The challenges of suddenly teaching online


Now that classes in schools and colleges are being shut down, faculty have been asked to shift to teaching online. In my former life heading a teaching center at a research university, I know that teaching online is not easy and to do it well requires a lot of preparation and help from online course designers. Many faculty are reluctant to try online teaching for a variety of reason. Some feel that there is positive dynamic in face-to-face interactions that gets lost when mediated by technology. Others are simply technophobes who worry that they will mess things up and not know how to recover. Some faculty at research universities like mine are unwilling to expend the time because research takes priority and there is simply no great benefit to it. And finally some faculty simply don’t care. They long ago stopped putting any effort into improving their teaching and see no reason to start now.

But now that all have been forced to go online, I can only imagine the stress that they are experiencing as they are forced into a new situation that has a steep learning curve.

But this professor has channeled those challenges into adapting Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

For those not familiar with the wonderful original 1978 song about empowerment, here is Gaynor singing it.

And here is a more irreverent setting of that song.

Comments

  1. says

    The real threat of online teaching is the very real fear that once students (and administrators) discover that an online course is just as good—and perhaps better, think most over crowded public schools and 100 and 200 level college courses—in many cases that teachers will mediocre and average teachers will find themselves out of work.

  2. says

    Damn, I hit post rather than preview…
    in many cases that teachers will mediocre and average teachers will find themselves out of work.

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