Teaching Amidst Covid-19

Changes owing to Covid? Obviously!

I began lecturing in January at UMich 2020. Just three months later, the appearance of Covid-19 forced major shifts in teaching plans over just a few days. Like all other instructors, I had to quickly adapt to remote learning. My first full year of teaching (winter 2020, fall 2020, and spring/summer 2020) was full of learning, adapting, and revising teaching plans to improve remote learning for better comprehension.

Teaching environmental geochemistry class remotely in 2020. Class "met" over Zoom; I annotated slides in real time to teach.

Adapting classes to remote learning:

Teaching methods that work well in a classroom do not translate well to remote, online learning. In redesigning my courses, I have tried a number of approaches with different results in different styles of classes. Below I've detailed how I adapted each of the classes I teach to maintain:

  • Student engagement in the material

  • Means for students to ask questions

  • Regular projects and assignments

Check the bottom for student reviews!

EARTH 104

A large enrollment half-semester mini-course on Earth's Ice Ages. I divided the course into topic-focused week long modules with ~8 pre-recorded lecture videos for each module. Videos were short (<10 minutes) and extremely topic focused to better allow students to easily return to discrete topics while studying. Class was run entirely through Canvas, an online learning platform, with weekly quizzes and a final exam.

EARTH 131

I am in the midst of reconfiguring this class, introductory chemistry designed for Earth science students, to a completely online version for Winter 2021. Classes will be synchronous as many students find introductory chemistry difficult; I want students to be able to ask questions immediately. I am also planning on interspersing polls throughout class to check comprehension. This class covers lots of material and I want to ensure students do not fall behind - easy to do with remote asynchronous learning!

EARTH 151

A first year seminar focused on Earth's Ice Ages and Ice History, taught in Fall 2020. I pre-recorded lecture videos and posted them on Canvas for Tuesday "class;" students were responsible for watching these videos in their own time during the first half of the week. Thursday classes were synchronous, and met in-person outside for the first half of the semester. Synchronous classes later transitioned to Zoom. Thursday classes did not introduce new material, instead students worked on group projects, participated in discussions, and created projects to better comprehend the material presented in videos.

EARTH 296

Summers prior to 2020 I taught geology at field camp in WY, but this too changed with Covid. In summer 2020, I worked with 6 other faculty members to redesign a remote introductory geology class incorporating field components to teach similar skills to what students would learn at field camp. I helped design and co-taught modules on North American glacial history and Earth surface hydrology.

EARTH 325

An upper division environmental geochemistry class would usually require practice problems, hands-on laboratory experiments, and discussions about anthropogenic and environmental impacts. This redesigned class incorporated all these components but in different approaches to keep people safe with Covid. In-person labs were optional; students could choose instead to watch lab videos and use supplied data to complete analyses. I adapted lectures to work over Zoom, where I annotated slides on an iPad to help students solve problems.

Student Reviews:

"This class was asynchronous but my favorite. Normal workload instead of piling it on like most. Entertaining, interesting learned a lot. More classes should be taught like this." (Earth 104)

"I didn't expect to like this class as much as I did. I ended up making some friends in this class and it is nice. I loved the passion Mr. Robbins taught with and you can tell his love for teaching and letting students learn. He connect with all of use really well and made topic that people may find boring very interesting to learn about. I would definitely recommend this course to an incoming freshman." (Earth 151)

"Awesome course!! Loved the break up of the lectures and amount of time to complete each activity made the class very easy to stay up to date on assignments!! Professor is very passionate and interesting!" (Earth 104)

"I was nervous about this course being online, I find more success while taking in–person classes. Mark was very proactive in making sure students understood the material. The weekly synchronous meetings were extremely helpful." (Earth 325)