On a typical Sunday evening in the middle of March, I am putting the finishing touches on my annual Net Price Madness bracket based on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Needless to say, that went out the window last week after the tournament was cancelled due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The virus has had a major impact on higher education, with seemingly most colleges suspending in-person operations on short notice. I’m also increasingly concerned about the financial implications of these closures for colleges, students, and employees alike.
As a department chair for this academic year, the resulting chaos in helping to make sure all classes can continue to operate while also taking care of a regular schedule of meetings and dissertation defenses made this the craziest week in my seven years as a faculty member. I also had to take my own seminar on dissertation writing online on both Saturday and Sunday on short notice. I have taught a few days of class online in the past, usually if there is bad weather or I am out of town for a meeting. But taking two full days of a class online in a synchronous format is something that I had not done before, so here are a few thoughts after teaching.
(1) I am glad that I bought a Zoom license. While my university provides two free options for video courses (Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Collaborate), they simply don’t match the ease of use of Zoom. We were able to easily share screens throughout the weekend, and nobody had any problems with connectivity. It felt more like a coherent experience as a result, which is important given that I had not had any of the students in a previous class.
(2) Lecture notes become an even more important resource. I always put copies of my lecture notes on Blackboard before I teach, but that was crucial for a class held live via video. This way, I could share the notes on the screen and students could follow along easily. It also saved them from having to see my oversized face for most of the weekend, which is an enormous benefit.
(3) Flexibility is crucial. I taught a class of K-12 school and district leaders over a weekend, so I did not have to worry about anyone not having access to a computer with a webcam. (That puts me in a privileged position.) But my students kept getting calls from their districts about contingency plans while I was also getting communication from my university about next steps. Attendance policies should be out the window at this point as we do whatever we can to help students learn. I ended up changing the timing and delivery mode of the final presentation to better meet students’ needs.
(4) There will be trial and error in teaching online. I think this weekend went pretty well given everything else that went on, but I’m still pondering what types of changes to make when I teach my next eight-hour class in two weeks. If you have any recommendations on what to do, I’m all ears at this point.
(5) Take care of yourself. I know that I can’t keep up this week’s pace of work for too many weeks, as this was legitimately a 75-hour work week. So as soon as I could after classes ended, I went out for a long run (a social distance run?) on my local trails—keeping far away from any other people. I am able to mostly—if not entirely—work from home over the next few weeks, so that should help me sleep well, eat well, and be outside while maintaining plenty of social distancing.
Robert Kelchen 
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