Planning | Cristina Lozano

Crash course on asynchronous online teaching

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Part of my job at the university is coordinating lower-level language courses and supporting our part-time instructors. Over the last months, I’ve noticed that asynchronous online teaching causes the most anxiety among instructors. For the uninitiated in online teaching, we usually divide courses into synchronous, where the class meets “live” over a platform (e.g., Zoom), and asynchronous, where students complete assignments on their own time.

When COVID hit in the middle of the Spring semester in 2020, everyone tried their best teaching over zoom. Most courses were synchronous, the natural adaptation was keeping the same schedule and meeting through an online platform. Fall 2020 brought new challenges, such as figuring out which modality (synchronous, asynchronous, or hybrid) was best. Different factors play into how to make this decision for each course. First, the decision has obvious implications for schedule planning. Administrators need to ensure that students can complete class sequences and requirements on time. Second, different subjects might be more suitable for one modality or another. And third, most importantly, the instructor’s preference. Why the most important? When instructors are not comfortable or trained to teach on a specific modality, the content of the class will suffer and students will pay the consequences.

Unsurprisingly, over the last year, I’ve noticed that asynchronous courses are scary for instructors. This modality is further away from traditional face-to-face courses and involves a great deal of “translation”. Here are a few of the doubts I received:

I don’t really know what the expectation is. Do the students just do all of the homework and video lessons? Am I supposed to record lectures? Are the students supposed to film themselves or record themselves speaking?

And we could even go into more big-picture questions: How can we create a community of learners? How do we recreate class discussion? How do send reminders and warnings? Answering all these questions requires training and careful planning. Untrained instructors even doubt it is possible to teach asynchronously, how effective can be a course whose instructor believes it is useless?

I have met with a couple of instructors in our department to explain to them how I organize my courses and I figured out other people might want to see it as well.

Home page

I don’t know about your institution, but mine gives me a course landing page that is crowded with information nobody uses or needs. In my home page, I’ve embraced minimalism in online courses. Give your students the bare minimum to get started and to get to know you. I include links (and schedule) to office hours, optional live sessions, my email, technical support, and a brief introduction of myself. Period. They don’t usually need links to all the repositories they can find at the library or the McGraw-Hill tool that nobody knows what it is for.

I’ve been surveying my students and I have the impression that the social media they use the most is Instagram. When you are on Instagram, you are seeing one picture with one comment. That’s it. Then you have menus and options. But the main thing is fairly simple. Why? It gets your attention, and we know that Facebook companies would do anything to get your attention 😬 Think about when you visit those websites full of pop-ups and ads moving around the screen, isn’t it the most annoying thing ever? I feel like a crowded landing page has the same effect on students. It’s overwhelming and it makes you want to run away.

Weekly assignments

Now, how do I organize my materials? The specific tool is going to depend on the platform you are using. But the idea can be implemented in any of them. In my case, it’s Blackboard (don’t tell anyone that I hate it 🤫). I create a new section on the left menu and call it weekly assignments. Inside that menu, there are folders with instructions for each week, and I also include the dates for that week (this was a suggestion of a former student). Notice that including the dates will involve changing the dates the next time you teach the course, but more on this later. Other platforms such as Canvas (CUNY, if you’re reading, I’m giving you hints here 🙏🏼) have more user-friendly ways of organizing the information: modules that are easy to navigate and you can even make them sequential, such that students cannot move forward until they complete a specific assignment.

On a typical week, I include a summary video (2-4 minutes), a lecture video (never ever more than 15 minutes), reading + forum on the reading, and an assignment (in my case, simultaneous interpreting, but think about what they would do on a regular week). They love short videos.

Group work

I’ve given workshops on how to organize group work in online courses, but I’ll keep it short. Do not assign group work in the first 2 weeks of class. Use them to organize the groups. I’ve tried a couple of methods:

Using the forum tool of your platform.
Slack (here’s a picture of how Slack looks like)

Ask students to post a message saying when they can meet (i.e., weekends at 5 am, a very popular time). They should assign a leader (who will be in charge of recording the sessions and uploading them), and write the names of the people of the group as well as the time/days they meet on a google doc. This makes it easy for the professor to keep track of the groups and, if for whatever reason a student cannot make it to their group meeting, they can see when other groups meet and join one. I would suggest they use zoom to record the meeting, and then you can create a google doc folder where they upload them. This saves you from having to deal with big video files as you can watch them on the folder without downloading them.

Repetition

During in-person classes, professors present the syllabus, explain deadlines, and when the deadline gets closer, they remind students about it during class: “remember next week you’ll submit your first essay”, “don’t forget about the midterm in two weeks”. Online is the same. You have to repeat things, so think about how you are going to do it because otherwise, this will probably happen

I send announcements (a couple a week) and I send some messages on slack. I don’t trust that all of them check slack, so if it’s something important, it goes to announcements.

Maintenance

Organizing everything I’ve mentioned is a lot of work, indeed. But once you have it, it’s ready to go and you just have to tinker with it. One thing I would advise you is keeping your text and videos as timeless as you can. For my lectures, I don’t mention whether it is Spring break, Christmas, or anything that has been on the news. If you do that, you’ll have to record them again because the next time you teach the course, it won’t be the same piece of news. However, for the introductory videos, I do mention current events. I update these videos every time I teach the course, so it makes sense.

Whenever you put dates, be aware that you’ll have to update them. In the case of the weekly folders, I do think it’ll be useful for students to see the date there, and I take the extra time to change them every semester. You can assess what adds value and what’s not worth it.

Videos

I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get into video editing for a while (I’ll get you dinner if you want to teach me the basics). Hence, I don’t edit anything and I keep it as low-tech as I can. I record them using zoom (but I do have a ring light 🙃). I create a new zoom meeting, hit record on the cloud (again, saving you from having to deal with big video files)

Then you go to your account on the web, find your recordings and there it is. You can change the name (you should, something that allows you to easily find it later, I put the course code and the week), and you get a link that you can then paste on your weekly assignments. Make sure that you either make the recording public or share the password with your students.

I think with this, you should be able to create a solid structure for your course. A while back I also wrote about what I learned from online teaching, you might find it interesting. Let me know if you want to know about any other aspect of online teaching.

Making a Tenure Plan and Keeping Track of It

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On my last post I wrote about why it is crucial to make a plan, even if you later change it. Here I show you what my plan looks like and how I keep track of it. I struggle to make long-term plans. When I first moved to the US (10 years ago!), I was asked what I wanted to do the following year. I was startled by the question, I had just arrived in Indiana, and thinking about what would happen next seemed impossible. But the professor who asked me that question was right, if I wanted to have options, it was the moment to start planning. I’ve recently figured out that my personality has a lot to do with it. I need to have information before making decisions. So when I get somewhere, I need some time to observe, gather data, and then decide. This is probably why statements like “this is the best pizza in NY” drive me nuts. I want to see a spreadsheet full of data that leads you to that statement. And this is wrong. It’s paralyzing and doesn’t let you move forward. One needs to find the balance between absorbing relevant cues in the environment and not getting too caught up in gathering infinite information. And this is where a good plan comes in handy.

In Chapter 2: Planning Your Time, from The Writing Workshop, Prof. Barbara Sarnecka explains the different levels of planning you need: the big picture (5-year plan), term plan (semester/quarter, whatever suits your calendar year better), and a weekly plan. But before getting to those plans, Sarnecka prepares your mindset. Following the plan, as opposed to just devising it, requires adopting a specific

Think like a CEO, not a factory employee (more on this in the next post)
Distinguish between urgent and important: this is particularly important when dealing with other people’s requests. Just because it’s urgent for another person, it doesn’t make it important for you. Their lack of preparation on a project does not have to derail your plan.
Accept that not everything will get done: and now that you know that not everything will fit in your day, use the previous step and don’t let the urgent push the important away.

As a new assistant professor, one of the first pieces of advice I received was: document everything you are doing. I thought this could be a messy process, so I came up with a system. I’m now finishing writing my first-year report, and it has been very useful to have everything in one place. Here is what I did to both create a tenure plan and keep track of all my work. I used Notion and if you haven’t heard of this app, it’s without any doubt my favorite. I’m kind of addicted to trying these things, I’ve played with Todoist, Trello, Evernote… you name it. Notion is the perfect combination of all of them but easy enough to navigate (there’s another called Roam that makes my head spin). The best part, if you are in academia, you can get the premium account with your .edu email.

I have a page where I organize my work-related things that looks like this

And since we’re focusing on planning, let’s check my Tenure page

The triangles (called toggles in the app) allow you to collapse information and if we open the calendar, this is what I see

And here’s my work database (a lifesaver for writing up your tenure file)

If the app is new to you, I foresee two reactions: 1. this is overwhelming, or 2. this will save me. It indeed takes a bit of practice to get used to Notion and understanding all its features (or at least figuring out which ones are relevant for you). Leave me a comment if this is your case and want me to make a video on how Notion works. But the app is not going to save you, it’s just a tool to make your life easier. Remember how the chapter I discussed earlier started by the mindset? You can use a notebook to do exactly the same. I happen to like these apps and the flexibility of having all the information with me at all times. The key here is creating a plan and keeping track of it. I tend to feel as if I was wasting my time for 70% of the day. But when I look at that table full of things I did during my first year, I realize that’s just simply not true. Our minds are not wired for happiness, they are wired for survival and they naturally focus on the negative. Seeing the good takes practice and keeping track of it…just helps. Oh! here is the template, in case you want to steal it 😉

This is why you should have a plan

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

*Note: before you start reading, be aware that you can substitute Ph.D. by any sizable project you are starting.

Did you know what you were getting into when you started your Ph.D.? I certainly didn’t. But the bigger problem was that I didn’t even know how to listen to understand what academia was like. I had developed a sort of tunnel vision focusing on the idea I had about how it would be like: a continuation of my bachelor’s and my master’s (spoiler alert: it’s very different). I’m not sure this was being naive or a mere protective mechanism. You know how parents think their kids are the best in the world? That’s the only way they endure all the sacrifices they have to make to raise them. It could be just that, in order to finish a Ph.D., you have to believe it’s going to be the best thing ever.

I remember a professor from my master’s tried to warn me about what I would find on the other side of the tunnel: slim chances of getting a job as a professor, high pressure to publish, and isolation, spending days and days alone writing articles. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. But thinking about it now, I wasn’t even capable of grasping her point. I now get her intention. She wasn’t trying to dissuade me from continuing the academic track —she actually encouraged me to go to a conference to meet some professors of the programs where I was applying (and where I eventually got in). What she was trying to do was simply giving me a complete picture of academia. She noticed I was a good student who enjoyed going to class and discussing the readings. But she knew I was only seeing that “cool” part of academia. So she tried to opened the door for me to see the not “shiny” corners.

Looking back, I’m really happy with the path I chose. I love the diversity and flexibility being a professor gives you. I have plenty of room to do whatever I want in my courses, to discuss things I find fascinating, and to see how my students' get those aha moments (my favorite part). I’m free to research whatever I want. I can adapt my schedule to buy groceries when the supermarket is not packed (although this is dangerous, see this wise tweet).

In academia you sometimes have to work 7 days a week, but the freedom to choose which 7 days is unparalleled
— Greg Bodwin (@GregBodwin) June 26, 2021

However, most people (even with a good CV) don’t get this type of job and end up living in a precarious situation. Other problems we face include low salaries, lack of resources, lack of clarity on your path, and isolation. So my master’s professor was right to tell me all about that. You need to be aware of the difficulties you are going to face further down the line.

The takeaway here is that you need a plan before you start (your Ph.D. or whatever project you are taking on). A plan gives you the intentionality to reach your destination. Not having a plan, is like getting on a bus without knowing where it is going. You might get somewhere you like, but you might end up in a shady place. Nonetheless, a plan doesn’t mean we have to stick to it no matter what. Think about it as a sailing trip, you have an idea of the route based on the wind predictions you have as of today. In a few days, when the wind changes, you can readjust your course to make the sailing smoother. What matters is that you are taking control and being intentional about where you want to go.

What I’ve noticed in the last months is that writing down your plan helps. You might think: yeah, it’s all in my head, I know what I want. But putting it down in writing forces you to structure the plan and, especially, it forces you to see it. Have it close by, check it often to remind yourself where you want to go.

If you start your project with an idea of how it will look like and the wind changes, recalculate the route. Just like your GPS (this is Rebecca Schuman’s idea, check her article). Google maps doesn’t start screaming at you “hey, you looser, why did you make that turn?” So just be like Google and recalculate as many times as necessary. Sometimes it will be because the wind changed, and other times it will be because you made the wrong turn.

How does this concept apply to your Ph.D.? You might begin your studies thinking that you are going to become a professor. Midway, you see that you will be forced to live in the middle of nowhere in the US and that idea is less than appealing to you. You apply the GPS approach and start looking (aka, planning) how to apply your Ph.D. magic to other jobs. Most people I know who have left academia started with an internship or volunteering. If you can to do this while still in your Ph.D. program, you will be ahead of the game. Now think about the alternative, you don’t know whether you want to be a professor or look for another job. You see everyone goes to the academic job market and you go too. You don’t get an offer for a full-time position and…you end up as an adjunct instructor (no benefits, low salary, no stability). It will be very hard for you to leave that situation without a clear plan. I wanna be clear here, I do think it is possible to get out of that place and I know some people that went from adjunct to assistant professor, but you need to be intentional and have a plan.

If you made it this far reading and are panicking because you don’t have a plan, I have good news for you. Just start now. Like the Chinese proverb: “When is the best moment to plant a tree? Twenty years go. When is the second-best moment? Now.” During my last year of the Ph.D., I attended a talk by Leonard Cassuto and he mentioned an idea that stuck with me: “You are the CEO of your Ph.D. Your advisor is a very important member of the board of trustees, but you are the CEO.” And this is probably the difficult part, especially for women. The entire world is designed for us to listen and follow, so most of us have zero experience being a CEO. So remember, only you know what will work best for you, and this might mean going against the crowd. In closing, I feel like this topic calls for a trilogy. You just reached the end of part I. Part II will be about how to make the plan and part III about getting CEO experience. Enjoy the trip! ⛵