How the Pandemic Influenced Teaching and Assessment in One Program

 A group of international educators writing about online teaching during the COVID-19 crisis note that when life returns to normal, “the worst thing that could happen is not learning from the crisis we experienced” (Rapanta, et al. 941).

Assistant Professor of Wellness and Adventure Education (WAE), Timothy Abraham, probably agrees. At a recent meeting of the Academic Assessment Committee, Abraham stated that in his program, instructors have no intention of returning to their pre-pandemic approach to teaching and learning.  

He said, “What we learned during this pandemic improved how we teach our students.”

Like most of us, Abraham misses being able to interact daily with students and colleagues, particularly when eating lunch in the cafeteria. And a great deal of the instruction in his discipline requires close contact with students, so the abrupt change to a virtual environment last spring posed a considerable challenge.

In the fall semester, however, he discovered that the hybrid approach resulted in his using face-to-face instructional time more productively.

While acknowledging that lectures have value, Abraham spends face-to-face time having students engage in hands-on, active learning. Likewise, his WAE colleague, assistant professor Megen Hemstrought, uses face-to-face time to incorporate 21st century skills like critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and technology literacy.

Hemstrought says that when students came to class two or three times a week, as in the past, many did not prepare ahead of time. She finds that having class less often (usually once weekly) motivates students to prepare better in advance so they can have more robust conversations, do more meaningful active learning, and delve deeper into the topics at hand.  She uses TED talks, textbook readings, and articles to get students prepared before coming to class. 

Abraham creates ”discovery activities” to help students make connections to the material and pique their interest to learn more. He then uses asynchronous learning modalities in Engage, the College’s learning management system to “fill in the holes.” Students may watch the instructional videos on their own time and at their own pace, giving this strategy the added benefit of supporting an individualized approach to teaching. The Knowmia tool used to create videos and make them accessible to all learners provides video analytics so that instructors can see how much of each video is viewed and how much time each student spends attending to the lecture.

This, Abraham contends, gives faculty a more objective way to measure student participation in a course than how they might have been doing in a traditional on-ground class.

Abraham and Hemstrought agree that not only have their pedagogical methods improved, so have their assessment strategies. Abraham reports, “I’m not always using ‘tests’ to assess learning, like I’ve done in the past.” Instead, he is opting for writing assignments, reflections, and practical application projects.

“It creates a little more work grading on my end, but I want to give them an assessment that makes them think. Plus, this prevents them from simply looking up answers at the same time they’re taking a test at home on Engage.”

Rapanta, et all. say that how we respond to a crisis “may precipitate enhanced learning and teaching practices in the postdigital era” (924).

This has certainly been true in the Wellness and Adventure Education program and probably in other programs as well at Utica College. It’s an important narrative to document.

 Work Cited

Rapanta, Chrysi, Luca Botturi, Peter Goodyear, Lourdes Guardia, and Marguerite Koole. “Online University Teaching During and After the Covid-19 Crisis: Refocusing Teacher Presence andLearning Activity. Postdigital Science and Education, vol. 2, 2020, pp. 923 – 945.