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.)
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