Teaching Grad Students Reflect on Adjusting to Remote Teaching Due to COVID-19

This article originally appeared in the Penn Almanac Volume 66, Issue 33 on May 5, 2020.

The move to remote teaching due to the COVID 19 pandemic has demanded rapid and unprecedented adjustments from everyone teaching at Penn. Graduate student instructors have played a major role in providing remote instruction. Below, six graduate students tell their stories of how they adjusted to remote teaching and worked to make their classes as successful as possible in this moment.

Olivia Werba, Chemistry: Since I am one of the head TAs for general chemistry, a course that has around 315 students, I knew that we had our work cut out for us going into remote teaching. In particular, we have SAIL recitations, active-learning recitations where students collaborate and work together on problems. To figure out how we were going to transition to online learning, I decided to first reach out to the students and see what would work for them. With people all across the world and with varied access to internet and electronics, it was important to find a fair solution for everyone. With the results, we decided to maintain synchronous recitations, adding a section for anyone who was unable to make one of the original eight timeslots.

I tried my hardest to make sure we preserved enough of the in-person format in structuring the recitations. Since not everything translated to an online format, I focused on keeping the aspects the students liked the most: group work and going over the answers as a class. Thus, we did weekly Zoom sessions, taking advantage of the breakout rooms to form small groups. Every week, one of the graduate students prepared a PowerPoint to go through the working of the problems step by step, which we would go through as a large group. Students responded positively, and we made sure the PowerPoints and recordings were accessible for people who may have less stable internet connections or who had to call in.

Along with the formatting, I think one of the ways we all got through general chemistry together was by maintaining personal connections. I went to workshops at CTL to figure how best to make sure all of my students knew they were valued as people. Each week, I had the students do “get-to-know-you” questions in their groups to learn more about one another and build social connections. We started every recitation with a check-in on how people were doing and included cute animals in the PowerPoints to create a positive environment. Some people said they liked coming to recitation just to talk with one another. This engagement and human connection allowed us to keep going through the class as a unit and to keep open the channels for communication and help. I am grateful for all of the students’ hard work keeping the class alive and overcoming current obstacles to continue their learning.

Nikola Golubović, Classical Studies: The class I am TA-ing for already had an online component built in: the students submit essays and respond to each other’s writing each week. The biggest challenge included migrating our discussion-based recitations to an online platform. I found that preparation in advance on my part went a long way. I was able to give detailed instructions on the nuts and bolts of using Zoom, and the students grew comfortable with it quickly. Typically, I will anchor the session by doing a brief lecture before moving to discussion. Slides are very helpful for this: our class is text-based, and Screen Share allows me to show images which are easy for the students to focus on. Engagement in discussion initially remained roughly similar as before. Yet as the semester progresses and students are facing increasing challenges on personal and academic levels, the spirits have been dropping. Students have been checking in to say they had family members who were sick and needed to be taken care of. My policy has been to never penalize late submissions and absences, and to be absolutely flexible about deadlines and assignments. And to lend a sympathetic ear to anyone who needs it.

Ellen Urheim, Mathematics: As a teaching assistant for an upper-level math course, I consider a successful recitation to be one in which students are frequently asking questions. Because of this, and because higher-level math can be intimidating, I have always prioritized making office hours and recitation a judgement-free zone. I try to be approachable in office hours, and I encourage participation in recitation by pausing often to check in and asking a mix of open-ended questions and more direct “knowledge-check” questions. I’m glad I focused on this early on, because when the class became remote, students were still voluntarily participating, even though this can be more awkward and challenging on Zoom. While I feel recitations have been going well, office hours have been harder to transition. In my office hours on campus, I often had students write on the board and help each other out with solutions. I am still figuring out how to mimic this collaborative process on Zoom, but ultimately the fact that students are still coming to office hours and participating in recitation—some participating even more than they did before —has reinforced my belief that encouraging students to ask questions is one of the most important things I can do as a teaching assistant.

Katherine Scahill, Music: When we received the news that face-to-face learning was suspended for the remainder of the semester, I was at first daunted by the prospect of creating an online version of the undergraduate class, “Introduction to World Musics and Cultures.” As a graduate student instructor of record, I was responsible for re-designing the course and communicating these changes clearly to my students. Support from colleagues, supervisors and the Center for Teaching and Learning helped me make this transition as smoothly as possible given the circumstances. Because the class is greater than 20 students, I combined pre-recorded lectures with discussion board posts and Zoom office hours.

Discussing musical performances is central to the course and facilitating this engagement online has posed some difficulties. The video and sound examples run through screen capture software that can be glitchy. An alternative is to have students pause my lecture and watch the designated clip on their own. Either way, these modes of engagement are not the same as listening together in the classroom and responding in ‘real time.’ However, one affordance of the discussion board is the option to post a music video or song. These multi-media responses may be a way to enrich discussions even when we are able to meet in person again.

Victoria Grace Muir, Bioengineering: I am a TA for Professor Jason A. Burdick’s course, BE553 Tissue Engineering, alongside my fellow TA, Jon Galarraga. The three of us have been working hard to make the transition to an online course format as easy as possible for students while maintaining high quality course content and frequent student engagement. Originally, BE553 had a large final group project assignment, where groups of four students were expected to deliver a 20-minute in-class presentation and 10-page written proposal on a new tissue engineering start-up project. With students scattered all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinating a group project can be extremely challenging and stressful for students. In order to relieve stress, our first course adjustment was to make the final projects an individual assignment. Students are now required to submit a 2- or 3-page written report accompanied with a 2-minute “elevator pitch” video about their tissue engineering start-up. In another effort to alleviate stress, all lectures for BE553 were pre-recorded and uploaded to Canvas so that students could access at a time most convenient for them. Most importantly, we have made a consistent effort to emphasize to students that we are here to support and will make accommodations when necessary. Jon and I have made ourselves available over email and Zoom to work with students on their final projects and help with any other academic concerns we can.

Rachael Stephens, GSE/Anthropology: As the educational community tackles the COVID crisis, much of our collective attention has focused on the nuances of remote teaching. Many of us had to rush our classes online before we even knew what a Zoom “breakout room” was, so this was a key first step. But as the weeks go on, I find myself thinking less about the exigencies of the medium and more about the moment. In the context of higher education, what does it mean to be responsive to our COVID-19 world?

As I scan a Zoom-room full of seemingly exhausted and distraught faces, I keep asking myself: what are we doing right now? I’m reminded of what the revolutionary educator, Paulo Freire, taught: students (like teachers) are engaged when the material has meaning in their everyday lives. When so many are struggling with their physical (including mental), financial and social well-being, most course material surely doesn’t feel all that important, whether it’s presented over Zoom or in person. And the reality is that many of our students—and many educators, whether TAs, adjuncts or tenure-track professors—were already grappling with varying degrees of crisis. Many felt the financial pressures of student debt or precarious over-employment. Many felt the alienation endemic to a historical moment when education feels more like credentialism than a collective pursuit of individual and social change.

When that’s the case, it’s hard for me to believe that the main obstacle right now is the medium. Instead, it seems like the question is: how can we build classrooms—whether remote or not—that are responsive to the demands of this historical moment?

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.