Monday—March 30, 2020—will be remembered as the day when Pomona College’s curriculum entered a new virtual world.
Two weeks ago, in response to the spreading coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, most students were busy moving off campus and most staff and faculty were beginning to work from home. During a prolonged spring break that ended Monday, professors and staff have been working furiously to temporarily shift the curriculum to online instruction. Leading up to the relaunch of the curriculum, the College’s Information Technology Services (ITS) has held countless workshops to guide members of the faculty in the use of a range of online tools, provided laptops to students and everything from tablets to video cameras to faculty, while professors have reviewed their course plans, seeking the best way to communicate content and create interaction online.
The result is reliance on multiple approaches and technologies, as each professor seeks to move online in the way best suited to their content and teaching style. “Our faculty have been experimenting with pedagogical techniques like flipped classrooms, where they record their lectures in advance,” Assistant Professor of Computer Science Alexandra Papoutsaki writes, “while others have been trying different setups for real-time class meetings. Some have brought mini whiteboards home, some have been trying document-cameras so that they can project what they write on paper in real-time, and others are using set-ups like mine, switching between laptops and tablets.”
Professors have been reaching out to their students, both to touch base personally and to prepare for the resumption of classes. “Because I am aware that people's transitions have varied quite a bit in smoothness and results,” Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Africana Studies Eric Hurley notes, “the very first concrete thing I did was to I did ask all my students to ‘please do let me know in an email if there are things about your particular situation that you think I need to know and consider as I try to support your navigating the remainder of the course in balance with life. Of course, the College has been consistent in its offers of technical and other support, but I figured that some issues and difficulties are kind of particular and that they can only be troubleshot as they come up. In fact, I did have a few responses to that, ranging from how virtual meetings might interact with students’ accommodations to the challenge of focusing on coursework while living in a small space housing a large number of people. I’ll do what I can.”
Some professors have chosen not to try to try to recreate the classroom experience online, moving instead to more individualized student research. Associate Professor of Sociology Colin Beck explains, “Both of my seminars were already planned to transition into student-focused work—discussions on topics that they were interested in, longer research papers, peer workshops on drafts, etc. It’s not possible to recreate the magic of those discussions online, but it is quite easy to move the research process into Sakai discussion forums and Zoom office hours. So, for both classes, I have excised the minimal post-spring break “content” in favor of having students focus on their own research.”
Some classes and disciplines offer greater challenges than others. For instance, science classes with hands-on laboratories have had to take on completely new forms. Professor of Physics Janice Hudgings reports: “For labs, we’ve switched from actually building the circuits with a breadboard to ‘building’ the circuits in an online circuit simulator, which allows us to do all the same measurements that we would have in the lab. The circuit simulator is a useful new tool that we wouldn’t have learned without this shift to online teaching—so that’s a nice win!”
Music is another field where hands-on work is essential, and music faculty are doing their best to meet all the complexities of guiding ensembles and individual lessons in such dispersed wide-ranging settings. “Applied lessons—one-on-one instruction on an instrument or voice—are going forward,” writes Professor of Music Donna Di Grazia, “but it is taking herculean efforts to do so. Many students had borrowed instruments on campus from the department, which is now making arrangements to rent instruments at the department’s expense and have them delivered to as many of these students as possible. The logistics of doing this are complex, and students also face challenges doing lessons or practicing with parents and siblings home, “and there is nowhere one can retreat and practice without distractions or without distracting everyone else.”
Some professors, like Hudgings, had already done dry runs, conducting preliminary classes to test the technologies involved. “We had our first Zoom class [last Tuesday],” Hudgings writes, “and I thought it went great! I think much of that is due to the students in the class, who are engaged and patient and really leaning in to making this work. We have built a really nice community in the class, with a strong culture of teamwork and helping each other to succeed, and I felt like that really shone through yesterday, with the students all pitching in to make this work. So, yay, Pomona students!”
Several faculty members took a moment to praise the work and dedication of the ITS staff for accomplishing so much so quickly. Professor of Geology Eric Grosfils writes: “The end-to-end development and testing of the Virtual Server by ITS was amazing and deserves a special call-out. This is something that would normally happen over many months; ITS did it in roughly two weeks. Without this capability, a big hunk of my computing-heavy course would be dead in the water. As it stands, I simply have to help my students adapt to a new way to access that computing!”
“I am incredibly proud of the ITS team,” adds Vice President and Chief Information Officer William Morse. “Without anyone having to ask, the entire team pulled together to do what seemed the impossible. Over a four-week period and through incredibly long hours with no breaks, the team put together a plan and then actually implanted it to provide for both instructional and operational continuity, all online. To do what we did typically takes many months, if not years of effort. We did it in just weeks. I am simply amazed at what we have been able to accomplish here.”