With the rest of the semester’s classes being
moved online, professors at UTD have had to adjust their classwork to
accommodate.
Kathy Lingo, a professor at the school of arts
and humanities, said faculty were alerted through email by university officials
before spring break to update their syllabi and get ready to make the switch to
online courses. Lingo said that like many other professors, she was expecting
the switch when it became known that COVID-19 was classified as a pandemic. She
teaches improvisation and theatre courses, which mostly incorporate
face-to-face interaction and in-person acting, but said they could still
accomplish this through video calls and putting together recorded video
performances.
“I don’t think anyone is truly prepared for
what happened to us, but I became prepared pretty quickly,” Lingo said. “I’ve
always been, what I like to call, an in-your-face person. I’ve always been in
the classroom and very active with my students and I enjoy that so much. But
FaceTime is very nice. We can do a lot of things live still, but I really do
love being present with the students and so we’ll take it to FaceTime, we’ll
take it to video recorded performances. We’ll do everything we can, but
nothing, I don’t think in the long run will ever actually take the place of
being in front of that student.”
Professors who mainly incorporate lectures in
their courses are using Blackboard Collaborate, Microsoft Teams and other
programs as well as recording their lectures to post on eLearning. Associate
professor of physics Jason Slinker said he plans to use WebEx and have his
PowerPoint slides displayed in real time for students to follow along if they
choose and upload recorded versions of the lecture afterward.
“The point is I don’t want a student that, all
of a sudden if there’s a drop of the internet connection or whatnot, to miss
the content,” Slinker said. “(For) some people, if you just simply don’t have a
very reliable internet connection, then live web interfaces like this might not
be the best interface that they can work with … I’m definitely prepared to keep
adjusting as needed to help the students. The whole point of this is to help
them learn better.”
Slinker said one of his biggest concerns is
conducting exams without interface issues while ensuring the students
themselves are taking the exam online, not someone posing as a student,
although his exams are typically open-note and students are provided an
equation sheet during the exam. He said Qualtrics was one software he
considered using to conduct the exams, and methods to ensure student integrity
during exams include asking for their NetID and randomizing the exam questions.
“The exams, of course, are going to need to be
done quite carefully. I’m definitely following through carefully on that,”
Slinker said. “That’s something we can take a little bit of tripping back and
forth when it comes to the lecture. For
an exam, setting that up for a set period of time, that needs to be done
smoothly and stably.”
Making the switch to online caused syllabus
readjustments such as cancelling exams, assignments and changing the way
coursework is turned in. Senior lecturer of BBS Salena Brody said one of her
classes involved a service learning track, and those students had to switch to
a different track because service learning was no longer viable. She said when
the prospect of going online arose, she contacted several of her colleagues
within BBS to discuss what to do to make the switch efficiently.
“Everyone participated and … just trying to
figure this out to do something that was best for our students and feasible for
us to put together in this very short time that we have to turn around our
courses to be online,” Brody said. “ It’s really a big ask to get faculty to
transform their courses in such a short amount of time, but everyone I think is
rising to the challenge that I know.”
She said one of her concerns with switching to
online courses was related to student accessibility and making sure students
with accessibility concerns were accommodated. She said one of the first emails
she received after the announcement was from a student with hearing issues
concerned about captioning for the lectures, and she then had to learn how to
include auto-captioning since this feature isn’t included in Blackboard
Collaborate.
“I had her and other students in mind when I
was trying to figure out how to set up my courses. That’s one thing that I think is going to be
a real challenge as we do this roll out is making sure that our teaching is
accessible,” Brody said. “I’m a little bit worried about some of our students
and they’re going to need to access the material online and the next question
is I hope that there’s enough support for those students in this new normal to
be able to finish their coursework along with anyone who doesn’t have a laptop
at home or a webcam.”
Lingo said if future class resumes on campus,
she plans to incorporate the course material she’s using for her online classes
in her regular coursework for the future such as using Ted Talks, online
textbooks and databases featuring short videos on the topics her class
discusses.
“I really think that you can look at things
always in two ways, negatively and positively. And I’m human, of course, I
complain and gripe and everything else, but once you have to accept something,
you can either look at it as a misery or an opportunity,” Lingo said. “I looked
at it as an opportunity and I really did find some very cool things that I’m
excited about. I think they’re valuable.”
With the university shut down for the rest of
the semester and campus operations being restricted to essential personnel
only, professors are continuing to adjust to new challenges and unforeseen
circumstances. Slinker said UTD’s response to the situation was one of the more
straightforward university responses in communicating and devising a plan of
action for campus response to COVID-19.
“We’re all responding to something that’s
fairly unprecedented or at least the last time we had something anywhere close
to this level of magnitude of the concern was before I think any of us were
alive,” Slinker said. “For all of us it’s been a lot of questions of unknown
and I think the university took, a fairly smart, decisive action that allowed
first and foremost the safety of our students, and staff and faculty here at UT
Dallas.”