Delaying Detailed Plans

In general, I am not a procrastinator when it comes to teaching-related activities, be it class preparation or grading. I sometimes procrastinate writing up a manuscript, because it feels less productive than getting more research data. Not having a deadline helps, I suppose. But when it comes to grant-writing, I usually start routing university-level paperwork a month ahead of the grant deadline, and I typically officially submit two weeks ahead of the deadline. I don’t like to be under time pressure; I think I perform worse, but it’s rarely been put to the test so I don’t know for sure.

However, with rising Covid cases throughout the U.S. and in my state, there is much uncertainty as to how we will operate when the Fall semester begins. At present, my institution is planning to have (masked) face-to-face in-class teaching, especially for incoming first-year students. It’s hard not to say anything different when your educational model sells itself on small class sizes, personal interactions with faculty, and having a beautiful campus among other factors. But there are contingencies in place: mask-wearing, physically-distanced classrooms with lower seating capacities, health checks, and more.

Having spent my teaching life in face-to-face environments, and having escaped the rapid online shift last semester because I was on sabbatical, I am apprehensive about what the new semester will bring. I’d like to teach in-person, and I might actually get to do so because it so happens I’m teaching two lower enrollment classes in the Fall. One is a first-year G-Chem class with only twenty students, where I’m also the students’ academic adviser. This is by design – the college ensures that every incoming student has at least one such class in their first semester. These classes are being prioritized for in-person teaching in the Fall, so it’s likely I will be assigned an appropriately sized classroom. My other class is a special topics origin-of-life chemistry course. I only have eleven students registered, and the room I’m presently assigned has a Covid-capacity of twelve students. So I might end up able to have all my classes in-person. But that won’t be true for most of my colleagues. Reduced classroom capacities mean that at a minimum, parts of the course must be remote – and there’s some registrar-related scheme to assign students different “live” days throughout the week.

I’m dragging my feet on class preparation. The situation is still uncertain and much could change over the next couple of months before classes begin. The state or county could mandate fully remote classes. I might be assigned or reassigned classrooms requiring partial remote, partial in-person, classes. I might have fully in-person classes. And any of these situations could change mid-semester – likely towards more remoteness as autumn turns to winter and the flu season hits, of if there’s a serious outbreak.

The challenge, and I might be looking at this too simplistically, is that what I think I would do to provide the best in-person teaching-learning experience differs quite a bit from my approach for an all-remote experience. I would structure my classes rather differently in both cases. The middle of the road, the so-called Hyflex approach (hinted at non-explicitly by my institution), is making me nervous. Trying to serve both in-person and remote students simultaneously seems overwhelming – especially when I think about whether I could even pay attention to so many different communication streams at the same time. The image coming to mind is a TED-talk or a game-show, with a live studio audience and many more tuning in remotely. Except I’d want my class to be highly participatory from both groups. Could I do it and would the technology support it? Unclear. Not sure how I would keep good eye contact with my in-person class while trying to watch a smaller screen all at the same time.

An additional wrinkle is that teaching and learning chemistry has a strong visual component. We’re trying to see the unseen, and that requires drawing structures on the board, using hand-held models, lots of gesturing with one’s hands and fingers, not to mention pictures and equations. Yes, one can flash up slides and share the screen simultaneously and even set up one’s presentation to show step-by-step changes. Just thinking about how I would do all this while trying to communicate well with simultaneous “audiences” is overwhelming. Perhaps I’m better off dividing in-class work and remote work into two separate realms, synchronous and asynchronous. But what do you do about a student who has fallen sick or who needs to quarantine for fourteen days or more? We’ve always had policies for illnesses or other absences, but those have always been viewed as individual idiosyncratic circumstances, not a large number, and worked out between the student and the faculty member. But when one’s institution (in a bid to keep students engaged), promotes these high-flexibility options, then it becomes a different ball game.

Perhaps I’m over-thinking the situation with needless fretting. I’ve started preparing for my special topics class because it’s easier to think about. We’ll be reading lots of primary literature and discussing it. Students will be writing. I recognize more than half of the enrolled students, so that will make connecting easier even if we have to go fully remote. I think I could pivot reasonably between in-person and remote given the smaller class size. Also, I’ve been thinking about the topic since I’m just coming off sabbatical and the majority of my workday is spent on research (while trying to write up a paper). I haven’t done much about my G-Chem class. Yes, I’ve taught the course almost every year in my familiar face-to-face format, but I might well have to think differently this coming semester. For now, I’m delaying making detailed plans given the fluidity of the situation. But at some point I’d really like to feel well-prepared. Not sure if I can be.