Category: Teaching online

Kate is a Biology instructor at Camosun, and this past year taught two sections of Biology 090 (a college prep Biology), as well as a section of a brand new second year Cell Biology course.  Not surprisingly, both had their challenges in moving online.  But, as she told me, last March, the Biology instructors “all jumped on the bandwagon together – whatever I was doing, I was sharing, whatever they were doing, they were sharing, and we just threw it all in the pot and cobbled through the semester, and in the end it wasn’t awful,” which certainly sounds like how the pivot last March worked for me!

Kate was fortunate to have scheduled development last spring, so she could spend time planning for fall.  She had used some D2L tools before, but faced some learning of tools she hadn’t used.  And now, Kate says she has fully adopted the Grades tool, as well as the Quizzes tool, finding the immediate feedback and the ability for students to complete quizzes multiple times a great trade-off for the work she put into creating them.  In addition, students submitted their lab assignments to the Assignments tool, where she could use the annotation tool or download them, add feedback, and upload the marked file for them.  “That part has saved me tons of time, once I got it working right, and I’m going to keep that for sure.  For students, when it comes time to study, they all have access to the uploaded marked versions, even if they were working in groups – no more excuses that someone else has the final copy of the assignment! It’s always there as a resource for them.”

For fall, Kate taught the Biology 090 asynchronously, which she recognized was a risk because of the upgrading nature of the course.  “I thought it would be a mistake to code it as synchronous, especially when there was so much unknown with jobs and lives and schedules.  Instead, I asked myself, how can I make this more accessible? So I tried to make it more self-paced, but with deadlines every single week. I’d have weekly synchronous tutorials, but I did not take attendance and I recorded them all. I expected students to watch them, but gave them the choice of how and when to schedule that time.”

Labs were definitely Kate’s biggest challenge.  “The big thing for Biology, of course, is the labs because they are supposed to be tactile:  you’re trying things out, you’re working with equipment, all things we couldn’t do. So I worked with that team of instructors and we came up with a pretty good hodgepodge of activities.”  For example, they developed what she called “kitchen labs.” “Do you have a carrot? Can you boil something? Can you watch ice melt? Can you put some ice, and then put some salt with the ice and then explain what’s happening to the hydrogen bonds?  They were all activities designed to connect to the course content, which worked out pretty well.”

While for the upgrading courses Kate was able to find a wealth of lab-related resources on the Internet, the second-year Cell Biology was a different story.  “Cell Biology is very content heavy, and online labs are not ideal, but we made the best of it.”  One of the instructors used his scheduled development time video-record several of the lab procedures, creating little one- or two-minute clips walking through the processes to get students through the semester. “Then we upped some of the data process requirements to make up for the loss of the practical skills, which worked pretty well.”  This last year has definitely brought out that flexible thinking – trying to find that balance of activities that will support students meeting learning outcomes.  One thing Kate noted about the Cell Biology group was that she saw “a really big difference in student engagement. They’re making study groups, they’re interacting, and you can see improvement in their data processing as well as in their critical thinking skills.”  I was particularly excited by an unanticipated by-product in Kate’s Cell Biology synchronous classes. “What has been cool is the text chat in Collaborate. Many students in this group knew each other from previous classes and there was an active chat thread while I was talking about something, for example someone types ‘I saw this cool article’ and they paste the link, or someone says, ‘yeah, it’s like what we did in our anatomy class’.  Having that text chat with this friendly banter (mostly content related) has been really fun and makes it feels more like a community”

In addition to finding new ways to deliver labs for the upgrading classes and discovering community building in the Cell Biology course, Kate has found many positive outcomes form the past year.  “This semester we are running a section where we have students from the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, mostly indigenous students, taking this course fully online. Look at the outreach that we’ve been able to accomplish by making a cohort for them!  I also have people in my own class who would never have been able to take a class face to face, for example my one student who had a baby two weeks before the class started in January. I have students from all walks of life who are able to access this asynchronous class because they complete the work in their own time within the week that each assignment is open.”

But there have been lessons learned along the way as well.  “It doesn’t always work the way you think. For example, I gave students an open book exam and discovered that not all students really understood what open-book means and what it doesn’t mean.  They were looking up every single question and of course ran out of time, even though I had warned them not to rely on their books, which was a lesson for all of us.”  Kate also realizes that not every student will succeed in an online course.  “Some have really missed those face-to-face study groups that happen organically after class when you’re standing around or hanging around the lab. But for other students, they’re self-motivated, know how to study, and know when they need help and how to get that help, whether it’s from me or the biology Help Center or online resources, and they’re rocking it.”

Moving forward, Kate is going to keep a lot of what she has created and learned.  “All those assignments that I spent all that time creating with the answers and instant feedback, I’m keeping those. They’re awesome. They’re great for the students and it’s no extra marking for me. I’m going to keep the digital lab submissions and look at ways I can give better feedback, better upfront instructions, etc. I’m even thinking about ways I can continue to share my PowerPoints in class and use my pen to write directly on the slides instead of using a laser pointer, because with the pen the marks will stay there.”

What Kate will remember as well is how she was able to make connections with so many students.  “I know people say it’s faceless and there’s not a connection, but there are ways to make connections without forcing people out of their comfort zone or making them turn on their cameras in a class of 50.”  And as many others have noted, there have been a lot of positives come out of having more flexibility in work-life balance, for students and faculty.  “Not having to commute or take public transit, not having to arrange for childcare – it’s all about making education accessible and flexible. That’s what the future needs – the model of going to University for four years face to face, and that’s all you can do, that’s gone. That’s not the reality for most students, and we need to get with the program.”

Lisa teaches in ELD (English Language Development) at Camosun.  She remembers the switch to online teaching last spring well: “The Friday before, I quickly taught the students how to take photos of their work with their phones and upload them because it felt like we might not be coming back on Monday. And then Monday we were online. Then I just tried to get them through the last weeks of the course.”  Then, over May and June last year, Lisa was on scheduled development leave and worked with a colleague to prepare for what they knew was coming in the fall.  “We realized that at the level our students were (lower level ELD students), nothing would be accessible to them. They might not be able to get into the class, and for new students, how would they even find their student numbers? So we spent a long time trying follow through what a student’s path would be to access the online platform, and did a lot of work trying to figure out how we were going to teach them all the skills that they would need.”

As I mentioned, Lisa taught lower level ELD courses in the fall, and found managing the challenges her students faced to be at times overwhelming, especially considering that “underlying everything was an assumption that they had basic computer skills. And they might have those skills in their own language, but keyboards and webpage layouts can be very different in English. Unfortunately, we hadn’t put much focus on basic computer skills development, which ended up being a big problem for students.”  In addition, Lisa faced some frustrations with D2L because it doesn’t always lend itself well to language teaching/learning.  “Where I’m at with it now, I would prefer not to use D2L, but would use Collaborate and either send a CD to students, or links to online audio files.  I was constantly trying to fit language learning into a system that was not developed for language learning and always having to find workarounds.”

The fall term presented a daily constant challenge.  “I heard a teacher being interviewed and he used the word heavy and that’s what it felt like. Every day were frustrations. I would stumble across a new thing and get all excited to try it out, and then wouldn’t work quite the way I envisioned it. It was a roller coaster.”  In addition, ELD courses typically have lots of small homework assignments that are easy to manage face- to- face, but managing them online, well “you put a lot of effort into marking something electronically, then have to help the students find the feedback,” but unfortunately in D2L instructors can’t always see what students see.  “I found it very difficult to help students at my level and I’m sure half my class never saw any of their feedback. It is so much more difficult compared to just handing it back and having a quick chat in the classroom.”

This Winter term, however, Lisa’s workload has been much better.  “I teach six hours a week and the other part of my workload is doing online testing. This term, there’s three of us team teaching, plus a support person, plus a manager, which makes things much more manageable.”  Having a larger support team managing an online teaching load, especially the first time around, is really key to success (and much less stress).  I do want to mention the project Lisa worked on this term.  “It’s a project with contract training, providing language, business and make-it skills to a group of immigrant women to sell products at local farmer’s markets. With the pandemic, one unexpected result has been the creation of an online store for Camosun.  Any students making products for sale can now sell them through the store and people can pay online, so it’s a benefit to the whole college.”

While Lisa felt frustrated a lot of the time over the past year, she does see some positives.  “Humans are remarkably adaptable, and I’ve felt like everyone jumped in and made it work as best they could.  We were collaborating, teaching each other, and learning as quickly as possible.”  Even instructors who were very new to all the technology were figuring it out and helping their colleagues.  “What I take away from last year is that huge team effort, everybody digging in and finding ways to make online teaching work.”

Lisa has some advice for faculty teaching online for the first time.  “I would definitely try to get access to a course that had already been set up, and connect with the instructor who set it up.  And I would want to work with that person as a mentor.”  Last spring, because they were thrown into the deep end, this was not really possible so “the group of us who were on SD ran training for the department.  Other instructors (who were teaching in the spring) could learn with us and then try it out right away in the class and report back.”

Moving forward, Lisa also feels that having dedicated eLearning support (someone familiar with their programs and teaching styles), as well as technical support, would make future technology-enhanced, blended, or online teaching less stressful for faculty and students.  “Someone who knows the platforms and can come in on-call to help with students when they’re having trouble, and also teach some basic computer skills.”  As for what she will continue to use moving forward, Lisa says now that she has content, the gradebook, and tests set up in D2L, she will continue to use them.  “I will also use the News, and I’d like to get on top of the Checklist.”

Lisa ends with a couple of thoughts. “When I look back on last year, with the news that we will be back face-to-face in the fall, it was very satisfying. I love delving into new things and learning about them. As a language teacher, I don’t think I would put much more effort into D2L, but into online learning?  Absolutely. I can see all sorts of ways we could make it work, as long as workload is being recognized properly, which is a big issue.  I also proud of myself and the other instructors in our department, as well as our students. So even though there’s been a lot of hard stuff, we’ve done some pretty amazing things, and that’s what I’m going to remember.”

Ally is a librarian at Camosun College, working primarily (pre-Covid) at the Interurban Campus library. Librarians, and Instructional Designers (like yours truly), are also faculty members at Camosun. We facilitate workshops and teach instructional sessions for faculty and students. Fun fact:  Ally had emailed me to ask if I was going to interview a librarian, and I said “Yes – are you volunteering?”  So, she did, but sent her colleagues my questions to get their answers and perspectives on the past year as well.

I asked Ally what the sudden shift to online support was like for her and her fellow librarians. “At first, it was a bit of a jumble, like it was for everyone else. We made more use of the online tools we already have, more time on AskAway (online chat) research help, and then worked to develop new online resources. One of the things I spent a lot of time on in the first few days was the initial COVID-19 resources guide pulling together subscription content like Credo Info lit with Camosun created resources. All of the librarians jumped in and started creating what ended up being instructional videos which, over time, we narrowed down, improved, and made more consistent.”

What Ally missed most, however, were the daily face-to-face interactions with students and colleagues. In the past, “at Interurban, Margie and I have offices right in the student space. With Margie, groups of business students would just go to her office to ask questions and chat, and I would often have one-on-one interactions with students who know me from class sessions and come to ask for help. At Lansdowne, the librarians have daily shifts on the reference desk, and I think losing that day-to-day, more personal connection with the students, was a significant loss.”  For some context, while the Camosun libraries were forced to close after the shutdown, it wasn’t long before there was some limited opening for handing out books, laptops, etc. for students. But mostly the libraries remained closed until fall (in September the Lansdowne library opened for take-out and limited computer workstation access, and the Interurban library followed suit in November). But luckily, librarians are highly adaptable and found new ways to connect – new ways that they will likely not let go of even when returning full time to their libraries. “We weren’t really using Collaborate before, but now we definitely are, and we’ve discovered that it’s a fantastic tool. We have been using research guides for years, but recently we have invested in some additional apps on the same platform. One is a scheduling tool which, combined with Collaborate is how we’ve been putting together our online open-registration workshops.”  In addition to workshops, Collaborate has also made it possible for librarians to host virtual one-to-one chats with students and faculty. What makes Collaborate such a game changer is being able to “see a student’s screen, give them advice, and work through problems. It’s a lot easier to have those kinds of teachable moments in a Collaborate session than in our pre-Covid classroom sessions, which has been quite transformative for us.”

When I asked Ally what the biggest reward might be from the past year, she told me “I honestly think that Collaborate makes it easier for me to connect with students. When we are face-to-face, there aren’t any name tags, but in Collaborate when people are typing in chat or speaking, I can address them by name and get to know them. I think it’s been very good, strangely, in terms of personal connections.”  I have heard this echoed by other faculty and colleagues – that despite the distance technology can create, in some ways it has brought us closer over the past year.

Reflecting on lessons learned, Ally says “I think as a group, we do our best to respond to students and faculty at their point of need, so the biggest takeaway for us was to jump in and take risks. Like the instructional videos: most of us have made videos in the past individually, but the Covid response involved all of us jumping in. We created a lot of content and then re-worked it, which I think was strangely more streamlined than hashing out the details before creating anything.”  And these thoughts certainly are echoed in her advice to anyone who might be coming back to work after being off for this past year. “Don’t be afraid of just trying things, your colleagues and students really don’t expect perfection, let it be messy for a while, and don’t lose your sense of humour.”  She notes that the librarians normally engage in reflective teaching practice (they all teach workshops year-round), and integrating new technologies has been part of every aspect of college librarianship for decades, so, they were already adept at “pivoting.” Learning Collaborate added an additional layer of complexity, but their reflective practice remained the same.

Moving forward, Ally says she sees “probably an expansion of more workshops on Collaborate and speaking for myself, I would be quite open to office hours for reference help. And I think we will probably start integrating the new scheduling tool with Collaborate to create a set repertoire of online workshops and drop-in times, because I think there are a lot of students who really like working from home. And so why wouldn’t we continue these as a service? Why would we leave those students out if that’s their place of need?”

Libraries’ function as a “safe third space” will always be an important part of life at the college. “There are plenty of students who live with too many roommates or family members, and there’s just no mental space at home for them to really get the sort of studying done that they want to do – and that’s why they spend so much time at the library. But I think what this past year has done for some students is also give them a digital space where they can get help when they need it.”

Brent teaches in the Medical Radiography program at Camosun, a program with a long history of using D2L to support its face to face offerings.  When I asked him about his experience moving completely online last year, he said “my personal experience with the transition is that it was born out of necessity in a chaotic time that was predicated on decisions that were made external to my locus of control.”  A good way to describe something that took over our lives and which we had no power to change.  In fact, he described the experience of last March as less about planning and more about simple survival, which I am sure others can relate to.

Brent had definitely used online tools, and other educational technology, to support his teaching before COVID.  “I’ve always been very adventurous in trying out new things. I try to find the optimal tool for the learning outcome that I’m working on with the learners, and I find it such a fun world to explore – we’re finally reaching a point now with options like H5P where all of a sudden coding is accessible for educators. But the tools still need to be thought out, used intentionally, and be authentic to the educator using them.”  Thinking out the appropriate use of technology for his teaching during this past year, meant that Brent ended up teaching blended: asynchronous with “some synchronous components that were reserved mostly for getting people on the same page, and for discussing more difficult concepts that required instant feedback.” The asynchronous was reserved for content and providing “directions of what was required during the week.  The key thing as the instructor is to understand where complexities arise so they can be dealt with proactively by getting people together [synchronously] for a more wholesome discussion.”

Brent says that the biggest challenge he faced in the past year was around nurturing and creating community and relationships in the asynchronous world.  “When you are face to face with students there are various non-verbal cues communicated between people. But when you don’t have access to see, to hear, to get immediate feedback verbally from learners, it disrupts that model. So the biggest challenge is learning how to maintain a semblance of that relationship with learners in a different setting altogether.”  And this requires building new skills in an effort to achieve the same outcomes for a course you wouldn’t normally teach online – something many faculty were not ready for when the switch to fully online happened last year.

Brent has seen many rewards over the past year, saying that “I think probably the single biggest reward is that learners are able to access education in ways that best suit their lifestyles. A face-to-face program often defines a student as someone who can attend from 8:30 am till 5:30 pm, can drive to campus and not have to leave during that time, and has five hours after school to do their homework.  The transition to online learning has forced educators and administrators to rethink traditional approaches, and how those traditional choices have impacted people. The whole idea that you can’t learn or work from home has been completely blown out of the water by the fact that, well, we’ve been doing it for a year.”  Echoing my own thoughts, Brent says that in order for us to survive and thrive as post-secondary institutions, “we need to start embracing and cultivating technology because that’s going to help us become more sustainable. It’s not a matter of if we should use technology to support teaching and learning, it’s a matter of when, especially in terms of truly serving our community, because our community is asking for better access to education.”

But, simply embracing technology is not enough.  “As great as technology is it’s not something that you just throw on the education buffet table and say this is the only item that you get to eat here today. It’s also less about what you’re throwing on the table and more about how you’re using it.”  Cultivating relationships and recognizing that every learner’s journey is different, regardless of whether you teach using technology or not, represents “the real skill of the educator, understanding that it’s going to be an adventure and there’s no one singular path to your destination.”

Brent has some advice for faculty starting to move into online teaching.  “You will fail, and that’s okay. It’s humbling and stressful, so have compassion for yourself, just as you would for your students when they stumble.”  In addition, Brent stresses the importance of having an open mind.  “Know your values and approach to education really well, because the more grounded and crystal clear you are about your approach to education and what your values are, the easier it will be to be creative and to learn from the experiences of others.  If you worry that you’re alone in all this, you’re mistaken: there’s many people who’ve walked these trails, especially over the last year.”

Moving forward, Brent says that his ideal is for learners to “have complete autonomy and agency in terms of deciding how, when, and where they would access their education”, and while that might not be possible institutionally any time soon, it certainly is a goal worth pursuing.  “As an educator, I really value the place of Camosun as an institution within our greater community, and I think the whole point of the institution is to help raise everybody’s boat higher. But in order to do that, we need to work towards lowering barriers and increasing the access to programming.”

Val is a part-time instructor in the BEST (Academic Upgrading Building Employment Success for Tomorrow) program at Camosun College.  Because her primary role at Camosun is with CUPE, when she was brought in to teach for the program last spring/summer, it had been awhile (since 2003 or 2004) since she had taught online so she felt a bit anxious.  Luckily, teaching online is a bit like riding a bike, so they say, and after some brushing up and attending eLearning workshops she was able to breathe again.  “Am I completely proficient now? No. Do I have lots of room for growth? No question. But sometimes just being thrown in is the best way to learn to swim,” which I am sure other faculty over the past year can relate to.

Val is no stranger to online BEST-like programs, having taught up north to isolated communities.  “I came from a community college up north that had to run its programs by distance or else they wouldn’t have had a student population.”  Realizing the power of online learning to create community as well as inclusive and diverse learning opportunities, Val shared her teaching experiences with her group because she realized “that moving BEST online could grow our membership beyond Victoria proper.  For example, for a student taking a baby to daycare, then travelling from Langford to class and back again, which creates barriers, expense, and environmental issues, having classes online, some synchronous, some asynchronous is a beautiful mix.”

BEST, which is “about fostering and creating trust, learning communication, and moving through value-based discussions in career and educational exploration,” is a program that some people thought might suffer when it moved online.  If, as some people believe, 90% of our communication is body language, how do you connect with BEST students online?  But challenging as losing that face to face contact is, Val notes that learning online helps students with those essential technical skills they need to hone and feel comfortable with, telling me about the wide ranging abilities of students of all ages going from zero to sixty learning the technology!  But with that wide range of abilities, and additional need for support that comes with learning online, Val says they could not have run the courses as successfully without their Instructional Assistants.  I wish all programs could have dedicated student support like this.

Val had some challenges getting started.  First, deciding on the right delivery mode(s) and finding a balance for the students.  “I wouldn’t want it completely asynchronous because I think we would lose that incredible community teamwork, celebratory human piece that is harder to build in a purely asynchronous course.  It can be done, but it’s not the same. So I think for this program, when you’re dealing with values, feelings, conflict resolution, communication strategies, active listening, it’s pretty nice to have the synchronous component.”  Second, learning the technology.  Val worked with a colleague to move the content of the courses into D2L, but learning to use the tools effectively was one of her challenges. And “most challenging was keeping students engaged. I think that was our biggest worry. But we (Val and her colleague) have been profoundly moved because there has been more engagement virtually, better attendance, than I have ever experienced in my time in this BEST program.”

As you have already seen, Val has seen many benefits moving BEST online.  She especially wanted me to include the benefits to the environment and mental health by not having to be face to face all the time. “We are not contributing to a carbon footprint, and while there’s a mental health need to connect, I feel that we’re reducing stress because instead of frenetically driving through traffic to get places, students get to share their space, their animals, etc. which seems to bring some comfort and reduce anxiety.”  To expand on this, Val says she has gotten to know her students in a different way.  Because they are all coming in to the synchronous sessions from their homes, they can, and are, sharing more of their lives with the classes.  One student played the piano for their class, others have shown their home renovation projects, or shared their artwork.  “Are these related to career in education? Absolutely. Because they’re presenting, they’re building confidence, they’re showcasing their transferable skills.”  And Val has to wonder if any of this would have happened in the face to face classroom.

What Val takes away from this entire experience is that “anything is possible.  BEST brings everyone from a Fulbright scholar, to a student upgrading to grade ten, to a mom who hasn’t left the home, to a gamer (we’re getting the gamers who won’t leave the house!) The diversity of students is incredible. My takeaways are dream the dream and we can do it.”  The online future is bright for BEST.  “We see opportunity to grow the program.  We’re bringing in guest speakers from Ottawa, from Toronto, even TV Ontario guests, people we never have been able to bring in face to face.”  The possibilities are endless.

Given BEST’s future goals, Val wants to find time to do more training, and would like to see CETL and the college bring faculty together from across the college, from experienced online instructors to novices, to share their experiences, their tips, and their virtual skills to build capacity and community.  “I think community-building happens when I get to work with somebody I’ve never met before, in Arts or in Child and Family, or an IA in engineering because I think there’s a richness in community building that we really need at the college.” And this is something I hope to find ways to support!

“I think we need to recognize that there has been a shift in the world, from the environmental piece to accessibility for an older population, to the fact that there’s already so much community online. But there’s a sweet spot somewhere between being online and communicating face-to-face too.  I think my final words to you is we absolutely need to continue to create diversity in learning options and join the virtual world with alacrity, care, quality, and the assurance that we’re also being supported.”

Jana is a faculty member in the Medical Radiography, Sonography, and Certified Medical Laboratory Assistant programs in the School of Health and Human Services (HHS) at Camosun.  Jana had a particularly challenging entry into the world of complete online teaching as she was a part-time instructor last fall teaching three courses, and only had half time scheduled development to prepare those courses.  This term she is full time, teaching five courses, three of them new (although she did not know which ones she would be teaching until November of last fall). And like many other faculty in HHS, Jana is also a front-line worker, so has found balancing course creation/teaching, meetings related to the many programs she is associated with (all of which were moving online), and life particularly demanding. “So to this day, I am preparing classes as I go, and I’m up quite late on Sunday nights making sure I have everything ready because since the students are in labs Tuesday through Friday, everything has to happen Monday. So it’s been a challenge.”

As you can imagine, teaching health care courses online is tricky.  Jana spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to get her labs online, labs which ended up being condensed in time, but not in the number of assessments required (which was exacerbated by Jana losing her teaching assistant).  In addition, students produced videos of their lab skills and marking videos takes a lot longer than marking something that is happening right in front of you.  “Instead of watching students interact and marking them on the spot, they submit videos which I have to download which takes about 30 minutes (to download the whole class’s videos). Then you have to watch the videos and you have to give feedback, both of which takes quite a bit of time.”  I mentioned that the labs were condensed, which means they are face to face, but due to COVID restrictions, “instead of having eight students, we now have four students in each lab, so they’re running more labs, and giving less time for lectures.”  Having less lecture time was upsetting to some students, but “if we were to fit more lectures in, we would have to find five to six extra hours of lecture time on top of everything else.”

While Jana was comfortable with D2L, she struggled a bit with Collaborate when using her iPad, which unfortunately doesn’t play well with Collaborate.  In addition, the prep work for creating videos and PowerPoint presentations took longer with the added technology.  “Recording my presentations took about four or five times the amount of time it normally would since I’d redo them.  In addition, instead of presenting a PowerPoint, I would write everything out on a piece of paper while recording what I was doing on camera.  The students seem to really like this way of presenting notes because it was more dynamic.” But Jana found that “until recently, I was really struggling with trying to teach effectively, especially when trying to explain some of the topics we had to cover, like muscles and the cardiovascular system which is hard when you don’t have the ability to draw on a picture.”  In spite this, as well as being camera-shy, learning to deal with life interrupting her teaching (we all know the sound of construction, or the dog barking in the background…), and being in general exhausted, Jana is beginning to find her way. “Instead of having long lectures, I have mini lectures, and I integrate discussions to help break up the lectures a bit because I know what it’s like to sit there watching an hour long lecture. I don’t know if I’ve figured out a perfect balance yet – each of my classes is so different.”

One thing I found particularly interesting was Jana’s observance of the differences between the two cohorts of students she taught this last year.  Not surprisingly, the older cohort struggled more with the new mode of course delivery, being used to face to face.  “That group really loved being at school. They were a very social group to begin with and they did a lot of extracurricular activities with each other. So I think they were hoping to have that kind of experience again.”  The new group, however, seemed to adapt more quickly, something I have heard from other faculty teaching multiple cohort groups.”

Jana says one of the biggest lessons she’s learned over the past year is to “make sure to plan things if you have the time,” which is a tough one for her as she didn’t have the time to plan.  She also says that “marking online has probably been my biggest challenge because it takes more time, and it was hard keeping up with marking while trying to get my courses online for the next term.”  She advises that whatever you do, “check your technology, make sure it works, and have a backup in case it doesn’t. Have everything well organized for your students, and be clear about what you are expecting them to do. Now I create game plans, which sounds simple, but I didn’t do initially. Also, keep it simple and don’t complicate things. For example, in one class I was teaching about the cardiovascular system, and in the other one about pathologies in the cardiovascular system, so I knew that assignments could easily be confused. My solution was to create a generic template for the labs clearly outlining expectations and just changing the topics in the template each week.” That little bit of consistency can make a huge difference to busy and stressed students.

Jana does have some positive memories though.  “Students were doing some of their lab work online, for example, for the PPE labs, they gathered household items as their PPE, meaning they would put on housecoats, jackets, etc. and demonstrate how to perform PPE. Also, they practice their interactions with patients by recording themselves, making mistakes, but getting more practice and coming better prepared to the face to face labs, which is something I will likely continue.”  Moving forward, Jana also plans to continue using her iPad in the classroom, projecting her work on the screen.  She is also considering keeping a condensed lab model to give the students a bit more flexibility and free up classroom space. “The allied health programs are quite intense, especially our X-ray program. Students were coming in 8:00am to 5:00pm every day, which is a long day to absorb information, apply it and then go home and study. Going forward I will likely keep a more condensed labs to shorten these days if possible.”

All in all, I am glad Jana persevered and found some good come out of her challenging year.  I look forward to hearing how her new plans go!

Chris is a Physics instructor at Camosun College.  When I talked to Chris back in March, he confessed to feeling tired after a very long year.  “I was just reflecting back to about a year ago and feeling like there wasn’t enough time to transition to online teaching properly and feeling really uncomfortable with just needing to keep my classes moving forward.”  Even though Chris has been using D2L for years, he hadn’t used some of the tools, like the Discussions or Quizzes, which last March and April he realized he would have to learn, in addition to creating videos to support his students. “I spent basically the whole of last summer getting things ready, and spent a lot of time thinking about how to design the courses to be as user-friendly and flexible as possible from a student perspective.  I really tried to imagine what it would be like for a student to navigate the course, and to find the most universal design way of delivering the content.”

Last fall, Chris taught two sections of Physics 140, which he describes a content heavy course largely aimed at physical science students and engineers.  “I built all of my lectures to be asynchronous because at least I could ensure their quality. And then took my six hours a week of live lectures and made two of them office hours, set two aside for students to work on their labs saying I would be there if they needed me, and made the other two hours into synchronous tutorials where I worked on the harder homework problems with them.”  Chris also had an interesting experience teaching a SIP (South Island Partnership) course to high-school students.  Because he and his co-instructor were worried that the school might get shut down at any moment, they developed the course with a blended model.  “Instead of doing traditional lectures in the classroom, I created 20 minute lecture videos that the students watched first on their own, and then came to class to work on their homework.”

One of the biggest challenges Chris spoke to me about (which will resonate with many faculty) was how hard it is to build community in an online classroom, and finding a platform to encourage students to engage with each other.  The discussion tool in D2L just wasn’t working for him, so after learning that students were using Discord to communicate, he set up a Discord space for his course, recognizing that it was important to meet his students where they were at.  Another thing Chris realized last fall was how time intensive it was not only for him developing and teaching an online course, but also how time intensive it was for students to learn online.  “I remember thinking that if I were to advise students, I would say take no more than three courses fully online at a time because more will be too much.”

As you can probably imagine from reading so far, Chris found many rewards in moving to online teaching.  “We developed a number of online labs, some of which are video analysis, and some of which are applet based. One of the things I noticed is that lab marks were higher this last year because students were able to pause the videos explaining the labs. I realized that sometimes I took marks off because students didn’t remember all the information from my lab explanations in class – I was testing their lack of ability to access instructions. So now I’m going to change how I do labs.”  But ongoing access to materials went beyond the lab videos. “I get e-mails from students at 3:00 am, not that they’re expecting me to respond, but they’re working through the content because that time works better for them to engage with material. And it also occurred that for me, every term, I give the same lectures with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on how I feel that day or how tired I am, whereas when it’s all filmed, I can keep re-shooting until it’s nearly perfect.”  Moving forward, with students being able to access lecture-like material online 24/7, Chris says he can then use the face to face class time for the more dynamic and changing content, specifically “working with the students, having them work through problems, and supporting those who need extra review.”

Chris’s advice to faculty moving to online teaching is simple:  “front-load your course development, at the very least, the organization.”  Be consistent with the course design, and take the first week slowly, teaching students how to navigate your course site and letting them explore.  “I do a weekly news feed: they get an announcement about the lab for the current week, and they get an announcement with the schedule and other miscellaneous pieces of information.”  And that consistency, that ongoing presence in the News, decreased frustration.  “It took me three to four times the amount of time it normally would to set up my D2L site, but if you think it through carefully and set everything up in advance, it makes a huge difference than if you are tweaking everything on the fly.”

In addition to keeping videos to support his labs, Chris says that “there’s a degree of flexibility in online teaching that’s really exciting.”  He told me that he has been interested in flipping his classroom, as he did for his SIP course, for a while, but “it’s one of these things where when you’re in the middle of the term, it seems like an enormous effort and a risk – it probably would have taken me years to get around to trying it.”  But this model is something he is interested in continuing with.  “It would be obvious for students who can’t make the normal college times work to meet in person twice a week for an hour and put the rest of the course online, and use the best of both worlds. I’ll probably try the flipped classroom approach moving forward, depending on what our classroom capacities are. I might do something like every second week the labs/classes are in-person, and then every other week they’re online.”

I am discovering as I talk to faculty members about their experiences that they have an amazing inventiveness for creating metaphors when describing the past year.  Chris told me that another faculty member described last year as “a tight-rope walk over a live volcano.”  And Chris himself likened it to running a marathon and having to learn how to pace it so you don’t run out of steam.  But aside from never having enough time to feel like he could do everything he wanted to do when developing and teaching his online courses, Chris says “I hope that this past year has been enough disruption that some of what we have learned will stick. It would be great if we could find ways for faculty to share what’s been working well for them. I’m really curious as to what everyone’s been doing in terms of online delivery. I’m exhausted, but I’m really excited and I think having some time to reflect as a community would be great!”

Bob is a part-time faculty member (who moved to a Continuing position on April 26, 2021) in the School of Business who teaches Business 150 (Introduction to Management).  Last March/April, he was one of the instructors who suddenly moved from being fully face-to-face to fully online, choosing an asynchronous mode for the last five weeks of his course.  Bob says that “moving to asynchronous was easy for me because I already had my materials prepared, although I didn’t have any videos which would have been helpful. But while it worked out well for me, students missed that regular class time.”  In addition, he had already prepared online exams so the final assessment piece last April was not a problem for him.

For summer of 2020, Bob stuck to an asynchronous model, but as he moved towards teaching in the fall, he decided to do a blend of synchronous and asynchronous, which he found worked much better for the students because of the scheduled synchronous sessions.  “The summer term was much more engaging for both me and the students compared to the end of the Winter term. There were some challenges getting things set up, but I worked with instructional designers in eLearning and I think without that, the whole thing would have been a colossal fail.”  Bob found a lot of support from his colleagues as well.  “We were sharing our experiences with each other, so we were learning from that as well.”

Bob feels that students should have confidence in their instructors to deliver their courses effectively no matter what the teaching environment, even if instructors don’t feel confident themselves, and he admits that sometimes the technology gets in the way of doing things like group work.  “We need be transparent about how the online classroom is going to work. And so that’s the approach I took, saying to the students, look, this is all new to us. We’re going to try this out. If it doesn’t work, the sky’s not going to fall, and we’re going to learn something new together. And so with that approach, and if you can laugh at yourself, the failures are a little easier to bear.  But, when you come back to the next class have it figured out so students can have confidence in the technology.”  Another challenge Bob faced was time.  From developing the course, to giving feedback to students, “that’s all layers and layers and layers of extra time we put in. But that extra time isn’t really factored into what you would normally do for your class, especially when doing a combination of synchronous and asynchronous. So for me, finding extra time was the most significant challenge to moving online.”

One of the positives of online learning Bob mentioned to me several times is that “although it takes more time to manage things, you’re giving an opportunity for every student to have a voice in the conversation that they wouldn’t have had in face-to-face classroom. I think there’s some magic to that because they’re contributing in a meaningful way.”  And with those voices comes a new depth of discussion.  “I saw that enhanced opportunity for students in the depth of the writing and the feedback they give to each other.  For example, when they say, ‘I hadn’t thought of that – you brought up some points here that have made me rethink this whole thing,’ I have to ask if that would have happened without this opportunity.”

Bob had some good advice for faculty moving their courses online.  “Do your homework, learn the environment especially if you will be teaching synchronously.  Contact eLearning for help, and figure out what you want to do in your classroom and make sure that you can actually do it!”  He also cautions to consider how much material to give students, and how much they should be able to access all at once.  “Understand what content students need and make sure it’s available to them when they need it, then articulate that clearly to students.  Make sure there’s a shared expectation about what’s going to happen so there is no confusion.”

Moving forward, Bob says the past year has presented “opportunities for us to think about things differently and to integrate some of what we used and learned when we get back into the classroom,” for example, creating space and time for students to process information so they can come into the classroom more prepared.  “I’m going to be much more insistent on students doing the prep before they come to class and structure my classes so they are more about the application of the materials that have already been shared.”  This kind of flipping is not a new concept to Bob, but the online experience has highlighted the benefits of it.

Bob will continue using videos to support his classes.  “Videos allow for an extension of class work into the online space, as well as provide a resource to help students make sense of things, to reaffirm a point, or allow them to review specific topics. I don’t think that’s something I would have done had we not had this transition.”  And he will also continue to use the discussion forums to support every student’s voice being heard, “allowing them, especially if they’re struggling with English, to formulate their thoughts, to think about what they want to say, and to be able to better express themselves.”

Some final thoughts from Bob which echo some of my own thoughts these days: “I think the transition back to the classroom in September is going to be as interesting as leaving the classroom was because there are things that we’re going to want to do that we won’t be able to do right away. Then the question becomes, do we have the space and means to have that conversation so we can work towards making the classroom experience different than it was pre-COVID?  I’m confident that we’ll be able to take a lot of what we’ve done, hang onto it, and start rethinking how we approach things.  We had the tools before, but now I’m able to use them in a way that will enhance my ability in the classroom. I’m kind of excited by it all!”

Tanis teaches in the Centre for Sport and Exercise Education at Camosun.  This past year, she told me, she was not teaching applied courses, but more lecture-based courses which meant that this, coupled with the fact that Tanis also was seconded to work part time for eLearning as an instructional designer last fall, made the transition from face-to-face to online teaching a bit smoother for her.

In addition, Tanis has previously taught online asynchronously at another institution, and has used D2L to support her courses during her time at Camosun.  So, last fall after the great pivot, Tanis started out teaching mostly asynchronously, using Collaborate only for office hours.  Then this Winter term, she taught primarily synchronously, but she “felt really puzzled at the beginning with Collaborate.  I didn’t know how it would work for me, but I was really keen to dig into it. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I hadn’t done asynchronous teaching before.”  While Tanis was comfortable with the technology and the online teaching side of things, she still faced challenges.  One of the biggest for her was not always knowing how the students were doing. “I had no feedback. I didn’t know how they were, or if they were overwhelmed.  You feel kind of alone in the world, talking into nothing. I wish I had been more proactive in getting ongoing feedback from the students.”  That piece of online teaching, when you lose the ability to see student faces, seems to be what faculty I’ve talked to miss the most.

One thing Tanis has learned from teaching online is how organized it makes you become.  “If you go into face-to-face class, you can just make it happen. But this last year I had my units all laid out in advance, and I created more quizzes that now I’ll be able to use again. So I feel better prepared going back into the classroom having more structure around my courses.”  Teaching online also allowed Tanis to explore the notion of flipping her class. “When learning online, students have to come prepared,” meaning that she, as the instructor, no longer has to drive everything in the class.  In-class can be more about the application and discussion of concepts students have reviewed online.

Over the past year, Tanis has learned to be more patient with herself and her students.  “We have no idea what situation they’re in so we need to have a little bit more compassion for all of us.”  And in addition to being patient with yourself, Tanis advises faculty getting ready to teach online for the first time to “keep it simple, and seek out help from eLearning and from other faculty members. Then you won’t feel so alone.”  And one interesting note that came out of our conversation was how, in spite of technology barriers, we seem to have more compassion for each other being apart than we had when we were all face-to-face.

Tanis is already thinking about what her courses could look like moving forward.  “I would love to keep some of it blended.  For example, keeping the D2L discussion forums to give students space for introspection, and keeping some of the lectures online, leaving the labs face-to-face where students can ask questions and practice. We have to imagine that students may not want a 100% face-to-face classes anymore.  They miss the social aspect of school, meeting up with their friends, but they’re not missing lectures where they’re hiding at the back of the room. So open up the social spaces, but let’s talk about how we can take the best of both worlds for teaching.  I think there’s some really cool combo opportunities we could explore.”

Jessica is Program Lead for the Early Learning and Care (ELC) program at Camosun.  Even though her main role throughout the past year (you know the one) has not been teaching, she has had a lot of experience teaching online having started her career with Northern Lights College (in Prince George) in a fully distance ELC program and then Northwest Community College in Terrace ( now Coast Mountain).  These initial experiences, reaching remote northern communities, many of whom were Indigenous, through distance learning means that for Jessica, concerns about the value of online teaching and learning simply don’t worry her, although she does admit that face to face teaching is a favourite mode for her.

One thing Jessica said that particularly resonated with me was how technology works, or doesn’t, and the impact it has on students and instructors.  “While distance platforms have improved and I’ve seen the progress that’s been made, some of the experiences this fall with implementing or trouble shooting the technology were very replicate of teleconferencing or video conferencing technology from the past. The same barriers and challenges [pop up] whenever we introduce a new piece of technology, and the frustration this last year was very similar.”  And all this leads to the same frustrations Jessica encountered in the past, that faculty encountered this last year “I struggle when I can’t support a student in the way that matches the high standards I have for myself.”  Just as an aside, while Jessica was talking about how similar challenge with technology are now to 12 years ago, I kept hearing a line from that Talking Heads song, “same as it ever was.”

But courses in Jessica’s program were not new to D2L, in fact all of the courses have D2L sites, and faculty in ELC have all used D2L tools in one way or another, and a couple of the courses were already being delivered online before Covid hit.  Because some components of the courses had already been designed for delivery in an online format, “that really helped us decide what courses we could teach online, [and because] most of the instructors really like having a synchronous option because otherwise they find it’s hard to engage the students who aren’t engaging, they could add a synchronous option if they wanted to.”  But of course, moving completely online was still challenging.  “We also have a practicum component, but we paused the practicum because the field was putting a pause on additional adults joining programs.”

Some of the faculty in ELC have also been collaborating on their online course development (before and after the shift last spring), sharing the load of developing content and creating the design and set up for it in D2L. Jessica note “I think when you can collaborate, it’s great because we don’t all have skills that the other one does,” and supporting the strengths of each instructor, and building capacity through collaboration and embracing different ways of creating and designing content she sees as a positive.  “Different faculty, different approaches – I think it’s the multiple ways in which you can engage [that really works], although I’ve also seen that could also be a barrier for some.”

Collaboration and support are a couple of the big takeaways from the past year for Jessica, especially “the opportunity for mentorship of new faculty and faculty who have experience and the opportunity to share resources,” while at the same time being mindful that not everyone has the same interest for collaboration and sharing. “I think that’s something that I learned with this other experience I had that I made a lot of assumptions.  [For example,] don’t assume that everybody has the same understanding of what online learning is, how they would do remote or distance learning, or what’s important for them.”  I certainly understand how easy it is to get caught up a passion for online learning!

Jessica has some advice for instructors moving online:  “I would say definitely attend a couple of workshops so you can see different styles [of online teaching] and find a point person [in eLearning] if you don’t know where to begin and just walk through your course shell with them. If you can, [ask other faculty] to be put into their master D2L shells so you can start to see other people’s styles because then you know what you’re drawn to.”   In addition, Jessica recommends considering what balance of synchronous and asynchronous will work for your courses and students. If you have a course that is very interactive, completely asynchronous may not work for you.  “Think about that contact with students and what you’re comfortable with, and think about what things are really important for you.”

Finally, “try not to think of online as being limiting.  It could be really freeing if you can change your mindset.”  One of Jessica’s mentors (and she does highly recommend finding a mentor who you can bounce ideas off of) “was the first person who taught me that, for a student, it shouldn’t matter how their program is delivered, their experience should be the same. So just because I did my education online and you did yours face to face classroom, it doesn’t mean that one or the other is any lesser – they’re still the same quality education.”  What’s important is what you value in your teaching.  “What’s important to you? Is it important that you develop some skills and are confident being independent?  Do prefer to work with a team that you can rely on? Is it that you are interacting and engaging with your students?”  Whatever your values, concentrate on those.

The ELC program will continue to not only use online tools to support face to face courses, but also to deliver courses completely online, as well as to develop more online learning opportunities (or as Jessica prefers to call them, multi-mode or distance rather than “online”) through support from the Ministry of Advance Education.  As faculty embrace the option of multi-mode teaching, working together when possible to share the load, and find new ways of engaging with students in the program, Jessica sees a future program that includes a wide range of options for students attending courses from across the province.