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.

Educating for Professional Success

I’m not surprised when I hear that employers are dissatisfied with the skills recent college graduates bring to the workplace. I’ve been hearing that since the 1980s. However, employers’ complaints historically focused on what are called “soft skills,” abilities that are typically associated with the liberal arts or the co-curricular experience.

More recently, employers have criticized college graduates for lacking “hard skills” as well, and large corporations report investing $30,000 to $50,000 a year to fill the gaps between what employers want and what college graduates have learned.

Utica College’s Associate Professor of Computer Science, Ronny L. Bull, has been addressing this gap for years.  

It all starts with building relationships. Bull has ties with several area employers, and he uses these connections to learn how prepared UC computer science graduates are when they enter the profession. Through informal conversations, he learns where graduates’ knowledge and skills are lacking, and he uses this information to make modifications to the curriculum and to refine pedagogy. For example, when he learned that graduates needed more knowledge and experience with coding, he revised all of his 100-level to 400-level courses in order to teach coding skills that tied back to the course objectives. Well-crafted coding projects reinforced the understanding of this content by engaging the students. As students progressed through their degree program, they could expect more and more challenging coding problems presented to them in higher level courses.  A secondary effect was that they were better prepared for the real world.

“It’s not just about knowledge, though,” he said. “Interpersonal skills, teamwork, and problem-solving are other competencies we address through our curricular offerings, since these ‘soft skills’ are critical to a graduate’s success as well.”

By networking with employers, Dr. Bull is able to “create a pipeline of people who know how to do a job.” His success is indicated by the fact that area employers ask for Utica College graduates, mostly because “they don’t have to train them,” Bull stated.

A carefully designed curriculum that has hands-on experiences built into its courses and that provides  students with real-world opportunities during their undergraduate years allows Dr. Bull to develop students’ knowledge and skills so that they can be successful in the professional workplace. More importantly, however, it gives him insight into individual students’ interests, abilities, and aptitudes. In turn, this allows him to match student interns and graduates with employers.

Helping students see what kinds of opportunities exist in the computing industry is part of the education Dr. Bull provides his students. Prior to the pandemic, he regularly brought students to tour local facilities and meet employers. On many of these visits, the employers they were introduced to were Utica College computer science alumni! It isn’t just career-readiness that Bull emphasizes, however. The curriculum and its emphasis on real-world problems and projects also prepares students for graduate education, and over the years, Bull has brought dozens of students to conferences sponsored by ACM, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Professor Bull also relies on the relationships he has established with computer science graduates when it comes to assessing the curriculum. Several years ago, he set up a discord server where students and faculty could collaborate, share, and chat. This created a community within the department, and when students graduated, they remained part of this group. Alumni were able to share feedback about the curriculum with their former faculty—feedback that was then used to make changes. 

The work that Ronny Bull does soliciting feedback from employers and alumni and using this information to develop curriculum and create experiential learning opportunities is an example of assessment at its finest, seamlessly woven into the fabric of what he us doing to develop students into successful professionals and lifelong learners.

 

Wilkie, Dana. “Employers Say College Grads Lack Hard Skills, Too.” Society for Human Resource Management, 21 Octover 2019, www.shrm.org/resourcestools. Accessed 3 March 2021.