Tip: New Semester Round-Up, Fall 2021 edition
Fall is here! Both more and less than what we anticipated...
When I did my first “new semester round-up” last spring, I focused on surviving a second disrupted semester: how to work with students who were ill or quarantine, how to adopt online asynchronous and face-to-face activities to a remote but synchronous environment, how to manage the disruption while balancing non-teaching roles and duties. The hope, of course, was that spring 2021 would be the last fully disrupted semester. As we are facing another semester that is just as much in flux as the past two, I wanted to highlight a few resources from the past year that I think might be helpful.
Getting started & first week activities
Much has been written over the summer about the mental and emotional fatigue that our students (and faculty & staff) feel. As I have written before, we each need to consider our own capacity for our work and how we set priorities, and - when a crisis rears - how we will make decisions about priorities. There may be very little we can do to ease the angst of the moment, but we can try to make our classroom space a welcoming place. Icebreakers and warm-up activities can help students to connect with their classmates. Another concern is that students are coming out of two disrupted years of schooling, and are going to find it extra challenging to manage the balance of school work with their daily lives. At the same time, more and more students are working, part and full-time, and involved in family caretaking. This time management activity helps students reflect on what they need to do to be successful in balance all their responsibilities.
Assessment & grading
Concerns over students being tempted to take shortcuts on their assignments. Whether that is the plethora of sites offering to write papers for you or repositories of existing papers and other assignments to search through, there’s just no way to create a “cheat-proof” assessment. If a student is motivated, they will be able to get outside help on any assignment you give. Moving away from exams and using alternative assessments and more authentic assessments are part of being thoughtful about developing assessment plans that discourage cheating. I use stacked assignments to incentivize completing preparatory assignments - it makes for better student learning, and it helps encourage them to do their own work. If they are having to respond to your or peers’ feedback and incorporate that feedback into the next version of their assignment, it’s very difficult to skimp on doing the work themselves.
Making flexible course choices
I had so hoped that this semester we would not have to worry about course delivery mode. But even in places without ill and quarantined students - which I can’t imagine is anywhere right now - students have discovered the benefits of online classes. Even when they say they want in-person classes, many institutions are seeing opposite enrollment patterns. Not all institutions are continuing to offer remote synchronous or asynchronous courses, but I would wager that many more of us are than we thought we would be. And of course, we all may be transitioning in and out of online learning, depending on factors outside of our control. So you may still want to think about what we’ve learned over the past year about HyFlex/“ZoomFlex” and remote synchronous delivery in general, as well as specific strategies for making videos and microlectures and using Google slides and Google docs. If you’re still tweaking your syllabi, consider how they build relationships and are visually appealing. And if your institution is one facing rolling quarantines, continued flexibility in design, low-stakes assignments, and different ways students can meet course objectives is still helpful.
Last January, I was a bit foolishly optimistic about what fall 2021 would look like, hoping that we might be back to normal, but I did get right one thing:
Even once we all return to our campuses, it’s hard to imagine that everything will be normal again. Given the challenges our institutions are facing, I think it’s safe to predict that we’re still at the beginning of a lot more disruption to come.
With all the resources available out there, I’m honored and delighted that you choose to read mine. Your paid subscriptions helped me send a donation to Northern Virginia Community College’s Emergency Student Aid fund, which provides much-needed support to students experiencing hardship. Future paid subscriptions and one-time donations to Tips for Teaching Professors will continue to support this and other student-focused causes. If you have a suggestion for the next recipient, I would love to hear from you.
