Classroom Possibilities

Basic Considerations for the Classroom

A key feature of Multi-Modal Course (MMC) design is the use of classrooms and face-to-face instruction in ways that limit COVID-19 transmission. Many faculty believe that classes meeting together on campus is not just a tradition, but a crucial element in student learning. Despite the challenges imposed by COVID-19 and social distancing rules, professors and students can take advantage of classroom meetings for various activities, complimented by course content and activities online.

Multi-Modal Courses

Professors must offer a fully-online course for students who cannot attend on campus, and can shift the course entirely online, if Canisius was again compelled to abandon the campus for part or all of the Fall 2020 semester.
make maximum use of available classroom time, with the understanding that professors can only meet with some of their students in any individual class meeting.
anticipate that, due to COVID-19 concerns, some students will not be able to attend classroom sessions, and require alternative instruction.
Early in your course planning, review the Academic Calendar for Fall 2020

The Classrooms

An early step is to determine what is the social-distancing capacity in your assigned classroom. You can do that here.

Attendance

Academic Affairs has guidance for how to handle attendance in your courses, particularly for classroom activities.

Small Group Interaction

If you have a small class, and are assigned a larger classroom (perhaps in the early morning, or evening), your entire class may be able to join every classroom session. But larger classrooms are in short supply, and most course rosters are large enough so that physical distancing will compel us to divide up our classes into smaller meeting groups.

Having to teach smaller groups of your students in each class means that for each student, the course will not feature as much face-to-face class time as a regular, or perhaps even a conventional hybrid course. For example, each student may only be in the classroom for 45 minutes or an hour each week.

Having section rosters divided up over multiple class periods, as well as offering students a completely remote option for each class, imposes special challenges from a course management perspective. Plus, students and faculty will need to acclimate to new challenges, such as conversations over proper social distances, while wearing masks.

On the other hand, faculty in various fields have long recognized the value of small class sizes and small group interaction. Smaller cohorts will be scattered over larger classrooms, but classroom-scale discussions now involve a smaller participant group, which can encourage participation. We should also consider ways we may maximize time spent on course preparation in multi-modal design.

You can see what the current social distance capacity for each Canisius Classroom, as well as its technology options.

Classroom Capacities and Technologies

A Common Prep

In many cases, professors will organize classroom sessions into sets, with a common preparation. Two or three cohorts will each meet in the classroom over a week or two, and join in the same activities. Both students and professor have a common preparation for these sessions.

So, for example, each half of a class does the same thing on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively. The professor and students both must officially be prepared for that activity by Tuesday, although the second half of the class practically has until Thursday. By the end of the week, all students have completed both the weekly online and in-class activities.

Staggered Deadlines

If you frequently assign small-scale assignments or homework, you may consider staggering the due dates to provide students with equal time to complete it. So for example, if a cohort of students attends in the classroom and learns concepts that inform their weekly homework assignment on Tuesday, their homework deadline might be Thursday. If another cohort comes to the classroom on Thursday, their homework deadline might be on Saturday. This clears up questions of fairness, but also helps the professor pace their own efforts assessing student work.

Alternative Online Activities

Professors must create alternatives to classroom activities that accomplish the same learning objectives as parallel classroom activities, for two reasons: if classrooms are available, some students may not be able to come to campus, and must complete coursework remotely. If COVID-19 surges, it will be much easier to transition any course online if alternatives to classroom activities are already in place.

If students discussed sources in the classroom, can a parallel asynchronous discussion take place online, using appropriately modified prompts? If students worked through calculation problems in the classroom, can students complete several problems for the professors' review, or peer review, remotely?

You may assess students for class participation in the classroom, and with smaller class groups, this can be more manageable. You can then assess the smaller set of online students' responses to course content, too.

If COVID-19 forced us off campus (again,) you could fall back on your asynchronous plan for all students. On the other hand, if you developed a good class rapport in classroom, it would be better to simply convene classes via web meeting.

Circling Back

Most skills are perishable. Students who have just learned something, be it a mathematical procedure, a verb in a new language, or primary source analysis, need to practice it within days or weeks, or in most cases it is probably lost. In language classes, instructors often compel students to return, week after week, to vocabular and grammar learned throughout the course.

In many other fields the importance of practicing skills is recognized but not strongly incorporated into curriculum. In one week, students may get parallel class and textbook instruction, and then may consult YouTube on their own to learn a set of concepts or a procedure. They (hopefully) return to it the night before the exam, and may or may not be able to then recall or relearn it.

Different course formats are often an opportunity to revisit pedagogical priorities. Why not better incorporate repetitive review into courses? In multi-modal course design, these cumulative review sessions are ideal for the classroom. Since courses are compelled to break into smaller groups, why not have students use classtime to work together in solving increasingly complicated calculations, analyzing sources, or perform other procedures that are course learning objectives?

Options for Classroom Review

Synchronous-Remote?

To maximize class time, faculty may be tempted to try to teach entire classes of students all at once using the classroom and live-remote technology such as Zoom, Google Meet, and microphones and cameras. In this way, a class of students could theoretically listen to a lecture, or participate in a discussion, whether they were seated (and properly distanced) in class, or joining via a web meeting. The professor is then able to use all the time allotted to a standard face-to-face course for classroom-based instruction.

But this imposes additional burdens on faculty members, and may become impractical for all but a narrow range of classes.

Canisius ITS may not have sufficient microphones or cameras to supply each faculty member. So the professor who wishes to teach in synchronous-remote format may need to supply their microphone, and perhaps a camera, appropriate for group instruction. These are currently hard-to-find items, as manufacturing has not kept up with surged demand. Until supply begins meeting demand, ITS may have difficult procuring more, and professors will find purchasing them on their own difficult and expensive.
ITS and COLI may not be able to provide just-in-time support many professors who attempt this during popular class times. So the professor should prepare to perform setup and troubleshooting before each class period.
If you and your students are compelled to wear masks (plan on it), microphones may struggle to pick up voices for the remote students to hear. You will probably need to repeat students' classroom comments for remote students.
If students join the Zoom meeting on laptops or phones within the classroom, they need to mute their microphones and speakers or risk creating irritating feedback noise into the remote meeting.
Professors may find it difficult to pay attention to the questions or engagement, generally, of the remote students, at a level equal to that of face-to-face students

Lecture in the Classroom?

For many faculty, a return to the classroom might signal a return to live lecture. Along with concerns about a synchronous-remote model for teaching, there are other considerations which may make classroom lecture less practical:

If you must divide your class roster up, such that cohorts of students attend at different times, you have a limited amount of lecture time compared to a traditional face-to-face course.
If COVID-19 surges, and you are compelled to move online, you will be forced to move away from, or record lectures anyway.
Lengthy lecture recordings can undermine student engagement. If you record lectures beforehand, it is easier to divide them into smaller videos, and integrate them with other activities that get students to act instead of just watch. Plus, you need not speak into a microphone while wearing a mask.

In the past, many faculty paralleled textbooks or other assigned reading in their lectures. This seems worthwhile, since it offers students more ways to learn the same content. But in such circumstances students may not bother taking notes, or may skip readings, so the multi-mode learning opportunity is lost.

Instead, consider if you can cut out lecture that parallels course readings, and offer classroom discussion and review opportunities (see above) that motivate students to do the reading.

Examples

HIS 124: U.S. History

In a U.S. history course aimed at freshmen and non-majors, the classroom is a place for small group discussion of special topics.

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