By the Numb3rs Fall 2020 - COVID - 19

COVID - 19

With COVID – 19 being a prominent factor in everyday life we have asked the faculty and students what opportunities and challenges they faced while in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. The questions are as follows:

  1. What surprises did you find when working online/remotely?
  2. What did you like when working online or remotely?
  3. What were your biggest challenges with working online/remotely?

Faculty

Jonathan Rubin

  1. I am surprised that I don’t miss most of the stuff from my office.  But on the downside, I often find myself not having left the house or taken more than 2000 steps by 6 PM.
  2. I really like some of the features on Zoom.  The polls and breakout rooms are great for teaching.  And the annotation feature is quite useful for group research discussions.
  3.  It is frustrating not being able to see some students’ faces during class and not having a built-in time when I can talk to them one-on-one.

William Layton

  1. I was initially surprised at how sensitive effective teaching is to the details of how it's done. There are obvious ones, like a high quality camera and microphone but even tiny details like what size nib is used on one’s pen or where the lights and windows in the room are located has a big impact on how much gets through the screen.

Of course, the biggest surprise is that it takes 3x the time.

  1. What I really like is when a class has the feeling like they are in my office sitting next to me and we are working through a theory or problem together. To get there takes a lot of effort to involve the students as the natural state seems to be for them to turn off their camera, only half listen because the videos can always be watched later.
  2. The biggest challenge is to assess the learning of the students and adjust the speed and depth of topics. This is because "teaching" is not about "exposure" (putting stuff on the board) but occurs only when students learn, understand, and retain. In a classroom you get feedback  from their faces and you can ask them direct questions like "What is the next step?" and if they don't know follow up with "What is the last step you completely understand?" and return there.  I've evolved ways to do this, consistent with what cognitive science tells us about how we learn, remember and forget, by giving micro-quizzes in class. Even so it is still a continuing struggle.

Juan Manfredi

Armin Schikorra

  1. Getting the students to talk to each other, worked surprisingly well (I think): I chose to gently force the students via 'participation credit' to meet once a week remotely in small study groups to work on homework problems, and that seems to work quite well.
  2. Teaching with an iPad means I can use pictures and animations seamlessly during my lecture in class.
  3. Schools being closed/fully virtual. Doing our full-time jobs and homeschooling in parallel is exhausting.

Carl Wang-Erickson

  1. Some things are pretty much the same -- for example, I have always been working on joint research projects, but never with someone with whom I could regularly meet locally. I think I may have been an early adopter of Zoom, introducing it to a few collaborators well before the pandemic. 
  2.  I enjoyed the opportunity to leverage some of the potential upsides of virtual instruction. For example, I am asking students to do regular peer reviews of each other’s work, and then they have a chance to talk it over in Zoom breakout rooms. 
  3. The main challenge was to get used to Canvas, which I was completely new to, and deploy it effectively. It took some start-up work, but with that invested, things are going smoothly. The teaching center's basic Canvas training sessions were rather useful for this. 

Bard Ermentrout

  1. Not too many - I've had to do this in the past for a series of lectures that I was supposed to give but got sick, so I gave them remotely. It is much easier when you have an iPad with a "pencil" than a stylus alone which was really bad.
  2. Best thing by far (and one I could get used to) was not having to commute - 80 minutes a day that was usually wasted in the car. Of course, not using the car meant that the battery drained at least twice, and I had to call triple A to get it started.   The great thing about not commuting is that I was able to take better care of my vegetable garden; it was the most productive it has been in years! 
  3. Remembering to hit the record button.

Michael Neilan

Jeffrey Wheeler

  1. I have a tablet that I often use in class: I would plug it into the classroom's projector, write on the tablet, display the screen, then later convert the notes to a pdf and post them on Blackboard.  Thus, when classes went remote in the spring, I felt I was well prepared. In my spring class, I did what I normally do but with Zoom replacing the classroom projector.  At the departmental end of the year meeting we had a presentation from the University Center for Teaching and Learning and the speaker pointed out that students overwhelmingly commented in their surveys that they appreciated face time. I had been failing to do this and did not account for the human need for social contact, especially during a quarantine.  I now start every class with a few minutes of interaction with my camera on.
  2. Not commuting into Oakland.  There is no close second.
  3. Exams have been a challenge, especially with students uploading an entire final exam to a tutoring service.  Since we are virtual, connecting with students is difficult.  We do not have the opportunity to chat after class, during a chance passing while on campus, or their stopping by my office.  I can still interact with students, but that tends to only happen with the ones I already know well.  My biggest challenge working remotely, though, is not work related.  I have three children who are also learning remotely and keeping my 12- and 9-year-old sons engaged in their schoolwork is a constant struggle.  In the beginning, there were also child or pet-induced interruptions of class.

Gregory Constantine

  1. No surprises, other than the occasionally loud pecks of the local woodpeckers, who suddenly attacked one of our birdhouses.
  2. Seeing the flying blue jays in the garden.
  3. The blessings of having to deal with the Windows updates.

Anne Yust

  1. I’ve been surprised at how much I’m enjoying teaching virtually. I was a bit concerned about being able to keep up with student questions in the chat feature of Zoom, but I’ve found that the chat seems to allow for a wider array of students to jump in with questions -- which is great!
  2. I really like the ability to capture the notes I write on my tablet so I can upload them to the Canvas site for students to review later. Many students commented about how this has really helped their learning. Students have also noted that they really appreciate the recorded lectures so they can review concepts they didn’t quite understand the first time through (or if they were unable to attend class synchronously). I also really appreciate seeing student names when they ask a question or attend office hours.
  3. At first, I had rigged my phone to screen-share notes I would write while discussing content with my students. Though, I was quite proud of my technological setup, the video lagged and would get blurry, often making it difficult for my students to follow the ideas being presented. However, once I received an iPad and Apple Pencil through the department, my students were so happy to be able to see my writing -- certainly leading to a sizable increase in student learning.

Students

Christopher Catullo

  1. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my classes and the dedication that my professors have put towards creating the best learning environments possible during this time. Nearly every aspect of online classes has been significantly improved since the spring term. I now feel that my online classes rival their in-person counterparts from previous semesters. I even had some professors go out of their way to make up for the lack of social interactions this fall. Specifically, Professor Armin Schikorra of the Math Department created study groups for his Advanced Calculus class, which came to be a tremendous help throughout the semester – both academically and socially.
  1. Flexibility has been one of the best features of working remotely. Whether you are going to office hours, need help in the (Virtual) MAC, or are working with fellow classmates, everything can be accessed from your laptop. For me, new opportunities have also arisen. As an officer of the Math Club, I helped adapt our events to a remote setting, which involved reaching out to a variety of professors and hosting virtual events with keynote speakers. Holding remote events has allowed us to work around professors’ schedules and provide more flexibility to our members than previous semesters. I have always had a passion for helping others, and this fall I had the opportunity to become a MAC Tutor, which has been a great way for me to help those who are struggling during this period of remote learning.
  1. I have also been exposed to new challenges throughout this semester. It has been extremely difficult for me to differentiate school time from everything else, as I have been isolated in my apartment for the entirety of the semester. This has led to the semester feeling like a blur – it is nearly impossible to discern one week from another when I go several days without going outside. This semester has been nothing short of a mental and emotional rollercoaster. I never realized just how much those interactions with my classmates before and after class meant to me, and I will never take those experiences for granted again. This is why I appreciated Dr. Schikorra’s study groups so much - they reminded me of those special memories - and I look forward to sometime in the future where I can make more of them.