6/10/2020 Teaching Online Classes During The COVID-19 Pandemic : NPR

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'Panic-gogy': Teaching Online Classes During

The Coronavirus Pandemic
March 19, 2020 · 9:00 AM ET

ANYA KAMENETZ

LA Johnson/NPR

As colleges across the country pivot online on very short notice, there are a host of
complications — from laptops and Internet access to mental health and financial
needs.

Digital learning experts have some surprising advice: do less.

"Please Do A Bad Job Of Putting Your Courses Online" is the title of one popular blog
post by Rebecca Barrett-Fox, an assistant professor of sociology at Arkansas State
University. Her point: "your class is not the highest priority of their or your life right

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6/10/2020 Teaching Online Classes During The COVID-19 Pandemic : NPR

now." She suggests not requiring students to show up online at a particular time and
making all exams open-book and open-Internet.

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Luke Waltzer, the director of the Center on Teaching and Learning at the Graduate
Center, CUNY, laid out his guidelines for transitioning to a "minimum viable course"
in a single Tweet:

Luke Waltzer
@lwaltzer

Minimum Viable (transitioned) Course, if your department lets you:

*send students clear, bulleted email with things to do & resources

*include times when they can call you or otherwise connect

*suggest benchmarks, but don’t require

*collect work via email, save into folders

213 7:30 PM - Mar 13, 2020

87 people are talking about this

Some colleges like Duke, Smith, MIT, Georgetown and Grinnell are starting to offer
students the option of taking their Spring courses pass/fail given the circumstances.

In a time of virtual reality classrooms and AI-enabled automated tutoring programs,

why are the experts in digital teaching calling for professors to simplify?

"Everyone's freaked out," says Sean Michael Morris. He's in the School of Education
and Human Development at the University of Colorado, Denver and the director of
Digital Pedagogy Lab, an organization focused on digital learning, technology and
social justice.

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6/10/2020 Teaching Online Classes During The COVID-19 Pandemic : NPR

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Transcript

Sean Michael Morris says that in this unprecedented time, "Recognizing that we're
also human, we also have to figure this out together is incredibly important. The idea
of being able to just port what you're doing in a classroom into an online environment
has its own problems. But trying to do that in the midst of a pandemic is another
problem altogether."

Morris and other colleagues have a tongue-in-cheek name for what they're doing right
now: "Panic-gogy" (for panic + pedagogy).

On one level, Panicgogy means understanding students' practicalities. Some only have
smartphones. Some have family responsibilities. Some have been sent home and need
to find a new place to live, new job, and new health insurance. Professors may feel that
the simplest option would be transitioning to class over video chat, but for all these
practical reasons "It's not really realistic to think that students can just show up and
start taking class at the same time every day in an online environment," says Morris.

Morris also suggests that professors not rely solely on the university's official software,
known as a learning management system, but that they make themselves reachable by
as many means as possible while preserving privacy: Facebook, Twitter, email,
WhatsApp group. And make sure that students have the opportunity to be connected
to each other as well.

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He also suggests that professors make themselves as familiar as possible with all the
types of help universities and communities are offering: from counseling, to
emergency loans and other financial assistance.

Robin DeRosa is director of the Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative at

Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She says, "I think the first thing is we
are not building online courses or converting your face to face courses to online
learning. Really, what we're doing is we are trying to extend a sense of care to our
students and trying to build a community that's going to be able to work together to
get through the learning challenges that we have."

DeRosa points out that creating an excellent online course can take a year of
development and collaboration among people with different skills.

"So if people think that in three to five days they're going to rejigger their course and
build some super amazing online platform, that's probably unlikely to happen," she
says.

DeRosa suggests that we ask students for their own suggestions on the best ways to
keep in touch.

"The idea here is really to help our students feel included in the process of rethinking
education for a challenging time."

DeRosa also suggests that professors bring COVID-19 onto the curriculum.

"Whatever field you teach, I think it's worth asking how is that field affected by the
public health crisis and what contributions could the field be making right now to help
people in their communities."

Even though the focus can sometimes be on technology, tools, and logistics, Morris,
from the University of Colorado, Denver, says that what is really required from
professors at this time is compassion.

"The real skill that Panicgogy requires is sort of a critical compassion, if you will, the
ability to look at the situation as it really is. Figure out what's going on, how you can
operate within that, and how you can be compassionate in that as well."

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