College Online

Faculty

Students

How has the transition to online learning been for you and what have you learned?

It has been going pretty well, and I found a lot of things I like about teaching this way. It isn’t something I thought about actually having to do, but now that we are in this situation, I’ve explored this space a little differently.

For me, one of the interesting parts of this switch is that for the last few years I have taught workshops with a colleague who is a faculty member in Canada. In particular, we’ve been teaching workshops for the past two years on how to use videos in the classroom. I talk about the in-class part of using videos, but she does a lot with remote learning. She talks about how you can use Edpuzzle to put questions into a video clip. Students have to answer the questions and it downloads it into a spreadsheet. I’ve always paid attention to what she is doing, but as soon as I realized we were going online, I knew I needed to pull out her notes. It was exactly what I needed.

I’ve had to think about my teaching in a whole different way. I don’t necessarily like the quarantine part, but I’ve evaluated what is important and what is not as important as I thought it was, so this has been a really good exercise in that regard. Taking a silver lining where you can find it, I’ve really taken a look at what I do and how I can do it in different ways.

How have you been able to continue to teach labs?

If this was going to happen, this is the best time of the semester for my course because these are very data-rich labs. We are emphasizing biological concepts and we are also pushing a lot of how to work with data sets, how to manage your data, how to analyze it and how to produce meaningful graphs and and figures.

All things considered, this wasn’t a bad time for it to happen. I do miss the students actually getting to hold the skulls and looking at the plants. There is nothing to replace that tangible experience. We normally teach the labs by students watching a video we’ve developed that gives them the protocols and shows them what we want them to do and how the equipment works. We’ve still been able to do that. We’ve gone back in past semesters and found high-quality data sets from past labs. Now we have our existing videos and resources, a data set we are giving them and I’ve been making videos the last few days showing the students what we are talking about. Even though they aren’t in labs, they can at least see what we are talking about. For all the limitations of what we can’t do, we can do a bit and get things done.”

Have past experiences benefited you in this situation?

For the last five years I’ve been working on universal design, trying to make labs accessible to all students. In particular, one of my collaborators is blind. Biology is a very visual science. We wondered how we adapt labs to someone who is visually impaired. We developed a modification of a lab exercise, and the value of this is when you make any modifications in an exercise for any group with an impairment is that it helps everybody. That’s what we’ve been testing in my classes for several semesters now. This activity that helps visually impaired people helps those who can see just as much.

Now that I’m in this online experience, I’m really trying to think about what I can do that would help any student. I’m trying to stay away from saying “I can’t do what I normally do and this won’t work.” I will admit that I did that for 30 minutes, but then I took the mindset that we’ve got to do this. It may not be what I wanted, but I’m trying to find the best ways to do what I know is best for teaching, and get that to my students and help them in this format, and I think it is working. We meet every Monday online live and have a full hour-long session where I give them the highlights and a schedule of activities of what to do. I’m trying to give my students once a week where I’m there, then everything else they can do on their own. We have an additional hour where they meet with their lab TA, so they’ve got two hours a week where they’ve got one-on-one instruction with someone on the course staff. We have bulletin boards where they can post questions. We are trying to use the technology in the best way we can and meet everyone’s different needs.

What type of feedback have you received from your students? 

They like it. Obviously, it is not ideal, and I have got a few emails saying they miss the class environment, but they are saying this is working. We’ve had to make some accommodations for students. I’m teaching students in Alaska, Korea, Brazil and across the United States. We are trying to accommodate times, and I’ve let some students switch labs.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when I ask if there are questions on Zoom, they’ll put questions on the board. I told the students if they asked questions like this when we are face-to-face, they have no idea what heights we can achieve. They are much more interactive now.

I don’t want to have this sort of thing every year, and I had never thought I could teach a hybrid course, but now I’m really starting to think about it. I’ve been teaching long enough that when going to class prepared was a stack of transparencies and my cool bucket of sidewalk chalk so I could put multi-colored diagrams on the board, but it’s a whole different world. I would have never thought that videos and other resources would be good, but if you use them right, there’s a lot we should be exploring. I’m a whole lot more open to exploring different models.

This experience has been good about bringing together the community of education researchers. If I can put my stuff out there on the web and my other colleagues are doing different labs in their specialties and putting them out there, we can all do this together. It is just a matter of communicating and sharing. It is only going to get better if we help. We’ve got to do something to make this negative situation a positive.

Explain the process of moving the Math Center online? What went into doing it and who was involved in the transition that made it possible?

The Math Center director, Christine Tinsley, and the Math Center associate director, Ashley Berger, led the efforts to take the Math Center online, with many other members of the FYM team serving as guinea pigs when ideas were being piloted. Once the University announced its plans to go fully online right before Spring Break, the entire FYM team began learning how to use digital resources to create online learning spaces. This included mastering the Zoom platform and its breakout rooms feature. During Spring Break, there was speculation on ways to use the breakout rooms, followed by testing. Once a viable process was determined, protocols were explicitly written down for Math Center staff, training videos were created for tutors, and detailed information regarding the plans to go online were disseminated to FYM course coordinators and instructors. Math Center staff conducted training and held question-and-answer sessions on Sunday and Monday following Spring Break, and the Math Center opened virtually on Tuesday, March 24. The hard work put in preparing for this online Grand Opening in addition to the flexibility and patience of the Math Center staff has allowed a smooth, successful transition, so that our service of OU students could continue without disruption during this intense period. In fact, I have been asked by other universities, and have shared, how OU's Math Center was able to make this transition.

What types of obstacles did you and your team discover, and how did you overcome them in the transition?

One of the first obstacles was determining what platform we would use and how it might work for tutoring. Next, we had to procure a Zoom account for the Math Center. That is where the College of Arts and Sciences stepped in to help us out. Finally, the FYM team members spent their Spring Break testing out how Zoom works. Once we learned about what this platform offered, the Math Center director and associate director worked with veteran tutors to develop protocols and write out explicit instructions for students entering the new virtual tutoring environment. 

One of the more recent obstacles involved having to incorporate a password for students to enter the Math Center, since this was not originally part of the plan. This required disseminating the change in the virtual meeting room link and the password to all of the course coordinators and instructors in the courses that the Math Center serves.

Are there any examples of how you have had to be innovative in either transitioning everything online or in how the Center is currently helping students?

We are using the breakout room feature of the Zoom platform to place students in virtual rooms with tutors. This mirrors how the Math Center works in a physical environment, with different “rooms” being assigned to certain courses. For example, a student in a section of MATH 1743 would be sent to a different room than a student in MATH 1503. This allows our tutors to focus on course-specific mathematics questions.

Fortunately, we have some great tutors who have been very innovative in how they can tutor online. Some of them have tablets and find the Whiteboard feature of Zoom handy; others have used physical whiteboards or even regular paper to write on in cooperation with the video-conferencing camera options on Zoom; others have used the screen-sharing feature to access additional digital platforms and resources on their home computers and laptops. It is fascinating to watch the tutors’ ingenuity and see how resilient and creative the Sooner spirit can be.

We also have awesome front desk staff! The front desk staff now have an even more important role in the online environment. They are the ones who direct both tutors and students to the correct rooms. They also are the ones who are recording the Math Center data, so that we are able to continue to track usage statistics. The front desk staff are not only hardworking, they are also innovative and welcoming. For example, some of them are using photos of the Math Center as their virtual backgrounds on Zoom, so that students can see online what they would have seen in person when visiting the Math Center.

How many students does the Center serve normally and how many has it served since moving online?

With help from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Math Center expanded in 2018 from seating 65 students in 1,877 ft2 (an environment that often saw students having to wait in the hall to enter or sitting on the floor of the Math Center) to a space that now includes five different seating areas that accommodate students in 4,723 ft2 with three entrances. The number of student visits grew from 15,690 in the 2014-2015 academic year to over 44,000 last academic year. Last year, there were about 3,000 unique students who visited the Math Center that corresponds to about 60% of the eligible students (i.e., those enrolled in courses that the Math Center serves). On average, there were typically 1,700 visits per week to the Math Center.

Since moving online, we started the first days with only a few students, which is typical after Spring Break, even when the Math Center operates in a physical environment. However, the next week, our numbers went up to serving almost 80 students, and now in the first three weeks, we are now at over 200 student visits since going online. While we may not reach the in-person number, we still look for this number to continue to increase, as it typically does during the semester, as the next round of midterm exams comes around. It is encouraging that as the semester continues, coordinators and instructors are reporting that students are getting more comfortable with the online environment, which should also ensure increased visitation as the semester continues. 

How have students reacted to the transition and what has the feedback been from them so far?

The feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive. One of the MATH 1743 students mentioned in an email to her instructor that she has always struggled with math and is “forever grateful” that the Math Center is still available without any reduction in hours or services. In fact, we have been asked to continue to offer some online tutoring, even when OU classes go back to the in-person format. Students have commented that it would be wonderful to have this kind of access from their dorms, without having to walk to the physical location of the Math Center. One of the MATH 1523 students wrote, “The thing about the Math Center is how indisputably it feels like they want you to win. ...Obviously, nothing can top the energy of a tutor high-fiving your “light bulb” moments, but the hours of availability are generally still the same and I’ve continued to receive the guidance I need for homework comprehension, class preparation and overall encouragement. Super grateful. Rock on, Math Center.”

What have you seen from those who work in the Math Center that has impressed you most? 

Our FYM course coordinators and instructors have really risen to the occasion. They have worked diligently to enhance their digital expertise so that they are now able to create environments that engage students. One MATH 1823 student wrote the following to her instructor, “You are doing a fantastic job of keeping us engaged in the class after the transition to online. This semester has totally changed my view of math from something I dread to something I look forward to doing. You are appreciated.”

The coordinators, in particular, have spent countless hours creating and curating videos, designing online assessments and determining ways to be as fair and as flexible as possible with students who are also adapting to online learning. They each put in 40+ hours over Spring Break. Since classes started online, the FYM team has also had a number of late night and weekend meetings to try to ensure that the rollout to students would be as easy for them as possible. I am so proud of the entire FYM team as well as all of the FYM students who are showing their Sooner tenacity in not only surviving but excelling in this online frontier. The FYM team has been incredibly generous in helping, not only the Math Center, but also the rest of the math department getting even upper-division math classes working well online. The FYM team has shared strategies, resources and tech tips in the Canvas discussion board. They have also taken turns running online seminars for the department members to beef up their Gradescope, Zoom and Canvas skills. Seeing all of this makes me proud to be a member of OU.