Transitioning face-to-face classes to a remote learning environment has been a new challenge for Dr. Evans, as her small group dynamics course has a lab component where students do group facilitating. It isn’t something that can be easily mimicked in a remote environment.
The class also includes many group activities.
“Last week, I gave a live and recorded lecture on conflict management in Zoom with my students, and we did an all-class activity. All of the students were in attendance and fully committed to the group activity. It went surprisingly well!” said Dr. Evans.
Normally she wouldn’t recommend learning in this new environment, as routines and lives have been upended, but her students have expressed an interest in meeting synchronously in Zoom at their normal class times, so she wanted to give it a try.
“Attendance is not required and I record the sessions and put into Blackboard and Canvas for students to watch at a more convenient time.”
Aside from the obvious changes, time has been the most challenging part for Dr. Evans.
“Taking course content that was designed for the face-to-face classroom is not easily transformed to online content. This takes a lot of time and effort,” she said.
“Many best practice tips for our new remote learning environment are the same best practice tips I share when I train faculty in online/hybrid design,” she said. “When I have taught fully online courses in the past, I have spent an inordinate amount of time preparing the course design, and then the time in delivering the course. In the case of transforming from face-to-face to the remote learning environment, we do not have the time to perfectly create a course.”
She added that it’s important to recognize there is a learning curve happening for everyone right now:
“Patience is also important; patience with ourselves and our students. This is a learning curve and our students did not sign up for this remote learning experience. Therefore, flexibility and understanding is important.”