. But still they are feeling growing pains, as they have to master these forms of technology. So, that's been a common need that I've heard from students across the two courses that I'm teaching right now.
Another challenge that I've heard from students is just navigating, kind of time constraints and finding the time to get course work done, despite really daunting responsibilities. So, I'm not teaching a doctoral level course this semester, but I'm still mentoring students and helping them with their dissertation work. And I am just in awe, of some of our doctoral students in the College of Education who are full-time teachers in K-12 schools, parents, and also doctoral students and who are managing to get work done. That's a struggle. That’s a struggle, to kind of carve out time to manage all of those responsibilities.
Similarly, even within the undergraduate courses that I'm taking right now, I have a number of parents who now are having to complete school work and try to attend our Zoom meetings, while also educating their children. And so, I just think it's really tough to manage these types of responsibilities, as well as the stress of our current moment. For example, I have one undergraduate student who works in a Women's Crisis Center and they're short-staffed, and she's being asked to come in because folks are sick and they need staff to serve this population. And I think this particular student has had a really hard time making decisions in this moment, where I am so needed in multiple directions. How do I make choices and still prioritize my own education? So that's something that I've seen across the students that I've worked with, is they're having to make those really hard types of decisions.
The last need that I wanted to touch on is just that in this moment, I have heard from a number of students that they are really struggling with mental health challenges. A lot of different psychologists have written in a multitude of outlets, that we are all kind of experiencing different forms of grief right now, as we grieve the loss of what was normal to us. And so, I think students are dealing with that in different ways. And especially when we started to see the number of cases rise in Ohio, I think the news media was so scary and it was hard to put focus on coursework, when you have such extreme concern for family members, for your own health and for community health. And so, certainly I've had lots of conversations with students have recommended students to the Counseling Center, and I hope that students are taking advantage of the resources that we have on campus. Certainly, I have reached out as much as possible to the Counseling Center, as well as to the care team to try to accommodate what students need in this very kind of precarious moment.
All right, so the next question that I will reflect on is, “What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?”
Well, this moment has certainly kind of stretched my technological repertoire as a person who has taught online. I taught my first, fully online class when I came to CSU in my first semester. I taught an online master's course, Social Issues in Education and since then I've been really growing and developing more of a skill set, but certainly I think this semester has expanded that skill set.
So first I want to talk about Panopto. I now love Panopto video lectures. I think they are so user-friendly and the way that they just plug right into Blackboard and students can play an entire video from within their Blackboard module, without having to open up a new window like we used to have to do with Tegrity.
Before I started using Panopto, I was basically using the functions on my MacBook Air. I was using photo booth to record lectures and then upload them. And now that I've made the switch to Panopto, things feel much easier and I'm able of course, to capture my PowerPoints. This semester, because we've had to switch to online learning and make courses that I typically teach face-to-face to online courses, I've pushed my own boundaries with Panopto. For example, I did not know that I could play a video from YouTube on my computer and that Panopto would actually pick up that sound and capture that video in really high quality. So, in my face-to-face courses, I typically play a lot of different pieces of media. I feature different scholars talks, or I use news coverage as a case studies to examine in small groups, and then as a big group. And so, Panopto has allowed me to still feature the same videos that I would in a face-to-face setting, and it even allows me to kind of pause the video, to point out certain things, to provide my own commentary on those videos or to pose questions that I want students to reflect upon on their own time or in assignments.
So, I have picked up a number of new skills with Panopto, that I think only make my video lectures more engaging for students. Of course, we are all now using Zoom quite frequently. And I have been really impressed with the functionality of Zoom. And I think students have felt like it's easy to get on to Zoom, into conference through Zoom. I think they have picked up the skills of raising your hand, virtually within a Zoom session or muting and unmuting their self, in order to ask questions and to participate in a polite way. And, so Zoom class sessions, I think, have gone much more smoothly, than I originally kind of anticipated. Just next week my co-teacher and myself are going to have a structured Zoom class session, where we ask students to kind of reflect on this past semester. We're going to use breakout Zoom rooms so that students can engage in small group work and then come back to the big group to reflect as a big group at the end of the session. And that is technology or those are technological options, that I didn't know about before and hadn't practiced using. And so, I think using that now, is going to inform how I teach in the fall, when I teach my online or blended format of the courses that I teach.
I did want to make a plug to a video reflection platform, that I've been using for the past a year or so, but that I'm using increasingly this semester as we have switched to online or remote teaching and learning. And that platform is Flipgrid.
So Flipgrid, is a really easy to use video platform kind of website, where students can upload just within the website, videos of themselves reflecting on topics that I posed to them. And the way I use Flipgrid is that out of my 25 students, I’ll assign five students to create video reflections that are in response to questions that I've posed. And then the rest of the class, who isn't a part of that 5 group of students will respond to the original posters for that week. And so, Flipgrid is always kind of happening in rounds in my classes where certain students are creating original responses to my questions and then other students are responding to those students.
But no matter if you are creating an original post, or just responding to someone else, you have to touch on the readings. You have to be engaging with our course themes in thoughtful ways. And I have found that structure of Flipgrid, to provide for really rich conversations that expose multiple ideas or viewpoints on an issue. And so, Flipgrid is something that I have been relying really heavily on this semester. I also feel like it allows for more personal engagement than something like a Blackboard discussion board would.
The other kind of tool or I guess strategy that I have been using this semester, since we have switched to remote teaching, is that I'm trying to kind of operate with a mantra of grading with compassion and empathy.
These are very stressful, challenging, and precarious times that we are all in. Our students at CSU are incredibly resilient and persevering through so much and so what I am trying to do is be lenient and reasonable with my expectations. I have stretched out deadlines. I've pushed deadlines back. I have really emphasized communication and that if you communicate with me that you're struggling, I will give you an extension. And so, that's been quite a shift in the policies that I typically have. Especially with my undergraduate courses, where I try to set really firm boundaries and have very clear consequences for if you are not turning in work on time.
And so this switch to remote teaching and having to grade with more compassion and empathy, has made me think about what are appropriate strategies to use in the future to still instill for my students a sense of responsibility and accountability, but to also be reasonable if students are really struggling with something.
And then, finally another kind of new teaching technique that I have been using with my students is just doing weekly check-ins, often times via Zoom. And sometimes I'll structure this just as a check-in to see what I could be doing to improve the course, or sometimes I'll use these check-ins to go over particular parts of assignments or to show students example excitements from previous years to help them with upcoming work.
And I feel like just having those touch points every week or every other week with students has been really helpful to kind of keep them on track, and to make them feel connected to me, and to allow them to know that I am here for them with whatever they might need as they try to get through this pretty difficult semester. And I have seen benefits from these weekly check-ins, in terms of students staying on track, students communicating with me in a more regular manner. And so, I am thinking that may be not weekly but perhaps bi-weekly or once month in the future when I'm teaching all online courses to use those types of check-ins over Zoom.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
So one thing that I have spent a lot of time thinking about is my own kind of social positionality, and my teaching persona, and how I might best reach and connect with students. There have been so many studies that have been conducted about experiences of teaching and learning in higher education that show us that students perceptions of faculty members depend on faculty members gender, their age, their appearance, their race/ethnicity, their socioeconomic status etc. Being aware of that research I often think about how as a younger faculty member, as a junior scholar, as a woman, how students understand me. I think because I am aware that students might read younger female faculty members as less serious, I think I have been in the past couple of years a bit more firm in my policies. and not, I haven't really been lenient because I want to instill a sense with my students that I am serious and that my policies hold and there's no getting around them.
Again, because I've had to kind of change course towards a mantra of grading and supporting students with a lot of compassion and empathy this semester, this has made me rethink how I am evaluating this research about gender, and age, and teachers’ experiences within higher education, and it's making me think about how I can, in meaningful ways, kind of communicate responsibility and accountability to my students and communicate with them that I am firm in my policies, but also care and be empathetic and make students feel aware that I am willing to work with them when they have serious life circumstances that come up.
I know that is more of a complex or research-based reflection on my own identity, but it's something that I have kind of been thinking about a lot as I continue to grow as a scholar. It’s kind of what my own teaching persona is and how that aligns with kind of my perceptions of research that is out there about how students perceive faculty members based on their identities and how they perceive their efficacy.
The other insight that I feel like I have gained this semester and that I've spent a good bit of time thinking about is kind of the power of connecting course content to global events and to diverse issues of inequity. Tthe courses that I teach within the College of Education have a heavy focus on social justice content and social science research that looks at the impacts of different educational policies or reforms on the ability to promote social justice and equity for all students. For a lot of my undergraduate students this is perhaps the first time in my courses that they are starting to think about these different dimensions of equity issues within education. This semester I saw the power of connecting equity issues that we were talking about as they related to schools to more glow equity issues that were coming up as the coronavirus situation evolved. For example, in my course we were talking a lot about inequity and stereotypes and how stereotypes of minority students in K-12 schools impact their learning experiences and their relationships with their teachers and with their peers. Oftentimes, those stereotypes come into play in very negative ways and we were able to transition having that conversation about stereotypes into stereotypes bias against Asian Americans and Asians in this current moment and how problematic certain acts of discrimination and oppression were coming out of the deployment of stereotypes against that community during the coronavirus.
Students were very thoughtful and I think kind of excited to make these connections and to be able to critique these forms of inequity and bias across the fields of education and kind of global health. To me that's really exciting because what that shows me is that students are being able to exercise social justice literacy in different ways. So as I move forward in teaching about this type of content in the future I will try to be more thoughtful about how I kind of connect the dots of different forms of social inequity and how I support students and being able to critique that and to best serve the student populations that they will eventually work with as teachers.
How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
I've thought about this a lot; especially because we don't know what our fall will like. It's hard to know what the summer will look like in terms of the state of the corona virus and how it's impacting our state and our nation and, of course, the global impact. and So, all of those question marks have made me think a lot about how would I teach depending on different variables.
So, when I think about doctoral education and I have a couple of different thoughts. One of my colleagues in my department who is teaching a doctoral level course right now has said that her doctoral students have really appreciated, actually, video lectures via Panopto or having recordings of Zoom lectures that she has given, because that then allows those students to go back to that content and repeat or review what she has said about a particular piece of content rather than having to email the professor and ask follow-up questions to make sure they master it or having to ask additional questions the next class session when they see you. (and) So, that has been interesting to me and made me think about how I might use something like recorded Zoom lectures or Panopto video lectures to be able to provide content to doctoral students, so that they can go back to it when they're preparing for something like their comprehensive exam or some of their core examinations. Related to that, the other thing that I have thought a little bit about, as it relates to doctoral education, is how I can create more of a flipped classroom learning environment, especially within my doctoral level course Introduction to Qualitative Methods.
In EDU 807, which is Intro to Qualitative Methods in the College of Education, I have a lot of content to pack into one semester and this past semester, this past fall, was the first time I taught it and it I felt like I was really rushing through things at points. So, I always wish I had more time to explain different nuances and the content that I was teaching. and So this semester online has made me think about the fall and wonder if it is possible to move some of that content into Panopto video lectures, so that students are expected to review that lecture and then when they come to class with that knowledge we are able to do more of a hands-on activity, related to course content that will allow them to practice the skills that I have given them through the Panopto video lecture that I've provided. So, hopefully that will make us all within that course, my students and myself, feel like we have a little bit more room to breathe and to process some of the content that we're having to engage with.
In terms of the master students that I teach, again I teach EDB 604 which is Social Issues in Education to master students and I would like to redesign that course which I typically teach in an online or hybrid manner. I would like to transform that so that students who are taking those online or hybrid courses feel more connected to myself and into their classmates, so they feel like learning has kind of a face-to-face feel, although it's happening online. So, I'm going be considering a lot of different things as I prepare to teach EDB 604 in the future. Perhaps I'll have things like Zoom check-ins. Perhaps I'll ask students to create their own types of video lectures on special topics that they're educating each other. Perhaps I'll use the platform, Flipgrid, even more, so that students are feeling like they're talking to their peers and not just talking on a faceless discussion board on Blackboard. Again, I really like instilling the sense of face-to-face connection into online courses and I feel like this semester with remote teaching, I've considered a new kind of world of possibilities of how EDB 604 could look in the future.
I said previously in my reflections that a lot of my master's students who take this course with me are often times doing student teaching through a specialized program or their paraprofessionals or they're already full-time teachers coming in to get their master's degree. Some folks are coming from other fields looking to make a career change, but a lot of folks are going to be full-time teachers when they finish their program at CSU. and So, I'm always trying to create assignments that make students feel like I am pushing them further along within their professional development and allowing them to develop tools that they might use, in the future, in their classrooms.
So, as I think about the fall in particular and wonder if we'll be in a face-to-face environment in Fall 2020 or if teachers in K-12 schools will actually be in a face-to-face environment, I've thought about what technological resources could my students be creating that would help them in their classrooms, in the future. Right? Teachers are increasingly asked to master different forms of technology and so I'm thinking about what are types of final assignments or major assignments that I could use in the course that would allow students to engage in content, the same content that I've always taught but that product of those assignments would be something technological. Perhaps a Google classroom tool that they could use with their students in the future, independent of what K-12 schooling looks like for the next academic year between Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. So, that's something that is on my mind. Connecting, kind of, our circumstances with what students are doing in the classroom at CSU and how that will impact their K-12 students in the future.
Finally, I want to reflect just a little bit on the undergraduate courses that I teach and how my experience this semester might influence my face-to-face teaching in the future. So, the two courses that I teach within the CREATE program, which again, are field based courses. They’re the first clinical rotation within our students’ teacher preparation program. I often times feel like I am jam-packed with content. So not only do I have to teach the content in this course, but I also have to carve out time for students to engage in field work. So, they're volunteering in classrooms and they also have to have time to reflect with me and with their classmates on what they are learning through their field work, in K-12 classrooms. So, that's a lot to jam-pack in. That's field work time, reflection on the fieldwork and then the actual content that I have to teach that is very social justice focused nature. and So I always feel like I am trying to catch up. I'm trying to pack more in and because I feel like I have mastered this repertoire of online tools, again, I'm thinking more about how I could try to instill more of a flipped classroom type learning environment where my students are doing a good bit of learning from me via Panopto video lectures or recorded Zoom sessions online. Then when they meet with me we're putting that to practice and relating it to what they're seeing in the field, so that we have more time for reflection and analysis of and connecting it to what they're seeing within the local schools that they're volunteering in.
So, although this semester has been full of some growing pains and stress as we've made this transition, I do feel like I've learned a lot about different teaching tools that I could use in online environments, hybrid environments, but also face-to-face environments and I probably would not have been stretched in this way had it not been for the circumstances that we find ourselves in now.
So, that's it! Thanks for giving me this opportunity to reflect and have a great rest of your semester.
Before I get into answering some of the questions that were posed. I want to tell you a little bit about what I teach within the College of Education. So, in the fall I teach graduate students. Traditionally or in the past three years that I've been at CSU, I have taught master's students in a course called Social Issues and Education. And most of those students are practicing teachers or other educational professionals who are coming to get their master's degree.
The other course that I have just started teaching in the fall is a doctoral level course. It's Introduction to Qualitative Methods and then in the spring I teach undergraduate courses. So, I teach two courses that are part of rotation one, which is an introduction to the social context of education. This is student’s first clinical experience in their teacher preparation program, and so we do feel field based work. Those students are in local schools and learning from K-12 teachers and students. And so, I just wanted to set that context, before reflecting on how some of my teaching within those different courses has changed.
Alright so first I'll reflect on the question, “What are the most challenging parts of the transition that we are all making right now?”
So, of course over the past couple of months, I have felt like my teaching as well as life, has been turned a bit upside down by COVID-19. But I also feel like, in making this transition I've learned a lot about teaching, teaching online, and kind of expanding my vision of different innovative methods that I can use to best serve my students in the classes that they're taking with me. So, I think the most challenging part of this transition, when we were starting to make this transition was first just determining what students needs, strengths, and preferences were.
First of all, for my undergraduate students that I'm teaching this spring, they come from pretty diverse backgrounds, and so I did not know which students would have access to laptop computers, to webcams, the ability to do video conferencing. I wasn't sure that folks would have high-speed internet connection, where they could participate in something like a video discussion group. And so, determining what folks needs were, and making them feel comfortable in expressing their needs to myself, as well as the faculty member that I'm co-teaching with, was tricky.
I also felt like it was hard to determine what students’ preferences would be, as it related to creating synchronous learning experiences or asynchronous learning experiences. I'm teaching two different courses this spring, and it just so happened that one group of students preferred to do more asynchronous activity and the other group of students actually requested weekly meetings, so we do check-ins every week. So, taking the time to kind of put those feelers out there and understand what those needs were, I think was crucial for having a successful past couple of weeks of the semester. And certainly, I feel really lucky to be at a community like CSU where I think faculty are so committed to accommodating student different, and making sure that we are teaching and serving our community in a very equitable way.
The other issue that was very challenging this spring in terms of transitioning to online learning, is that my two courses that I'm teaching this spring are field based courses. So that means that in the College of Education, those students are working in local schools, volunteering almost as teacher's assistants, and learning a lot from that volunteer work. From being in the classroom, seeing how teachers are teaching their students and kind of learning about how they structure lessons. And so, when we realized that we would not be holding face-to-face classes, and that K-12 schools across Ohio were transitioning to online learning, it then became very difficult to think of, okay how do we kind of remove that field-based component of the class? And how do I make sure that I'm giving students really rich opportunities to still come to the same types of understandings and conclusions, that they would have come to if they were still working in local K-12 schools?
So that's been a challenge, just trying to provide through videos, through accessing different types of media. It's been hard to give students that type of experience that they would have gotten within their field based, course work.
So, the next question that I'll reflect on is, “What are the most common needs expressed by your students?”
So, multiple students first have expressed to me that they have felt pressure, to learn multiple forms of technology really quickly. I think often times as older faculty members, and certainly I am still very young in my career, but I grew up with technology in a different way than my students did. So, I think we often times think of our student population as Millennials or as Generation Z, I believe they're a part of, and we think that they are so adept with technology. And certainly, they have a multitude of technological strengths, but I still think that they need a lot of support when transitioning to use technology, such as Zoom, such as maybe Microsoft Teams, such as the Microsoft Office suite that we have. Other things that my co-teacher has tried out this semester has been Blackboard Collaborate or VoiceThread. We've used Panopto, and so some students have communicated with us that, “okay we're having to learn all of these new technologies in your class. Now, multiply that by five for all the different classes that we're taking,” and that all of a sudden becomes such a burden to those students to have to learn the content in their courses. But also, to have to learn these new forms of technology that we are asking them to master and to use. And certainly, I think that students are going grow through this and come out on the other side, with a broader technological skill set.
For our students within the College of Education, they will now be able to use those technologies in really innovative ways with their students in the future. But still they are feeling growing pains, as they have to master these forms of technology. So, that's been a common need that I've heard from students across the two courses that I'm teaching right now.
Another challenge that I've heard from students is just navigating, kind of time constraints and finding the time to get course work done, despite really daunting responsibilities. So, I'm not teaching a doctoral level course this semester, but I'm still mentoring students and helping them with their dissertation work. And I am just in awe, of some of our doctoral students in the College of Education who are full-time teachers in K-12 schools, parents, and also doctoral students and who are managing to get work done. That's a struggle. That’s a struggle, to kind of carve out time to manage all of those responsibilities.
Similarly, even within the undergraduate courses that I'm taking right now, I have a number of parents who now are having to complete school work and try to attend our Zoom meetings, while also educating their children. And so, I just think it's really tough to manage these types of responsibilities, as well as the stress of our current moment. For example, I have one undergraduate student who works in a Women's Crisis Center and they're short-staffed, and she's being asked to come in because folks are sick and they need staff to serve this population. And I think this particular student has had a really hard time making decisions in this moment, where I am so needed in multiple directions. How do I make choices and still prioritize my own education? So that's something that I've seen across the students that I've worked with, is they're having to make those really hard types of decisions.
The last need that I wanted to touch on is just that in this moment, I have heard from a number of students that they are really struggling with mental health challenges. A lot of different psychologists have written in a multitude of outlets, that we are all kind of experiencing different forms of grief right now, as we grieve the loss of what was normal to us. And so, I think students are dealing with that in different ways. And especially when we started to see the number of cases rise in Ohio, I think the news media was so scary and it was hard to put focus on coursework, when you have such extreme concern for family members, for your own health and for community health. And so, certainly I've had lots of conversations with students have recommended students to the Counseling Center, and I hope that students are taking advantage of the resources that we have on campus. Certainly, I have reached out as much as possible to the Counseling Center, as well as to the care team to try to accommodate what students need in this very kind of precarious moment.
All right, so the next question that I will reflect on is, “What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?”
Well, this moment has certainly kind of stretched my technological repertoire as a person who has taught online. I taught my first, fully online class when I came to CSU in my first semester. I taught an online master's course, Social Issues in Education and since then I've been really growing and developing more of a skill set, but certainly I think this semester has expanded that skill set.
So first I want to talk about Panopto. I now love Panopto video lectures. I think they are so user-friendly and the way that they just plug right into Blackboard and students can play an entire video from within their Blackboard module, without having to open up a new window like we used to have to do with Tegrity.
Before I started using Panopto, I was basically using the functions on my MacBook Air. I was using photo booth to record lectures and then upload them. And now that I've made the switch to Panopto, things feel much easier and I'm able of course, to capture my PowerPoints. This semester, because we've had to switch to online learning and make courses that I typically teach face-to-face to online courses, I've pushed my own boundaries with Panopto. For example, I did not know that I could play a video from YouTube on my computer and that Panopto would actually pick up that sound and capture that video in really high quality. So, in my face-to-face courses, I typically play a lot of different pieces of media. I feature different scholars talks, or I use news coverage as a case studies to examine in small groups, and then as a big group. And so, Panopto has allowed me to still feature the same videos that I would in a face-to-face setting, and it even allows me to kind of pause the video, to point out certain things, to provide my own commentary on those videos or to pose questions that I want students to reflect upon on their own time or in assignments.
So, I have picked up a number of new skills with Panopto, that I think only make my video lectures more engaging for students. Of course, we are all now using Zoom quite frequently. And I have been really impressed with the functionality of Zoom. And I think students have felt like it's easy to get on to Zoom, into conference through Zoom. I think they have picked up the skills of raising your hand, virtually within a Zoom session or muting and unmuting their self, in order to ask questions and to participate in a polite way. And, so Zoom class sessions, I think, have gone much more smoothly, than I originally kind of anticipated. Just next week my co-teacher and myself are going to have a structured Zoom class session, where we ask students to kind of reflect on this past semester. We're going to use breakout Zoom rooms so that students can engage in small group work and then come back to the big group to reflect as a big group at the end of the session. And that is technology or those are technological options, that I didn't know about before and hadn't practiced using. And so, I think using that now, is going to inform how I teach in the fall, when I teach my online or blended format of the courses that I teach.
I did want to make a plug to a video reflection platform, that I've been using for the past a year or so, but that I'm using increasingly this semester as we have switched to online or remote teaching and learning. And that platform is Flipgrid.
So Flipgrid, is a really easy to use video platform kind of website, where students can upload just within the website, videos of themselves reflecting on topics that I posed to them. And the way I use Flipgrid is that out of my 25 students, I’ll assign five students to create video reflections that are in response to questions that I've posed. And then the rest of the class, who isn't a part of that 5 group of students will respond to the original posters for that week. And so, Flipgrid is always kind of happening in rounds in my classes where certain students are creating original responses to my questions and then other students are responding to those students.
But no matter if you are creating an original post, or just responding to someone else, you have to touch on the readings. You have to be engaging with our course themes in thoughtful ways. And I have found that structure of Flipgrid, to provide for really rich conversations that expose multiple ideas or viewpoints on an issue. And so, Flipgrid is something that I have been relying really heavily on this semester. I also feel like it allows for more personal engagement than something like a Blackboard discussion board would.
The other kind of tool or I guess strategy that I have been using this semester, since we have switched to remote teaching, is that I'm trying to kind of operate with a mantra of grading with compassion and empathy.
These are very stressful, challenging, and precarious times that we are all in. Our students at CSU are incredibly resilient and persevering through so much and so what I am trying to do is be lenient and reasonable with my expectations. I have stretched out deadlines. I've pushed deadlines back. I have really emphasized communication and that if you communicate with me that you're struggling, I will give you an extension. And so, that's been quite a shift in the policies that I typically have. Especially with my undergraduate courses, where I try to set really firm boundaries and have very clear consequences for if you are not turning in work on time.
And so this switch to remote teaching and having to grade with more compassion and empathy, has made me think about what are appropriate strategies to use in the future to still instill for my students a sense of responsibility and accountability, but to also be reasonable if students are really struggling with something.
And then, finally another kind of new teaching technique that I have been using with my students is just doing weekly check-ins, often times via Zoom. And sometimes I'll structure this just as a check-in to see what I could be doing to improve the course, or sometimes I'll use these check-ins to go over particular parts of assignments or to show students example excitements from previous years to help them with upcoming work.
And I feel like just having those touch points every week or every other week with students has been really helpful to kind of keep them on track, and to make them feel connected to me, and to allow them to know that I am here for them with whatever they might need as they try to get through this pretty difficult semester. And I have seen benefits from these weekly check-ins, in terms of students staying on track, students communicating with me in a more regular manner. And so, I am thinking that may be not weekly but perhaps bi-weekly or once month in the future when I'm teaching all online courses to use those types of check-ins over Zoom.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
So one thing that I have spent a lot of time thinking about is my own kind of social positionality, and my teaching persona, and how I might best reach and connect with students. There have been so many studies that have been conducted about experiences of teaching and learning in higher education that show us that students perceptions of faculty members depend on faculty members gender, their age, their appearance, their race/ethnicity, their socioeconomic status etc. Being aware of that research I often think about how as a younger faculty member, as a junior scholar, as a woman, how students understand me. I think because I am aware that students might read younger female faculty members as less serious, I think I have been in the past couple of years a bit more firm in my policies. and not, I haven't really been lenient because I want to instill a sense with my students that I am serious and that my policies hold and there's no getting around them.
Again, because I've had to kind of change course towards a mantra of grading and supporting students with a lot of compassion and empathy this semester, this has made me rethink how I am evaluating this research about gender, and age, and teachers’ experiences within higher education, and it's making me think about how I can, in meaningful ways, kind of communicate responsibility and accountability to my students and communicate with them that I am firm in my policies, but also care and be empathetic and make students feel aware that I am willing to work with them when they have serious life circumstances that come up.
I know that is more of a complex or research-based reflection on my own identity, but it's something that I have kind of been thinking about a lot as I continue to grow as a scholar. It’s kind of what my own teaching persona is and how that aligns with kind of my perceptions of research that is out there about how students perceive faculty members based on their identities and how they perceive their efficacy.
The other insight that I feel like I have gained this semester and that I've spent a good bit of time thinking about is kind of the power of connecting course content to global events and to diverse issues of inequity. Tthe courses that I teach within the College of Education have a heavy focus on social justice content and social science research that looks at the impacts of different educational policies or reforms on the ability to promote social justice and equity for all students. For a lot of my undergraduate students this is perhaps the first time in my courses that they are starting to think about these different dimensions of equity issues within education. This semester I saw the power of connecting equity issues that we were talking about as they related to schools to more glow equity issues that were coming up as the coronavirus situation evolved. For example, in my course we were talking a lot about inequity and stereotypes and how stereotypes of minority students in K-12 schools impact their learning experiences and their relationships with their teachers and with their peers. Oftentimes, those stereotypes come into play in very negative ways and we were able to transition having that conversation about stereotypes into stereotypes bias against Asian Americans and Asians in this current moment and how problematic certain acts of discrimination and oppression were coming out of the deployment of stereotypes against that community during the coronavirus.
Students were very thoughtful and I think kind of excited to make these connections and to be able to critique these forms of inequity and bias across the fields of education and kind of global health. To me that's really exciting because what that shows me is that students are being able to exercise social justice literacy in different ways. So as I move forward in teaching about this type of content in the future I will try to be more thoughtful about how I kind of connect the dots of different forms of social inequity and how I support students and being able to critique that and to best serve the student populations that they will eventually work with as teachers.
How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
I've thought about this a lot; especially because we don't know what our fall will like. It's hard to know what the summer will look like in terms of the state of the corona virus and how it's impacting our state and our nation and, of course, the global impact. and So, all of those question marks have made me think a lot about how would I teach depending on different variables.
So, when I think about doctoral education and I have a couple of different thoughts. One of my colleagues in my department who is teaching a doctoral level course right now has said that her doctoral students have really appreciated, actually, video lectures via Panopto or having recordings of Zoom lectures that she has given, because that then allows those students to go back to that content and repeat or review what she has said about a particular piece of content rather than having to email the professor and ask follow-up questions to make sure they master it or having to ask additional questions the next class session when they see you. (and) So, that has been interesting to me and made me think about how I might use something like recorded Zoom lectures or Panopto video lectures to be able to provide content to doctoral students, so that they can go back to it when they're preparing for something like their comprehensive exam or some of their core examinations. Related to that, the other thing that I have thought a little bit about, as it relates to doctoral education, is how I can create more of a flipped classroom learning environment, especially within my doctoral level course Introduction to Qualitative Methods.
In EDU 807, which is Intro to Qualitative Methods in the College of Education, I have a lot of content to pack into one semester and this past semester, this past fall, was the first time I taught it and it I felt like I was really rushing through things at points. So, I always wish I had more time to explain different nuances and the content that I was teaching. and So this semester online has made me think about the fall and wonder if it is possible to move some of that content into Panopto video lectures, so that students are expected to review that lecture and then when they come to class with that knowledge we are able to do more of a hands-on activity, related to course content that will allow them to practice the skills that I have given them through the Panopto video lecture that I've provided. So, hopefully that will make us all within that course, my students and myself, feel like we have a little bit more room to breathe and to process some of the content that we're having to engage with.
In terms of the master students that I teach, again I teach EDB 604 which is Social Issues in Education to master students and I would like to redesign that course which I typically teach in an online or hybrid manner. I would like to transform that so that students who are taking those online or hybrid courses feel more connected to myself and into their classmates, so they feel like learning has kind of a face-to-face feel, although it's happening online. So, I'm going be considering a lot of different things as I prepare to teach EDB 604 in the future. Perhaps I'll have things like Zoom check-ins. Perhaps I'll ask students to create their own types of video lectures on special topics that they're educating each other. Perhaps I'll use the platform, Flipgrid, even more, so that students are feeling like they're talking to their peers and not just talking on a faceless discussion board on Blackboard. Again, I really like instilling the sense of face-to-face connection into online courses and I feel like this semester with remote teaching, I've considered a new kind of world of possibilities of how EDB 604 could look in the future.
I said previously in my reflections that a lot of my master's students who take this course with me are often times doing student teaching through a specialized program or their paraprofessionals or they're already full-time teachers coming in to get their master's degree. Some folks are coming from other fields looking to make a career change, but a lot of folks are going to be full-time teachers when they finish their program at CSU. and So, I'm always trying to create assignments that make students feel like I am pushing them further along within their professional development and allowing them to develop tools that they might use, in the future, in their classrooms.
So, as I think about the fall in particular and wonder if we'll be in a face-to-face environment in Fall 2020 or if teachers in K-12 schools will actually be in a face-to-face environment, I've thought about what technological resources could my students be creating that would help them in their classrooms, in the future. Right? Teachers are increasingly asked to master different forms of technology and so I'm thinking about what are types of final assignments or major assignments that I could use in the course that would allow students to engage in content, the same content that I've always taught but that product of those assignments would be something technological. Perhaps a Google classroom tool that they could use with their students in the future, independent of what K-12 schooling looks like for the next academic year between Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. So, that's something that is on my mind. Connecting, kind of, our circumstances with what students are doing in the classroom at CSU and how that will impact their K-12 students in the future.
Finally, I want to reflect just a little bit on the undergraduate courses that I teach and how my experience this semester might influence my face-to-face teaching in the future. So, the two courses that I teach within the CREATE program, which again, are field based courses. They’re the first clinical rotation within our students’ teacher preparation program. I often times feel like I am jam-packed with content. So not only do I have to teach the content in this course, but I also have to carve out time for students to engage in field work. So, they're volunteering in classrooms and they also have to have time to reflect with me and with their classmates on what they are learning through their field work, in K-12 classrooms. So, that's a lot to jam-pack in. That's field work time, reflection on the fieldwork and then the actual content that I have to teach that is very social justice focused nature. and So I always feel like I am trying to catch up. I'm trying to pack more in and because I feel like I have mastered this repertoire of online tools, again, I'm thinking more about how I could try to instill more of a flipped classroom type learning environment where my students are doing a good bit of learning from me via Panopto video lectures or recorded Zoom sessions online. Then when they meet with me we're putting that to practice and relating it to what they're seeing in the field, so that we have more time for reflection and analysis of and connecting it to what they're seeing within the local schools that they're volunteering in.
So, although this semester has been full of some growing pains and stress as we've made this transition, I do feel like I've learned a lot about different teaching tools that I could use in online environments, hybrid environments, but also face-to-face environments and I probably would not have been stretched in this way had it not been for the circumstances that we find ourselves in now.
So, that's it! Thanks for giving me this opportunity to reflect and have a great rest of your semester.
Original Format
Audio recording
Duration
29 minutes, 32 seconds