What Sociology Instructors Learned in 2020-2021

Much of U.S. higher education transitioned to remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, few instructors and students had experience working remotely. The University of Michigan’s Sociology Department, where we teach and learn, was no exception. We set out to understand how our department adapted instruction to address these changes. We collected survey and interview data with instructors and students over the 2020-2021 academic year. Our data represent experiences across an estimated 64 sociology courses. Our findings are also informed by our experiences as graduate students, instructors of record, teaching assistants (TAs), and remote course consultants with the department.

In “Learning from 2020: How the Challenges of Remote Instruction Reinforce the Need for Care-Informed Pedagogy” (Hess, McAuliffe, Gleckman-Krut & Shapiro, under review), we argue that the experiences of the 2020-2021 academic year threw into sharp relief the lessons of care-informed pedagogy. Care-informed pedagogy encourages instructors to practice empathy for their students – including through attention to how students’ and instructors' identities, structural positions, and lived experiences impact student learning. Instructors practicing care-informed pedagogy incorporate students’ various wisdoms into class discussions, collaborate with students to address practical and structural barriers to learning, and critically engage with questions of power, privilege, and positionality in the classroom.

Our data show evidence of instructors and students collaborating to address barriers to learning. Most lead instructors offered only remote synchronous classes (n=36), with most of these being recorded (n=24), during the 2020-2021 academic year. Students in our study remarked that synchronous class time offset some of the isolation they felt while following the pandemic’s distancing and quarantining requirements. Instructors also reported feeling disconnected from their students. Twelve lead instructors cited a lack of connection with students as their biggest struggle in the 2020-2021 academic year. Synchronous interactions (e.g. over Zoom) helped some faculty feel closer to normal. By holding space together, students and instructors helped one another get through the loneliness of remote pandemic times.

The introduction of asynchronous content into sociology courses provided another example of students, faculty, and TAs collaborating to address barriers to learning. Over a third of the instructor respondents (n=22) in our study incorporated asynchronous content into primarily synchronous courses. This asynchronous content included assessments. Our department more often assessed students based on small written assignments as compared to timed exams, for example. Asynchronous content offers students flexibility: students can engage course content from different time zones, organize their learning around other responsibilities, and revisit recorded material. Incorporating this asynchronous flexibility into assessment strategies allowed for course engagement from students with a variety of at-home circumstances.

Providing asynchronous content during the 2020-2021 academic year required significant time, emotional labor, and administrative work for all parties. Ten out of 15 TAs in the Fall and six out of 14 in the Winter reported feeling overworked due to increased time for instruction and supporting students in crisis. Our data, personal experiences teaching, and previous research attest to the fact that asynchronous teaching is both an important component of inclusive teaching and demanding on instructors. It also seems that the cumulative effect of remote instruction, including asynchronous and synchronous components, overwhelmed some students. Full-time remote learning required students to spend more time on their schoolwork with fewer built-in structures and so to take more personal responsibility for keeping up with the increased level of work. One student reported: “[Once] you fall behind, you can fall [very] behind, very quickly.” Six TAs and four lead instructors also identified this issue.

In short, remote instruction during this past year required that students and instructors work together and attend to one another’s structural and emotional needs, showing the need for and benefits of care-informed pedagogy. We join the growing chorus of pedagogy scholars who advocate for care-informed pedagogy in sociology classrooms – today, tomorrow, and the next.