Teaching During Lockdown (guest post by Graham Oppy)

This is a guest post by Graham Oppy, Monash University, for our unusual teaching ideas series.

In Australia—as in many other parts of the world—we have been through more or less an entire academic year of teaching entirely via Zoom. It is likely that, in 2021, we shall continue to do some part of our teaching via Zoom.

I taught three medium size upper level classes via Zoom this year: a second year class in philosophy of religion (‘God, Freedom and Evil’) and two third year classes, one in philosophy of religion (‘Philosophy of Religion’) and one in metaphysics (‘Metaphysics’).

Philosophy of Religion Classes

The two philosophy of religion units were taught on the same plan. Each week, the students were assigned three tasks to complete prior to a two-hour Zoom class:  reading (around 6000 words); watching a collection of short videos (typically, 10-12 short videos, with a total running length of around 50 minutes); and working through a list of questions on a worksheet.

I made the videos using Panopto. Each video was somewhere between 2 minutes and 5 minutes in length. The videos were collected into a playlist on Moodle. Each video had an informative title. Each video dealt with a discrete topic: the explanation of a concept, or the examination of a premise in an argument, or the like. I used no more than one PowerPoint for each video. Most students liked the searchability of the short videos; some students wanted a single video that they could listen to while doing something else (e.g. exercising).

The questions on the worksheet were grouped in sets of five. Typically, I made four sets of questions; sometimes, I made five. The group of questions were connected thematically: typically, exploring different angles on a single important claim or sub-topic. (I include an example of the question sets below, in an appendix.)

Zoom class group sessions were organised around the sets of questions. After a brief introduction to a set of questions, the students were [randomly] divided into five Zoom breakout groups. (There were about 30 students in each class group.) Each group was assigned one of the five questions. The groups were given an assigned time period to discuss their question. One member of each group was appointed to deliver feedback to the main group. Feedback to the main group allowed for discussion from everyone in the class.

Early in the semester, the group sessions were 7 minutes; and the feedback sessions were about 13 minutes. This allowed us to get through four sessions in two hours (with a coffee break in between the second and third sessions).  Later in the semester, the group sessions expanded to 10-11 minutes; and the feedback sessions expanded to about 40 minutes. This allowed us to get through two sessions in two hours (though we sometimes went slightly beyond the allocated time in order to complete the second session).

In second semester, I had two separate cohorts—so, 60 students in total—and I had a tutor who was randomly assigned to a different breakout group in each small session. (The breakout groups were randomly reassigned after every small session.) In first semester, I also had two separate cohorts—again, about 60 students in total—but no tutor.

Even in second semester, during our second—and very long—period of lockdown, a higher percentage of students attended class than in past years. Moreover, student engagement in general discussion was much better distributed across the cohort than in previous years. Finally, the assessment results for the unit were slightly up on assessment results in previous years. These might all reasons for thinking that it will be worth trying to implement this model of teaching when we eventually get back to face-to-face learning in the classroom.

Many of my students—and my tutor—agreed that these classes had been important for their mental health during lockdown: they all looked forward to the (admittedly limited) form of human interaction that the small and larger sessions afforded. While this reflected a uniform trend at Monash, it is probably worth noting that my first semester student teaching evaluations were the best that I have had (in thirty-five years of teaching). We do not yet have the second semester teaching evaluations, so I cannot report on them.

Part of what I aimed for in setting up the classes in the way that I did was to build communities of discussants who were committed to candour, charity and doxastic humility. There is clearly room for argument about whether these are appropriate goals for the classroom. In particular, if students do not complete the pre-class tasks, then there is a risk that such classes will descend into banal agreement. This did not happen in my classes this semester. One of the interesting features of the reporting back periods was the reporting of the range of opinions in the small groups.

(In the first week of semester, I got students to post to a discussion list, explaining why they were taking the class. From that information, I know that the class was quite diverse: a number of religions were represented in the class, as well as a range of non-religious standpoints.)

Metaphysics

I had two cohorts in Metaphysics—again, around 60 students—and I used the same mechanics for Zoom: readings, videos, worksheets, small groups, feedback to the larger group, etc. However, other aspects of this unit were quite different.

The unit is designed around the assessment task. The task has four parts. First, the students make an essay plan, on which they get written feedback. Second, they have an interview (on which they are graded) in which they respond to the feedback on their plan, and (mostly) in which a final plan is agreed. Third, they write an essay draft on which they get written feedback. Finally, they revise their essay in the light of the feedback that they have been given.

Zoom classes only ran for the first four weeks of the semester; after that, the allotted class times became drop-on sessions in which students could discuss ideas, problems, etc. with other students (and with me). The drop-in sessions were attended by fewer students than attended the corresponding face-to-face sessions in previous years. (I have been teaching the unit in roughly this way for the last six years.) However, some students made very significant use of this time.

The topics for the zoom sessions in the first four weeks were: (a) introduction to social ontology; (b) introduction to a range of topics in social ontology; (c) discussion of Haslanger on race and gender; and (d) discussion of Thomasson on fictional objects.  Student projects focussed on a diverse range of topics in social ontology, across social groups, group minds, institutions, race, gender, sex, disability, class, (participatory) economics, money, artefacts, law, codes, language, property, art, music, and metaontology. For each topic, I provide a small set of ‘suggested’ readings.

This unit is fun to teach; but there are two periods—the week of the interviews, and the ‘week’ of marking the drafts—where the workload is a bit crazy. In past years, I divided the class with another lecturer: we each ended up with about 30 students. This semester, I had all 60 students. In the interview week, I allocated 30 minutes per student: 20 minutes for the actual discussion, 5 minutes for me to prepare (by reading through my comments on the plan), and 5 minutes to grade the student, and—where appropriate—note follow-up feedback. The marking ‘week’ actually last for about nine days this year. Each student needs to be given feedback that can stimulate them to improve their essay: some of the credit on the final essay is for ‘improvement over the draft’. Part of the reward for this style of teaching is the quality of the final essays: a healthy percentage of students in my classes end up producing really terrific work.

General Discussion

One question that you might think to ask is whether the set-up of classes works as well for metaphysics as it does for philosophy of religion. I think that there was a similar amount of diversity in the standpoints represented across the two kinds of classes. I expect that a class on social ontology with a more conventional assessment structure would work just as well as classes in philosophy of religion in building communities of discussants.

I do not expect that all areas of philosophy could be taught on this class model, or with the assessment structure that I use in my metaphysics class. I think that it is better for students to be exposed to very different methods of teaching philosophy in the course of their majors. However, there might be something in what I have tried that some others might also like to try, to see whether they get similarly good results.

One thing I should mention is that I taught a fourth unit this year: a final (fourth) year seminar. I have taught one of these seminars in each of the past three years. In 2018, the topic of the seminar was metaphilosophy. In 2019, the topic of the seminar was philosophical scandals. In 2020, the topic of the seminar was good argumentation. In each year, I had a group of about ten students. In 2018 and 2019, the discussions were led by students, each of whom was required to guide discussion on a particular topic. In 2020, this feature of the unit was dropped at the insistence of the students. For whatever reason, the class in 2020 fell quite flat, compared to the classes in 2018 and 2019. I suspect that the biggest factor was the choice of topic: argumentation theory just does not have the same intrinsic interest as the range of scandals that has rocked philosophy, particularly in the last few years. But I also think that I failed to find a way to build social interaction between the members of the cohort; and this also likely played some role in their reluctance to make contributions to discussion in class.

It is not yet clear what my teaching will be like in 2021 (and thereafter). There is a lot of higher-level institutional enthusiasm for teaching face-to-face on something like the model that I used this semester online. However, we do not have the physical infrastructure to make that possible. There are rumours that we shall have units in which we alternate between face-to-face and online classes. I have some scepticism about whether that will be workable. Given the choice, I certainly want to get back to the face-to-face classroom. However, it is possible that I have learnt some things this year that will make me a better teacher in the face-to-face classroom that I was previously.

Appendix: Sample Question Set.

These are the questions I used for the final week of God, Freedom and Evil, an introductory course on arguments about the existence of God. The arguments that are the focus of the first three questions sets had not previously been discussed in the unit. The aim of these questions was to have the students collectively apply what they had learned during the unit to a bunch of ‘new’ arguments.

• Argument 1

Consider the following argument: 1. It is possible that God exists; 2. God’s existence is either impossible or necessary. 3. (Therefore) God exists.

(i)   What will naturalists say about the first premise of this argument?

(ii)  What will theists says about the first premise of this argument?

(iii)  Is the argument valid?

(iv)  Can naturalists and theists agree on the second premise?

(v)    Is this argument successful?

• Argument 2

Consider the following argument: 1. The universe began to exist. 2. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning to exist? 3. (Therefore) The universe has a cause of its beginning to exist.

(i)    Did causal reality begin to exist?

(ii)   Could causal reality have a cause?

(iii)  Do naturalists think that natural reality just is causal reality?

(iv)  Can naturalists consistently think that natural reality has a cause?

(v)   Is this argument successful?

• Argument 3

Consider the following argument: 1. God is maximally forgiving. 2. God is maximally just. 3. It is impossible for something to be both maximally forgiving and maximally just. 4. (Therefore) God does not exist.

(i)    What will theists say about the first premise?

(ii)   What will theists say about the second premise?

(iii)  What will theists says about the third premise?

(iv)   Can theists accept all three premises?

(v)    Do theists agree about the extent to which God is forgiving and the extent to which God is just?

• Final Outcomes

(i)   Is it likely that there is no logically consistent version of one of theism and naturalism?

(ii)  Is it likely that there is a knockdown argument for one of theism and naturalism?

(iii) Is it likely that there is an algorithm that will decide between theism and naturalism?

(iv) Could it be equally acceptable to theists and naturalists that it is properly a matter for judgment whether one is a theist or naturalist?

(v)  Could it be equally acceptable to theists and naturalists that we rationally agree to disagree on the matters that divide them?