Professor: Let’s stop apologizing for teaching online; great things can happen | Opinion - TCPalm

Jena Heath, Associate Dean Arts & Humanities, Associate Professor Journalism & Digital Media, Coordinator Journalism and Digital Media program summarizes, Like virtually everyone I know in teaching I have been working all summer to up my online game. 

Mason Merola, 10, signs off a remote learning class with a thumbs up to his classmates and teacher, Mrs. Pendergast, on the first day of school, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, at his home in Jensen Beach. The 5th grader at Jensen Beach Elementary School was enjoying his school day from home. "I was surprised that it was pretty fun," Merola said. "I like that I don't have to be at school because of coronavirus. I miss seeing my friends and I would like to, but I'm not going to take the risk."
Photo: LEAH VOSS/TCPALM

I’ve read pedagogical treatises and attended Zoom trainings at St. Edward’s University, where I have taught journalism and digital media since 2008. I am determined to improve the triage online teaching I did in spring, when COVID-19 ran us off campus.

That the transition to remote instruction is a challenge is not news. Teachers must choose between synchronous (face-to-face) or asynchronous (no meetings) instruction, both of which involve enormous preparation and redesign of traditional classes.

They must think up ways to encourage participation in Zoom, an online environment that feels distant and oddly intimate at once. Colleagues in the sciences are adapting lab classes. Language faculty are planning the best ways to teach Spanish, French, German and Japanese online...

This is exactly what we will be doing this semester at St. Edward’s. Check out these Faculty Voices on Teaching mini-podcasts. You will hear a chorus of caring faculty talking about how they are adapting the ways they teach the subjects they love in hopes their students will love them, too, online or off.
Read more...

Source: TCPalm