Overseas education Professors reflect on time zone differences between teachers and students BY MCKENZIE CONNELL Math and biology professors looked back on past remote semesters and shared their hope they are learning enough to assist their students with any struggles they might encounter. Joyce Smart of the Faculty of Math & Computing was called as a teaching missionary in 2018 for the BYU–Hawaii math program with her husband, Larry Smart. July 2020 was the end of their two-year mission, but both have continued teaching into the Fall 2020 Semester. “The math department can’t get missionaries to be able to come ... so we emailed the math department chair, Scott Hyde, and said we would be happy to continue teaching remotely from our home in Utah,” Joyce Smart said. Currently, the time difference is three hours between Hawaii Standard Time and Mountain Standard Time, she added. 46
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The math program offers online tools such as the Math Learning Center, which can offer an immediate response to students in need of tutoring, Joyce Smart said, but the extent of resources is nothing compared to what is usually available on campus. “The Testing Center is just a fabulous resource for instructors. It’s wonderful, and they do such a great job there.” Smart said they often use the library and added the library will check out TI-84 calculators, which can make a great difference to students. She said the school is advising all professors to have compassion and over-communicate with their students. Teacher-student interaction Having students sitting in a classroom physically is a completely different experience than communicating through email and video calls, said Joyce Smart.
“If you had somebody you could ask immediately, you could just get past [those roadblocks], and you’re good. But without that resource of immediate response, that’s hard for students, and they have enough stress already,” she said. Colby Weeks, a professor in the Faculty of Sciences who has been teaching for 10 years at the university, said he agreed. He recently attended a workshop at the Center for Learning and Teaching, which helped educate professors on the different things needed in a course. Upon reflection, he said he realized there was still something missing in his classes. “They talked about student-teacher interaction and also student-student interaction, and while I’ve advised students to participate in study groups, I don’t know how much that is happening,” he said.
