Leaning In

LEANING IN Dr. Rosemary Allen and Georgetown College faculty embrace change to bring certainty in uncertain times

In January 2020, Dr. Rosemary Allen, longtime professor of English and provost and dean of the College, began the spring semester teaching her Renaissance literature students about Shakespeare. She couldn’t have imagined that the world she and her students lived in would soon parallel Shakespeare’s world of 400 years ago.

“One of the things that one has to deal with when talking about Shakespeare is the degree to which he was living in a really uncertain world,” Dr. Allen said.

That world, of course, was a pandemic — the bubonic plague, to be exact. The pandemic would shut down theaters on a regular basis, cutting off Shakespeare’s primary income stream. This forced Shakespeare to find different ways of achieving his goals. He took his plays on tour, or he focused on writing plays rather than producing them. In other words, Shakespeare had to pivot.

In late February and early March 2020, Dr. Allen had learned enough about the ongoing developments with COVID-19 that she began encouraging Georgetown College faculty to pivot, just as Shakespeare had.

“I was already suggesting to faculty that if they had some time over spring break, they should start looking at what it would take to transition their classes online,” she said. “But honestly, I did not anticipate what happened during that spring break week. We were fully expecting to resume classes in 10 days.” ONE WEEK TO RECREATE SIX WEEKS OF CLASSES Most can pinpoint that moment in early 2020 when the world shifted and routines changed. For Dr. Allen, it was the moment Georgetown College

“I WAS ALREADY SUGGESTING TO FACULTY THAT IF THEY HAD SOME TIME OVER SPRING BREAK, THEY SHOULD START LOOKING AT WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO TRANSITION THEIR CLASSES ONLINE.”

— DR. ROSEMARY ALLEN

decided that students wouldn’t return to campus after spring break. Instead, classes would transition fully online for the remaining six weeks of the semester.

As a college whose mission is to educate and strengthen a student’s heart and mind, it was imperative that online classes maintain the same quality that Georgetown College classes are known for, classes in which discussion and studentteacher engagement are where true learning happens. It was also necessary to adapt learning and teaching to fit individual situations without relaxing academic standards.

And so with the resilience and dedication that Georgetown College is known for, faculty members, led by Dr. Allen, did what they had to do: they pivoted.

PROFESSORS TEACHING EACH

OTHER A foundation for online learning already existed at Georgetown.

Faculty members and students use

Canvas, a learning management system. The biggest challenges were learning to use it better, restructuring in-person curricula to better fit virtual learning, and understanding how to use Zoom effectively.

“They were so on it,” said Dr. Allen.

“The faculty who had used online tools a lot volunteered to start doing workshops for those who weren’t as versed.” The start of classes after spring break was delayed by a few days to give faculty some extra time to implement the full transition.

Dr. Todd Hamilton, professor of chemistry, and his colleagues quickly worked together to transition labs online.

“Lab is very difficult virtually,” said Dr. Hamilton, but he and his colleagues made it work for students by going into the lab and recording themselves conducting experiments. Then they gave their students the data to analyze and write up.

Dr. Allen refers to this and other innovative strategies as “a mammoth thought experiment.”

“And every single person had to come up with a different solution, because so much depends on what the nature of your class is,” she added.

Dr. Laura Hunt, professor of Spanish, said that even faculty members who aren’t the biggest fans of technology recognized that tools like Canvas and Zoom were the solutions.

“I’m very proud of everyone for figuring it out,” she said. “Since faculty are already lifelong learners, this just became a new area to research. Everyone jumped on board and made it happen, which is just incredible.” Dr. Hunt was among several professors who created materials for and led workshops during spring break for her colleagues.

Professor of English Dr. Carrie Cook, who has more than 20 years of online teaching experience, jumped in to help her colleagues learn how to use Canvas effectively.

“Everybody has come together and worked so hard, students included,” Dr. Cook said. “And I’m just honored to be a part of this group — we’re all trying to move forward, and we care about each other along the way.” PUTTING STUDENTS FIRST One of the most important aspects of transitioning to online instruction was making sure all of this necessary change took into consideration the well-being of each student. Uncertainty abounded with the unknowns of a highly residential student body now moving back home to finish out the semester.

“We didn’t know what their personal situations were,” Dr. Allen said. “We didn’t know if they were going to even have access to sufficient internet at home.”

In light of this, students were given the option of electing to finish their classes pass/fail for Spring 2020. “We knew that grades were not necessarily going to be reflective of what students were able to do,” Dr. Allen said. “Particularly since we didn’t know what their home situations were. We didn’t force them to accept a grade that didn’t reflect their best efforts.”

Dr. Allen says that professors understanding that one size doesn’t fit all is what students appreciated most during those final six weeks of the Spring 2020 semester.

“Each faculty member figured out what worked best for their particular class and their particular teaching and learning styles,” Dr. Allen said. “Everybody was finding solutions that somehow worked.”

Dr. Cook emphasizes that Georgetown College’s virtual classes last spring weren’t just something put online for students to navigate their own way through.

“We really tried to keep and foster that connection with the individual students, so I made time to meet with my students, to conference with them,” she said. “I tried to make sure that I checked in individually with each of them at least every week.”

For Dr. Dan Vazzana, associate professor of business administration and economics, working through obstacles with his students was all about grace.

“I preached the notion of grace,” Dr. Vazzana said in regard to students understanding that their professors were having to pivot just as much as they were. And, at the end of the day, everyone was doing their best.

“And students were also up to the task of offering the same grace,” he added.

Dr. Hunt literally went the extra mile at the end of the term by driving across the state delivering cakes to her graduating seniors in the Spanish program. And for the ones she couldn’t get to, she mailed them chocolates.

“None of those students signed up for an online/ hybrid experience or were prepared for it,” Dr. Hunt said. “And I especially felt bad for our graduating seniors who didn’t get to experience the usual celebrations.”

She added: “It made me so happy to deliver those cakes. It was for them, but it was for me, too.” MOVING FORWARD The College used the summer to prepare for the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters. Two task forces were created. One focused on strengthening instructional methodology practices, which included making sure faculty have the right tools for blended instruction. The second focused on scenario planning.

Semester structure also changed. For Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, instead of students taking five or six classes a semester, they instead took two or three classes during two different 7.5-week subsessions. This allowed students and professors to be around fewer people for shorter periods of time.

To accomplish this, faculty members spent Summer 2020 completely redesigning a year’s worth of classes in order to be able to teach them in the sub-session structure and with a greater flexibility than they normally do, because they had to be ready for any possibility.

The College will return to the semester structure this fall. But Dr. Allen and others anticipate keeping some of the beneficial digital learning strategies, whether that’s delivering content online and then using the classroom for discussion or moving to online instruction during inclement weather situations, as the College did earlier this year.

“I also think some people will figure out better ways of accommodating students who are sick or students who are on athletic teams who have to miss classes, because now they know that there are ways of doing it,” she added.

For Dr. Hamilton, having to reevaluate and redesign how and what he teaches has been a difficult but useful exercise.

“I’ve had to go back and look at the overall framework of what I teach,” he said. “When you’re forced to boil it down to the essentials, it allows you to see what’s important. And really ask yourself — what should this class look like for our students?”

Dr. Vazzana has used Zoom to change how he offers his office hours: he’s dedicated time in the evenings to meet with students whose schedules are too packed during the day.

Like Shakespeare, Dr. Allen was able to pivot early and stay focused on Georgetown College’s goal of continuing to provide a championshiplevel education of the heart and mind, even in a pandemic.

“I never ever saw her stressed or frazzled,” Dr. Hunt said. “Rosemary did a great job of getting us what we needed at the time we needed it.”

Dr. Vazzana added: “Rosemary and the administration were very proactive in making sure we had all the resources we needed.”