Modified: 2021-08-17
I led an SAU delegation to Havana in February 2020. We attended the bi-annual meeting of Universidad 2020 and gave presentations about rural education (Kardas), agriculture (Miller), and the Nigerian economy (Okeke). The latter presentation was by honors senior, Chinedu Okeke. He’s now a graduate student in international relations. Dr. Miller retired last semester as chair of the Agriculture Department. Little did we realize that soon a pandemic would hit.
That March SAU moved all of its classes to online. Me, I had long vowed never to teach an online course, but circumstances forced my hand. Having long created web-based class materials, I decided to amplify my pages to simulate the information I used to provide orally in class. Where applicable, I continued to use textbooks and PowerPoints. In general psychology, I learned to add audio to those. On my old web pages I added additional audio and video materials. I did not use Zoom.
Perhaps the most radical thing I did was to move to a testing system that was more resistant to cheating. I made all of my tests open book and open notes. At the same time, however, I also raised the standards for grades. To me, at least, it made sense to do so given that students could look up the necessary answers. I also removed time pressure by allowing students to take the tests at their own pace. Some were able to finish the courses ahead of time because of that.
I wondered if having to look up the answers to a test, rather than trying to remember studied material, made for better learning. Unfortunately, because all of my classes were online I had no control group; a face-to-face class in the same course where I would lecture in class and give traditional tests. Maybe I’ll get the chance to conduct such an experiment when the world becomes more normal.
SAU students who saw me prior to Covid knew that I only wore two basic outfits to class. One was a loud short-sleeved shirt, shorts, and Birkenstocks. The other was overalls, a t-shirt, and Birkenstocks. Well, I have worn those only a few times since SAU went to online. Teaching from home allowed me to don gym shorts and a t-shirt nearly all the time, comfy. I also did not shave as often.
Early in the pandemic my wife and I rarely left the house. We shopped at Sams and Walmart but always wore masks. I added rubber gloves to my wardrobe, along with a baseball cap. We ceased eating out nearly totally and cooked many more meals than before. We quit flying, of course. For our 32nd anniversary trip to Ocracoke Island, NC we traded for a new 4X4 truck so we could drive it on the beach. For our 30th anniversary we had flown and rented a 4X4 truck. Understand, that getting to Ocracoke requires taking a ferry and that at the beach the nearest other people were always at least 75 yds away. In other words, we isolated ourselves at home, on the road, and at the beach.
Getting back to teaching, I realized that I came to enjoy teaching online. I noticed I was busy nearly all the time (meaning from 6 am to 8:30 pm) either answering e-mails, grading tests, or taking phone calls. Instead of having to come to SAU, meet my classes, hold office hours, and attend face-to-face meetings I discovered I could do all of that from my desk in my new “home office.” There, I had two Mac laptops and one regular PC. I had to pay Verizon for a newer modem to accommodate a faster network too. Plus, I could take a quick nap, grab a snack or a drink, or even take a short walk whenever I wanted.
My wife and I each got vaccinated as soon as possible. She had to wait longer than I. I had about 6 hours of discomfort following the second shot. My wife had no after effects. A colleague reported he was down for a whole weekend. After waiting a few weeks after our second inoculation we began to eat out more, but only in outside settings. We still masked and kept our hands as clean as possible.
Around midsummer 2021 we were looking forward to returning to a more normal existence but the Delta variant changed all that for us and everyone else. I was prepared to return to traditional in-class teaching for the fall but two things changed that, neither related to the pandemic. One class (PSYC 3093) moved to online because of time conflicts in scheduling it in a classroom. The other class (PSYC 2003) moved back to online because SAU is setting up an full online Associate of Arts (AA) degree and that required a general psychology class. I moved Honors Seminar back to face-to-face for several reasons. One was to avoid another “lost” honors cohort. (They did not really get lost, but we never got the chance to learn about each other as well in the online format.) So, I’m looking forward to actually being in front of a class again.
Experienced teachers know that it takes a while to recover the muscles and oral components required to speak loudly for several hours a day. So, it will be a few weeks before I can yack continuously for more than an hour without feeling sore and dry in the throat. After a few weeks I’ll be able to lecture for long periods without discomfort.
That’s my pandemic story. I’m happy it does not include relatives becoming sick or passing away. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for a few friends of ours. In July, we were in Buffalo, NY visiting our son and his girlfriend and we all took in a minor league baseball game. There were 10,000 fans there and it was packed. My wife and I looked at each other and we were amazed. We were actually in a crowd of strangers, packed shoulder to shoulder. Now, it looks like that will no longer be the case. The pandemic is not over and who knows what more changes it will bring.