Online Teaching is Sucking the Life Out of Me!

by Kate Curry, Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education

After finally completing my dissertation in the middle of Covid, I found myself with some extra time on my hands. I'll be honest, teaching online is not my thing. Well, actually it nearly sucked the life out me! I am a mover, a doer, a group work assigner and an experimenter. I need my students to move, talk, test out, make mistakes and try again. I want to be in the midst of them seeing their faces, observing how they learn and making connections. I find teaching online so disconnected from how I naturally teach. To that end, I began to look for something to read over the winter break that could inspire me to try some new strategies or simply get me excited about another semester teaching from my home office! Is that even possible?

I stumbled across a book called "Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting and Engaging Students" by Norman Eng. I am certain it is not the "ultimate" guide, but it certainly gave me some encouragement going into this semester. I've been teaching for over 25 years and yet I can't stand the thought of doing the same thing every year without trying to learn more and do better. Some of the ideas Dr. Eng shares may be familiar, as they were to me, but I had forgotten some of the things I know about best practices. Some of his other ideas I found inspired me to do some things different this semester. I'll share a few with you here in hopes that you might keep the 'spark' of your own teaching going as we teach another semester in these crazy times.

I appreciate how Dr. Eng bases his ideas on research and speaks from experience as these make him more believable. One of the main things I have struggled with is getting students to read so they can learn and we can discuss stuff in class. The author reminded me that most textbooks are geared towards both graduate and undergraduate students to make them more marketable to more courses. However, this means that much of what is in our books is WAY over the heads of our students. He suggests giving them specific pages to read and telling them to what to look for so they can skim and find the most critical information. In addition, he uses "QCQ" which means question, comment and quote. He asks his students to find one of each of these in their reading assignments (Probably not every time, but it's a tool he uses.) When they come to class he asks them to share one of these QCQs and explain what they chose. He uses this to draw out their own ideas and understanding before introducing key terms or concepts they have never heard. This connects to another idea. He suggests activating students' prior knowledge before we introduce new ideas. Tell a story, show a video clip, post an image or present a case study (whatever works best with your content that day) and use this to help students think about what they know. This gets the talking and sharing rather than me! Then, use their responses to link to course concepts. They (we) learn by making connections to our previous experience to make sense of new information. Let's face it students are trying to take in and process a ton of new information each semester! I think I'd forgotten that what I am teaching is completely new to my students, but I've been talking about it for 25 years!

There is so much more in the book! He gave me convincing reasons to change my powerpoints, my lecture structure, how I wrap up my class, why I should use "cold calling" and so much more. I am thinking I might have a prayer at keeping my students somewhat alert during class as I employ some new ideas. Stay tuned, since day 1 starts today! Anyway, I'd love to share more or you could just read the book :)