So Your University is Going Online...

Wednesday, one week ago, I gave my last in-person lecture of the term. By Thursday, news about the COVID-19 virus began to infiltrate every conversation. By Friday, classes were cancelled. By Sunday, all instructors were directed to take all classes online. Today was my first online class.

I was ever-so-slightly prepared to make this move, mostly thanks to the practical and humane advice from Academic Twitter (especially Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer), James Gifford (@GiffordJames), and Andrea Kaston Tange (@aktange). I used a survey Tange prepared as a model to gauge my students’ access to necessary tools/technology, preferred options, and concerns related both to our course and in general. I sent it out Thursday night, and had responses from about three-quarters of the class in just a few hours. I made the responses anonymous to encourage frankness.

For the possible online options, students were willing to try a range of approaches:

By far, the students were most interested in recorded video lectures that they could access anytime, as well as posted lecture notes. Some were also interested in a real-time chat or conference, but less interested in group activities like shared Google documents or small-group chats. So, keeping in mind Gifford’s advice to keep it simple and to offer asynchronous options that do not demand specific time commitments from students in the middle of significant upheaval, I’m moving to upload video lectures and notes, and offering an optional group chat during our “normal” class time. This can all be done using the UofA’s CMS (eClass), which I was already using as the primary place to distribute texts, assignments, and other resources.

And that’s what I did today. I enjoyed being able to present something like a real lecture, and the recording of it was easy enough. I’m not a regular video maker, though, and I didn’t anticipate the effort it would take to get it edited and compressed small enough that eClass could handle it. As well, my computer is pretty old, and I don’t have specialized recording equipment (cameras, microphones, etc.). It’s a big demand on the old MacBook, and the limitations were frustrating. I managed to get it posted right at class time, along with the written lecture, though I’d like to get it up earlier in the day. A handful of students participated in the chat, which was disappointing in terms of numbers, but was helpful just to check in and converse.

I’m going to try this method a few more times and re-assess. I’m also grading and offering feedback on assignments through marked-up pdfs and email, and I will be collecting final projects by email. As this is a first-year English course, the amount of writing and need for feedback is heavy, and unfortunately the end of term is when this work is at its most demanding already.

In terms of communication, I’m sending out regular email updates (with recurrent, numbered subject lines) to the whole class, using succinct numbered lists to update them on university-wide decisions, point out changes and additions to our class website, share key information resources from the provincial and federal governments, and to offer encouragement. I - and they - just need something with the semblance of order.

Coincidentally, this course has focused on “the news” as a genre and media form, tracing its history through successive periods of communication. This week, we’ve moved on to broadcast news and we’ll be diving into social media and misinformation heavily in the coming classes. I didn’t intend it to get so real, but the rapidly evolving pandemic response is certainly selling the value of the material.

This is an unprecedented time for the modern university, itself just one crack in the shattering face of neoliberal austerity policies, precarious labour conditions, weakening social safety nets, and the uneven weight of care borne by women. I research primary texts from the 1930s, including welfare and surveillance archives. There are many overlaps and many of the same issues laid bare in the university’s response - I hope to focus in on some of these over the next few weeks.