{"id":3096,"date":"2020-08-03T00:44:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T04:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=3096"},"modified":"2020-07-31T08:56:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T12:56:49","slug":"video-killed-the-radio-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2020\/08\/03\/video-killed-the-radio-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Killed the Radio Star"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My new stylish shield.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s almost time to return to fall classes, such as they are. I feel very lucky to be where I am: my institution is not forcing us to teach in person if we do not want to. The students also are under much more control than at other universities; they all are undergoing a mandatory 14-day supervised quarantine after a tiered and staged arrival, and they all will be issued masks which they literally will be ordered to wear. I also am very lucky to have a decent personal supply of Clorox wipes, gloves, masks, and even a face shield.<\/p>\n

Having said that, I made a very difficult decision not to teach in-person.<\/p>\n

A large part of this came down to \u201cconsistency.\u201d Because of the quarantining of the students, the first two weeks of our 16 week semester were to be exclusively online. Fine. There still has not been a decision made about Turkey Day, but it is official that should the students be allowed home then the remaining 3-4 weeks of the semester will be online. That means 12.5-37.5% of my class is guaranteed to be online. And the idea of starting online, THEN switching to in-person (where only a third of the class could physically fit with social distancing measures so that would be a fun circus to ring lead), THEN returning to online\u2026it sounded insane, unnecessarily chaotic, and counterproductive.<\/p>\n

And this saddened me. I love teaching and know that I\u2019m better at it than I am at most other things. I love the pre-class banter with students. I love taking questions on the fly as they come in. I love office hours, and even keep cookies and puzzles in my office for a more \u201cchill\u201d vibe. Had I been able to start my semester in-person, things would be different. I would have wanted to at least meet my students face(shield)-to-face(mask). Show them that even in a pandemic I\u2019m willing to \u201cshow up\u201d for them, so then maybe\u2014just maybe\u2014they would feel a little more of a moral obligation to \u201cshow up\u201d for me.<\/p>\n

Once my decision to teach solely online was made, I sat through multiple teaching seminars where people talked about how we could recreate in-class experiences online. Everything from group work, to clicker-style polling. From a traditional lecture to student presentations. From Panopto to QuickNotes, from Procreate to Keynote. I\u2019ve Zoom-ed, and Google-met, and Face-timed, and even Skype-d about all this.<\/p>\n

And after about my third such meeting, I finally started to think:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we even TRYING to mimic an in-person classroom online? Why do we believe that online can do exactly what in-person can? \u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

I felt so silly taking so long to come up with that realization too. I\u2019m not new to online teaching: I\u2019ve been a course instructor for five years at The Art of Problem Solving (AoPS). That exposure and seeing first-hand as a teacher how online can function probably is what kept me so relatively cool, calm, and collected when we all had to go online in March. Not only are AoPS classes online, but the classrooms themselves are video and audio free. That\u2019s right: there\u2019s a company out there, that by many measurements would be called \u201csuccessful\u201d, that gets 5th thru 12th graders learning non-trivial math at 75-120 minute stretches and it\u2019s completely text based<\/b>. No cute backgrounds or avatars. No videos and colorful graphics. No polling apps or breakout rooms. Which also made me wonder how AoPS can be so entertainment-free with 10 year-olds while we feel obligated to barrage constantly the senses and minds of 20 year-olds.<\/p>\n

But that actually might be how AoPS can get away with being so \u201cbare bones\u201d: their student body is younger. The younger the students, the fewer preconceived notions of what a math class should be. AoPS kids learn very early-on that you don\u2019t need videos, and polling, and group work. They learn quickly to use discussion boards, and unlike one of the primary selling points of platforms like Piazza these kids don\u2019t need anonymity\u2014they learn it\u2019s OK to make a (public) mistake.<\/p>\n

I started to think that this may be why in part things are so chaotic for us as college instructors: not only do the students have 12+ years of notions of what makes a \u201cnormal,\u201d \u201csuccessful\u201d, etc., math class, but we as faculty are also set in our ways. We\u2019re not just dealing with the math right now\u2014we all<\/b> are having to spend nontrivial time learning a new format. A new way of thinking about the dissemination of math.<\/p>\n

Online learning cannot replace in-person learning. And so while I find it noble that many are trying to simulate a more \u201cnormal\u201d classroom environment, my<\/b><\/span> goal for this term is to embrace that which online provides that in-person specifically never could. What are those things? I\u2019m still trying to formulate a list (and encourage others in comments to add), but here\u2019s what I\u2019ve come up with so far:<\/p>\n