Speaking to my teacher colleagues about their first months of remote teaching brings me back to when I flipped a course and later taught it entirely online.

In the classroom

Imagine this; you teach science, Anatomy and Physiology to be exact. You have microscopes neatly lined up in the cabinets, slides labeled, organs properly stored, pencils and chalk in easily accessible places. You find yourself getting a little anxious. The students are due any minute now. What will your classroom look like at the end of the day?

Can you relate? It was hard to make a transition in the classroom from being the “sage on the stage” who shared my knowledge and my teaching supplies with students to a “guide on the side.” The parents and students seemed to think it was my responsibility to fill their brains with knowledge.

The flipped classroom

Using technology helped. I moved lectures to short 15-minute explanations and posted them online. This practice freed up all of the classroom time for… Initially, that thought was a little scary. What am I going to do with 30 students for an hour each day?

I hoped to bring a sense of wonder back to my classroom. The initial phase of letting go was challenging. I had to trust the students to get what they needed out of the materials I supplied. To be completely honest, the classroom was messy some days. The noise could be deafening. Every student did not rise to the challenge.

However, most students stepped up remarkably. Students started coming after school to help set up labs and to design their own labs. One student volunteered to be a laboratory assistant. She came every day after school to organize and clean supplies.

Certainly, there were still students and parents who complained that because I did not lecture, I did not teach. However, as many students became more self-sufficient, I had more classroom time to help those who needed additional guidance. I watched and listened to the students in their groups every day. Identifying areas that required learner support and determining how best to build that support became my new role. Trying to be flexible, inclusive and keep the learning focused on the students and their needs, I structured my evaluations on whether the objectives were met, not how they were met.

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. -Maria Montessori

Online

The next step was to move to a completely online course. My panic grew as I realized how little of the educational process I would be able to control. How did I know if the students read the material, listened to the lectures, submitted their assignments, or took their tests without outside assistance?

I had a weekly synchronous session spent on discussing case studies and asking “what if” questions. These sessions were required unless you had an emergency. However, the students knew about the sessions when they signed up in contrast to the students in the current emergency online courses.

The question of grades

It did not take long to get a sense of who knew and understood the material and who did not. I gradually moved all graded content to discussion boards, submitted case reports, and videos arguing points or outlining procedures. I found that this method correlated best with the grades I would have assigned based on the synchronous sessions. It also provided more ways for students to express their grasp and understanding of the subject content. It was an opportunity for me to see that if I got out of their way, the students would be creative, enthusiastic learners.

Not a complete break from tradition

To make sure that everyone came to the synchronous sessions prepared. I had a test bank of questions based on the reading. Students had to score 80% or higher before the online session. They could take it as many times as they wanted. I am sure some randomly guessed and then wrote down the answers. It does not matter as long as they knew these key points. Case studies and videos were also due before the session started.

What you did while remote teaching is amazing!

Many of you had to make your transition to remote teaching in days. You did not get the luxury of a gradual, well thought out transition. You had to divest of the need to control, amp up on the use of technology, design new ways to present and test on content in an unpredictable environment.

Please do not think that your experience is representative of online courses or online education. What we have experienced is unprecedented and hopefully will never reoccur. When you have time to breathe again, consider what aspects of teaching can best be done in the classroom and what parts can best be done online. If you do, your future students will benefit significantly from this experience born of necessity.

You were there for your students. You helped keep them safe. You used technology to establish a sense of community, a community of learners in a time of unexpected emergency remote teaching. You were creative problem solvers who improvised on the fly.