How are online classes working at U.S. colleges and universities during the coronavirus pandemic?


Thursday, April 9, 2020

"A rapping professor. A cat in class. Pornography on Zoom." USA Today brings us a lot of insight into how online classes are working at some of the best U.S. colleges and top universities during the current global health pandemic.



Rapping to keep things light.

After having taught a history of music class for decades, Mark Naison, 73, has had to shift quickly to online education methods. He was not sure how to preserve the free-spirited nature of the course that goes over history from rock and roll to hip-hop. He had an answer that always worked for him in the past. 

“I can make a fool of myself,”
he said in an interview with USA Today.


Technology used in remote teaching and online distance learning, mainly the video-streaming software Zoom, was unfamiliar to him before the pandemic. With no physical presence in a classroom, the professor at Fordham University found himself asking how he would be able to keep students focused class.

He did not know how to use music videos he normally would have just played live in class. He thought about how it was imperative to keep students spirits up as they struggled to adjust from in-person courses on a campus of friends to the isolation of distance learning.

What was his answer? He filmed himself rapping!

His lyrics mentioned topics such as social distancing, hand washing and self-quarantining.

He is no Eminem or Kendrick Lamar, but his rhymes work. His students appreciated the effort he put in to keep things light and keep them laughing.

His efforts show an attempt to adapt to the current situation and acknowledge how students are feeling. This could be key at a time like this.

Imani Del Valle, a senior at Fordham, said Naison was one of few professors that acknowledged student anxiety.

Del Valle shares, “[the rapping videos] actually make you laugh, and I think that’s what we kind of all need right now with everything going on.”

The “everything” for Del Valle and her fellow peers includes transitioning to a new class format they hadn’t expected, and dealing with the general distress caused by the coronavirus health crisis. Del Valle lives in New York City, one of the hardest hit areas.

It has been nearly a month since colleges and universities across the country canceled in-person classes and switched to virtual courses digitally taught online through distance learning methods.

For many of those colleges and universities, the first week was anything but smooth. Apart from transitioning to digital classes, universities also asked students to clear all college housing and dorms. Many scrapped traditional grades in favor of pass-fail classes. Graduation ceremonies have been canceled or postponed.

Instructors are dealing with new technologies and virtual teaching methods that leave them uncomfortable. Students are likely to be spread across multiple time zones, which can make scheduling quite a challenge. Many students lack decent internet connections or up-to-date technology.

The result is not necessarily the best example of online learning—distance courses, like in-person classes, take months to plan effectively. Perfect or not, it’s the current reality of continuing to work to earn a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, or doctoral degree/PhD for millions of students.

In one online college class, a cat showed up for class!

One morning, five College of William and Mary students followed along via Zoom as Professor David Feldman drew economic models on a whiteboard. Watching Feldman sketch was similar to being in a physical classroom. Then, on one of the students’ screens, a door slowly swung open. A big yellow cat popped into the student’s lap.

Hardly anyone noticed, and the lecture continued without interruption. Students broke off into digital groups to talk about local and national economy.

Zoom has an option to ping the instructor; this is likened to the digital raising of a hand. Most students chose to raise their hands in real life. Feldman spotted them easily. For Feldman, digital lectures allow him to provide almost the same information he would have been able to share in person. That’s not representative of higher education as a whole. A dance or auto mechanic class, for example, would not translate in the same way.

Some wonder if this is a trial period where it can be determined if higher education is effective when it comes to teaching students online, but that would be a mistake. The circumstances are extreme, and most professors have had only days or a couple of weeks to prepare for the change. Any suggestion that switching to online classes will save universities money is incorrect. 

Again, the circumstances are extreme. Universities still need to pay tenured professors such as Feldman. Universities also spend money to afford the infrastructure needed to roll out classes and prepare their teachers at the last minute.

The quality is going to go down, and the cost is going to go up,” shared Feldman.

Pornography on a class screen.

If Feldman’s class is the best-case scenario, then the worst case might be student Ian Castle’s experience during an online class with the State University of New York at Albany.

Castle is taking a course named “Information in the 21st Century.”

One morning, within Zoom, someone had posted pornography on a shared screen. Racial slurs followed shortly after. The person responsible remained disruptive, Castle said. The person kept swearing and harassing students in the chat channel. Eventually, the professor gave up. Around 15 minutes later, she apologized and canceled the class.

“I’m really frustrated because it kind of seemed like we were back in middle school. It was just frustrating that one to two students, or however many were doing it, were ruining it for a whole class,” shares Castle.

Experiences such as Castle’s have been reported at universities all over the country. Zoom published a guide to hopefully stave off bad behavior. Castle’s class meets only once a week. He shared that his mother taught him to view every class as a portion of the tuition paid, so he feels cheated out of instructional time and money (The professor later sent out a recording of the lecture.)

Juggling childcare and missing graduations.

Beyond technical challenges, coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic are disrupting normal life. Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, an English professor at Arizona State University, said many of the institution’s students work in the service industry and are out of work as a result of the virus. One of her students said her child was also trying to learn at home. The student joked, saying she didn’t know who would pass their classes, her or her 6-year-old.

Part of making things more bearable for students means altering class expectations. Fonseca-Chávez was teaching a graduate-level course that met only once a week for three hours. She knew this was not going to work online. She has shifted discussions of literary texts to online message boards. Presentations meant to be in front of the class have been shortened significantly. Students grasp tweaks made to the class.

Del Valle, the senior at Fordham, is also adjusting. She lives with her father, mother, and three siblings. Her mother is also in college. She has not handled the transition to digital classes as well. Del Valle assumed the transition to digital classes would be simple for her and her peers, since they grew up familiar with video chat technology. There are challenges associated with relying on the programs to work or finding a decent internet connection.

Del Valle is unsure whether her university will host a commencement ceremony. Amid stay-at-home orders and a tanking economy, her plans for the future—which involved graduate school and moving to Virginia with her fiancé—are on hold.

“You can’t relieve your last semester of your senior year. I’ve just been sitting here in my room thinking of all the times I took for granted.”




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