When Scripps announced in early July that remote instruction would continue for the fall 2020 semester, faculty expected that there would be challenges in conducting classes through online platforms, but also opportunities to expand the idea of what a liberal arts education could look like. Now that the fall semester is underway, Scripps professors have risen to those challenges and opportunities, creating courses that are flexible, creative, and student-centered.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 have to teach in the same way we always have,鈥� said Jennifer Armstrong, associate dean of faculty and professor of biology. 鈥淵es, it鈥檚 different, but this new online system gives you the freedom to try more creative, collaborative education. It鈥檚 trust-based pedagogy鈥攕tudents can take learning into their own hands.鈥�
While the phrase online semester may conjure images of Zoom screens and laptops, remote instruction and learning isn鈥檛 exclusively tied to technology. Many of Assistant Professor of English Michelle Decker鈥檚 assignments encourage students to engage in creative, analog, offline activities. 鈥淪tudents need to learn while moving their bodies away from screens,鈥� she said. 鈥淩eflection and creativity happen best when students are given the opportunity to move from passive to active learning.鈥� For example, she designed an activity for her poetry class that instructed students to take a walk outside without their phones, find an object, and write a short poem or descriptive paragraph on the object鈥檚 tactile features, while also reflecting on the sensory experience of the walk.
To assist faculty in building robust remote courses like Decker鈥檚, Scripps hired Nora Scully as an instructional design consultant in July. Scully, who has 15 years of experience in virtual learning and instructional design, said that a good online course typically requires about 50鈥�100 hours of planning, so the sudden transition to distance learning in March presented challenges for professors accustomed to in-person teaching. She offers one-on-one sessions to faculty to help build their curricula and think through their pedagogy. 鈥淥ften, they already have ideas, so what we鈥檙e doing is having a dialogue, filling in the blanks, and building solutions together,鈥� she said.
The (CTL) at The Claremont Colleges has also provided a number of resources for 7C faculty, including a self-paced workshop on teaching summer courses, downloadable course templates, and a series of modules on strengthening community for new faculty members. While their spring workshops focused on what CTL Program Director Jessica Tinklenberg called 鈥減andemic triage鈥濃�攔ecognition of the challenges brought on by COVID-19鈥攖ransparency, communication, and care for students鈥� well-being have remained at the forefront of the CTL鈥檚 best practices for remote instruction in the summer and fall. Tinklenberg noted that the ongoing nature of the pandemic, the fight for racial justice, and the West Coast wildfires have all taken a toll on The Claremont Colleges community, and the CTL has hosted seminars on trauma-informed pedagogy and humanizing teaching and learning.
鈥淪trengthening community has emerged as a theme for our teaching and learning workshops,鈥� Tinklenberg said. 鈥淚n creating strong online instruction, we have to foreground transparency, start from a position of care, and engage in intentionally equitable communication practices. Students need to see a clear path to success in their online courses, and we have to make sure that students get access to courses in a variety of ways.鈥�
For chemistry lab coordinator Sadie Otte, that means providing flexibility with due dates, an explicit explanation of the extension process for late work, and weekly videos summarizing the previous week鈥檚 assignments, as well as upcoming activities and due dates. Mindful of students鈥� varying levels of access to materials, Otte has also provided creative options for in-home 鈥渒itchen chemistry鈥� experiments, utilizing common household items. Earlier this semester, her organic chemistry students focused on chromatography and recrystallization, two different lab techniques for separating mixtures into components. Depending on the materials available to them, some students chose to use Kool-Aid, Crystal Lite, and food coloring to conduct at-home chromatography, while others used water and sugar to conduct recrystallization.
Decker has similarly adjusted the number of required readings on her literature syllabi and built small group, collaborative activities for students to maintain asynchronous connections. 鈥淭he best thing we can do for students right now is to provide a flexible structure for learning that maintains standards but is also attuned to the challenges of an online semester,鈥� she said. 鈥淪tudents want to learn, but since our [on-campus] community isn鈥檛 intact, we need to respect individual limitations.鈥�
Thoughtful procedures like Otte鈥檚 and Decker鈥檚 are part of what Scully refers to as 鈥渢he ethics of care,鈥� a best practice in humanizing learning, whether online or on-campus. Scully noted that many of these practices, such as designing a well-organized course or engaging students in collaborative thinking, aren鈥檛 new鈥攖hey just need to be adapted for a digital environment. 鈥淎ll this work is student-centered,鈥� she explained. 鈥淔aculty are open to student feedback, and they鈥檙e willing to pivot and do what needs to be done in order to connect their students to their teachers, to each other, and to the world.鈥�
Indeed, Otte said that the most vital aspect of strengthening her classes鈥� sense of community has been incorporating students鈥� voices and choices into the curriculum wherever possible: Her students have chosen their own course objectives, classroom values, research projects, and presentation topics. 鈥淚t鈥檚 something I started doing even before we went online, and now it鈥檚 more important than ever,鈥� she said.
Support for remote instruction will continue throughout the fall semester, as faculty continue to adjust their teaching to students鈥� needs. The CTL will offer a series of lectures on creating anti-racist pedagogy in the classroom鈥攁nother cornerstone of their resources鈥攁s well as regular presentations on best online instructional practices. (The CTL provides the faculty who give these lectures and presentations with stipends that, in pre-pandemic times, were earmarked as course activity grants for faculty to improve classroom practices.) Decker and Otte will each present their best instructional practices in CTL workshops this semester, focusing on the two-pronged approach of creativity and care for students鈥攏ow and in the future. 鈥淪mall, project-based assignments enable students to see this strange time as not simply a hardship, though it is,鈥� Decker said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 also an opportunity to start building the community and the world they wish to live in, even as we study the very real structures of violence and oppression that harm minorities and people of color especially.鈥�
Scully believes that the strength of the Scripps community has bolstered faculty鈥檚 ability to adapt to the challenges of remote instruction, allowing them to translate what鈥檚 worked in the classroom to online interactions. 鈥淐ourses at Scripps have a good student to teacher ratio, so faculty have the opportunity to be connected with their students鈥攁nd they are so connected,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey care passionately about their teaching practices and their students.鈥�
