How are you running your courses this fall?

Many of us, indeed probably nearly all of us who teach at a university level, will be teaching courses in new ways this fall. Although most of us had a little experience transitioning to remote/online delivery this past spring, I take it that this fall may be the first time that many of us have designed hybrid or online courses. Consequently, this fall is almost certainly going to be a real learning experience for most of us. Some of what we do may work well, some of it may not work well, and some of it may turn out to be a disaster (as is sometimes the case, in my experience, whenever one attempts radically new things).

Anyway, because most of us will be returning to the classroom soon (and much to my surprise, I've learned that some universities have already started!), I thought it might be helpful to run a thread on how readers are designing their courses. What format are you giving your course in, and how will you be running them? Why? The way I see it, the more details people choose to share, the better: it may give those of us who are still designing courses some helpful additional perspectives to go on. Allow me to start things off.

One of the things I found fairly early on in my teaching career (post-PhD) is that experimenting with radical departures from what I normally do doesn't tend to go very well. During my first few years at my current university, I experimented with all kinds of things, ranging from regular group presentations to in-class debates and all kinds of other stuff. The vast majority of the time, when I experimented with something brand new there tended to be some 'unintended consequences' that I was completely unable to foresee heading in, such that some element of the experiment went badly. Fortunately, over subsequent years, I slowly discovered and refined a bunch of teaching practices that seem to work well for me in this environment--and so what I've tended to do since then is 'experiment along the edges' of the things that I already know tend to work well. That is, I've tended to make incremental rather than radical changes. Finally, on the one occasion in recent years I tried something radically new--and put a ton of thought, research, and effort into it--it really didn't go very well on the whole. So again, I've tended to find the 'incremental changes' approach to teaching better for me and my students. It doesn't mean I don't change what I do. Oftentimes, I will still experiment with substantially changing, say, one major element of my courses. What I don't do is completely overhaul courses from the ground up (all at once, as it were).

I say all of this as background to contextualize what I plan to do this fall. Basically, I'm teaching two hybrid courses, each of which meets for 1:50 two days per week. Because as you can see our class meetings are unusually long, I've long had a practice of breaking them up into three parts, each of which normally takes around 35-40 minutes. I usually begin my meetings with open discussion motivated by short reading responses students complete before class--so that each day starts with students thinking about the material for themselves. Then I normally give a standard lecture with some discussion interspersed along the way. Then I usually end the session with graded in-class group assignments on some question/prompt at the end of my lecture. Because half of my class is scheduled to be in the classroom and the other half joining via Zoom, my general aim this fall is to approximate what I normally do as closely as possible, but with remote learning technology to supplement student experience inside and outside of class. First, instead of written reading responses, I plan to have my students submit recorded responses before class on Flipgrid. Because I know that not all students may be comfortable on video, I'll leave it up to them whether to do video or just do audio. Then, before class, I plan to view each of their responses and then select some of them to play during the first part of class to stimulate class discussion (I will also, of course, encourage students to generate class discussion in person). Then, after discussion is over, I plan to simulcast my classroom lecture on Zoom. Finally, when my lecture is over, I plan to have students complete their graded 'in-class' assignment in small groups outside of the classroom (for those who attended in person) and in Zoom breakout sessions (for those who join remotely), submitting their assignments online by the end of class. Finally, students will be encouraged to engage after class on Flipgrid (to e.g., 'continue the discussion' after class).

I am optimistic this plan will go fairly well, but we all know the saying, "The best laid plans often go awry." So, we'll see what happens. Anyway, this is what I plan to do and the rationale for it. What do you plan to do, and why? 

Comments

[elisa freschi]

Thank you for sharing, Marcus. As for me, I am also teaching in "dual delivery". This means there will be up to 18 students in class and up to 82 remotely connected, though I believe the latter group will be way smaller (say, 30 students). I will continue to start classes with a thought-provoking question they have to answer in writing. The answers will not be graded and have only the purpose to make them aware of background assumptions they may have overlooked so far. This way, I make them more receptive to what I am about to tell them in the frontal teaching part.
Thereafter, to foster discussions, apart from the Chat function, I ask them to prepare some reading assignments on Perusall and add post-its with comments and questions that I can then address in class. Hope it works! Comments and thoughts are welcome.

[elisa freschi]

I forgot to add that I designed one weekly assignment per week (they have two) as a group assignment, so that students learn to interact even if not in person.