15 minute read
From Social Distancing to Distance Learning
Caroline Ruutz-Rees, 2 nd from le , next to Mrs. Katharine Hepburn in white. Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association, 1912. Courtesy of the Connecticut State Library & State Archives. Purple, white, and gold were the colors of the American suffrage movement.
FROM SOCIAL DISTANCING TO DISTANCE LEARNING
How Choate’s Helping Students Succeed Online
ver the past four months, COVID-19 has significantly changed how students around the world are educated. At Choate Rosemary Hall, traditional in-person classroom learning is now being complemented by new learning modalities as we suddenly engage in distance learning allowing us to truly embrace the “learning anywhere, anytime” concept of digital education in a range of formats.
As of March 27, students now join their teachers and classmates in a virtual Zoom Room, instead of in various spaces across the campus. In order to pivot to online learning, students and faculty took advantage of training sessions and video tutorials presented by Information Technology Services and Academic Technology teams. Students use their school-issued iPads for remote work while practicing their best Netiquette. In a communication to faculty, Head of School Dr. Alex Curtis both rallied and reassured: “Our students are fortunate to have you as their teachers and advisers, and you will remain the wonderful, caring, knowledgeable teachers you have always been, even as you navigate an unfamiliar new video conferencing platform and deal with inevitable snags and unexpected challenges.” The Bulletin shares with its readers some of the rationale and thinking that went into building the distance learning model.
faculty training
Administrators went into swift action after the School announced that spring term classes would be conducted online. They had four days to pivot to online learning. What were some of the challenges in getting faculty and students operational?
Tom White, Director of Professional
Development: The first step was creating a framework for what this new paradigm would look like: a daily schedule, basic expectations of faculty, and how to support students with resources so faculty could begin to think about ways in which what they had planned could transfer to remote learning. Parallel to these eorts was providing the necessary guidance and support for faculty.
We put together a number of supports for faculty. Some of those were digital resources and guides compiled to assist faculty as they moved their classes online. One week of professional development was consolidated into the four days before classes began on March 27. There was also a required faculty training on using Zoom to run synchronous classes. Optional training sessions were oered throughout the week on various learning management systems, screencasting, netiquette, discussion boards (written and video), words of wisdom from Choate faculty with experience with online teaching, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, and follow-up sessions on Zoom.
TOM WHITE, DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Morgan Harris, Director of Academic
Technology: It’s amazing what changes a crisis will motivate. We have tried to get everyone on Microsoft Teams for years, and this situation forced adoption across the entire school in under a week. Now all academic departments have created their own teams for their central hubs of communication outside their regularly scheduled synchronous Zoom meetings. Because we have many students currently in China, we had to scramble to find alternatives for these services that we’d taken for granted (e.g. all things Google – Classroom, Drive, and even YouTube!).
Tom White: The process has been a truly collaborative eort. Faculty and sta stepped forward to lead professional development sessions, share resources, oer encouragement, and lend support, all in the midst of tremendous change not only to their classes, but to their own lives. It was an exemplary moment of what the Choate community means.
academic schedule
What was the thinking behind the creation of the new academic schedule?
Deron Chang, Director of Curricular
Initiatives: There were five key priorities: First, to make it as similar to the normal schedule as possible – one less thing to get used to. In this case, keep the number of meetings the same, keep the block rotation the same, and keep which classes land on which day of the week the same. The creation of 50-minute classes did two things: kept classes starting at a predictable time and shortened the classes. Next, we added O ce Hours and Faculty Collaboration, anticipating that students would need more outside-of-class help from teachers and advisers and that teachers would need more time to retool their classes for a whole new teaching paradigm. Building in a break for students and faculty from what will inevitably be a lot of screen time in the day was essential for our teachers’ and students’ well-being. Furthermore, it provided a consistent break time for teachers who are parents of younger children (all currently home from school). It is worth noting that we did shift this break to later in the day to better accommodate our students in distant time zones when it became obvious that we would be teaching remotely for the whole term. Doing so, ensured that more of the class meetings started at times that students in Asia could attend synchronously.
Teachers were asked to record all classes and post their recordings to their learning management system to allow students who have missed a live class to watch a recording of it. O ce Hours are an analog to Conference Block but are longer and can be used for significant teacher time for students unable to make it to a class due to time dierences. For example, a student in Hong Kong can reasonably meet with a teacher during the early Daytime O ce Hours or the Evening O ce Hours slots (9:00 p.m. or 8:00 a.m., respectively, in Hong Kong during those scheduled blocks). Similarly, a student in California can meet during the afternoon Daytime O ce Hours or the Evening O ce Hours (12:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., respectively, on the west coast of North America during those scheduled blocks). We acknowledge that the remote learning daily schedule does not work perfectly for all students, but we feel that the vast majority of students and faculty are well served.
Tom White: In addition to what Deron notes, it was important to stay true to our premise that the pedagogy needs to fit the learners and the goals of the course. Maintaining flexibility in the schedule and our expectations for synchronous and asynchronous work was important for allowing teachers to meet their students where they are. Faculty were given a framework within which they could tailor their pedagogy to what is going to work best in the context of remote learning. They determine the right balance between face-to-face work and asynchronous work, and that’s going to look dierent depending on the course and the students.
Connecting with students becomes that much more di cult when working remotely. Our students may now be spread across dierent time zones or lack access to Wi-Fi and laptops. How is the School supporting students and faculty?
Deron Chang: In terms of the time zone issue, there is no way to accommodate every student in every time zone with a daily schedule. Instead of trying to fix the problem entirely through the daily schedule, we decided to fix the problem by oering asynchronous options for all of our classes and to create daily and evening Oce Hours.
In terms of technology dierences, the fact that all students were issued an iPad has greatly simplified, though not eliminated, the access issue. We could not have predicted when the 1:1 iPad Program was instituted that this would be one of the benefits and yet, here we are!
digital learning outcomes
The School decided to use Zoom to transition to a remote work environment. What are some of the advantages of that?
Andrew Speyer, Director of Infor
mation Technology Services: Zoom is the de facto standard used in higher education and K12 schools. It allows a teacher to see all students’ video feeds at the same time, create breakout rooms and essentially replicate the small group work used in face-to-face teaching, and record the class. Zoom also oers most accounts for free.
What are some ways that teachers are allowing students to participate in discussions and complete assignments that work best for students’ individual situations? Can they stream classes and save audio files so students can download it later? How are lab courses being conducted online?
Kelsey Wiegert, Academic Tech
nologist: Through Zoom, faculty can record class sessions for students who are unable to attend due to the circumstances they face. The class sessions are shared with students. Because each student is in a unique situation, faculty are in communication with students to find what ways class might need to be adapted to help them. Assignments and discussions are shared through Microsoft Teams, Canvas, and Google Classroom. Faculty members are using what they find will best substitute for their classrooms. There are many additional tools they are using, like Kahoot!, pHet for physics simulations, Flipgrid, Nearpod, JigSpace, and Google Expeditions for augmented reality biology and chemistry labs and to assist in providing context-based activities in a virtual environment.
In the science department, for instance, Dr. Selena Gell has designed a new unit for her cell and molecular biology class on the molecular biology of testing for SARS-CoV-2. Students have been using virtual labs and interpreting data sets. They have also been reading journal articles and news stories about the problems (both technical and regulatory) encountered with designing and implementing dierent types of tests.
Teachers were advised to start simple, to get basic readings and activities into their campus learning-management system and to go low-tech and asynchronous, given that students may have varying levels of tech and internet access wherever they are at, away from the campus. Why was “go slow” the best advice?
Kevin Rogers, Director of Studies:
Going slow gave both instructor and learner a chance to acclimate to the remote learning paradigm and iterate as they go. Choate has always focused on crafting classrooms that are defined by rigor, creativity, and energy. Capturing those elements in the face-to-face classroom means being careful not to let technology become an obstacle to the partnership that is the essential ingredient for the challenging work that we do. The same is true now that we’re working to deliver a similar experience via our remote learning paradigm. A balance must be struck to provide the right technologies at the right time to facilitate the desired learning.
“Choate has always focused on crafting classrooms that are defined by rigor, creativity, and energy.... The same is true now that we’re working to deliver a similar experience via our remote learning paradigm. A balance must be struck to provide the right technologies at the right time to facilitate the desired learning.”
DERON CHANG, DIRECTOR OF CURRICULAR INITIATIVES
Tom White: The one note of clarification I would add is that we advised faculty to start “small” not “simple.” When one looks at traditional online courses, those can have approaches that take several months of planning, extensive faculty training, and considerable resources to create. These are great courses, but unrealistic models for moving to remote teaching in four days. We wanted to convey to faculty that they should not start out planning to build those types of online courses. Rather, they should start with what they know, and then build as they go.
Starting small means that faculty can start where they are. Some folks were ready to get right into screencasting, video discussion boards, and so forth. Others were not, and trying to learn all those skills at once and shift their courses didn’t seem fruitful. So, a part of this was about building confidence amongst faculty and then growing from there.
Moving face-to-face courses online presents a challenge for those teaching at home with kids and pets. When a faculty member records a class what happens if their dog is barking? Should they stop and re-record or can they be authentic and say “hey, we’re in class today with my dog in the background. Guess he wants to chime in!”
Deron Chang: This is a great question because it lets me get on my soapbox. I was often asked the same question years ago when I first began to flip my classes: “Don’t I have to be perfect since I am recording myself?” The answer is an unequivocal “no!” In the same way that no class is ever perfect, these online recordings do not need to be perfect, and no one expects them to be. In fact, as always, it helps our students to see us as human beings. I leave in all the juicy mistakes (I correct them on the fly, of course) and goofy stumbles because, as you say, it adds authenticity. Furthermore, it also helps reinforce to my students that learning is not about perfection.
Grades this term are pass/fail. Does that lessen the pressure of this new online teaching environment for students and faculty?
Kevin Rogers: We know that feedback is a critical learning tool. Our shift to a P/D/F system means that the faculty can emphasize narrative feedback and the growth it engenders. When a grade is axed, some students will stop the moment that they see what they got. Now, they need to work harder, in a good way, to understand what went well in an assignment and what they might have done better. We know that timely, detailed feedback can do much to help the learner achieve the intended goals. Avoiding the challenge of translating nuanced feedback into a letter grade can be empowering for both the student and the teacher.
Tom White: Some teachers have enthusiastically embraced the new grading model. English teacher Dr. Stephen Siperstein posted this on Choate’s Reflective Educators online forum: “I feel freed up with the feedback I oer my students on their writing, and since we’re doing more ‘low-stakes’ writing this term (such as journaling), that freedom has been particularly helpful. I think that similarly, students feel freed up to write more honestly (as many of them are doing) given that I’m not grading them on it. It’s amazing the kinds of human connection that become more possible without traditional power structures in place.”
Regarding the Central Qualities of a Choate Education document: In the age of COVID-19, how do these qualities remain true? How are we able to strike the “dynamic balance” preparing our students for a world filled with challenges and opportunities? How do we balance “perseverance and resilience with humor and joy” in this very serious time?
Kevin Rogers: Echoed in this document is the sentiment that I think is well put by a Chinese proverb, “prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” I think many of us have em- phasized the importance of adaptation when counseling our advisees about the challenges and opportunities presented by this unfamiliar remote learning paradigm. As we regularly do, we have daily opportunities to urge them to persevere when they find a lesson challenging because they are working on it remotely. We promote collaboration, between students and faculty and between students themselves, emphasizing the importance of clear, timely communication.
Now, perhaps more than ever, we count on both students and faculty having a sense of humor about the inevitable technological and practical issues that have come along with this shift to remote learning. Learning a new piece of software or having the patience to play with an app to get more out of it takes perseverance. A seemingly small hiccup, like a failed download, or an inconvenient update, can be immensely bothersome when you’re also trying to keep up with what’s going on in class. We count on both students and faculty to maintain perspective and to accept that new and dierent kinds of mistakes are going to come along with this new context.
students weigh in
At a virtual Student Life and Athletics Subcommittee Meeting with Trustees on April 16, Student Council members were thoughtful, articulate, constructive, and authentic about sharing their experiences with the new normal. Said Ava Maha ’23, “The transition to a virtual learning experience has been a difficult shi, however the community has come together to adapt and create the best online curriculum possible. By working collaboratively with the Student Council during this unprecedented time, the School has done an excellent job of fostering a positive and innovative environment. There is no doubt in my mind that we will return to campus stronger than we leit.” And senior Blanca Payne ’20 shared this bittersweet reflection, “What hurts most is our separation from Choate. You’ve all been to campus. You know what it feels like. You’ve experienced that vein of energy running through campus from Memorial Circle to Hill House, to Athletics and to Colony Hall. That energy oen brings me to tears. On one hand, we are lucky to have access to technology and teachers who make an effort to see our faces every day to make sure we’re doing okay. On the other, we’re missing the very best parts of being a student at Choate: community, change, and a great learning environment. These stressful, anxiety filled times are even stronger reminders that Choate is at its strongest when we’re all here living, breathing, and learning what it means to be a Choate student. I thank faculty, staff, and the administration immensely for trying their hardest to preserve our Choate experience.”
