Difficulties, Opportunities Moving Classes Online

As schools close because of the coronavirus outbreak, educators inspecialized subjects are dealing with the difficulty of moving their classesonline.

College classes in the sciences and arts often use laboratory work,performances or even travel to teach students important lessons.

Some of these classes require special equipment or the ability togather in a group. For example, what does an engineering lab course look likeonline? How does a musical group practice?

Challenges

VOA Learning English spoke to educators across the United Statesrecently. Some described the difficulty of moving classes online in economic ortechnical terms.

Tom Luer is a music professor at California State PolytechnicUniversity, Pomona. He noted that his school has many students who do not havesome kinds of technology or special equipment at their homes.

Lectures, reading assignments and class discussions are not toodifficult to deal with, Luer explained. But, some kinds of lessons and performancesare more difficult to do.

Other educators were less concerned about technical problems andwere more concerned about the overall goals for their classes.

Aaron Sakulich is an engineering professor at Worcester PolytechnicInstitute, in Massachusetts. He was going to lead a group of students on aproject-based class in Armenia.

The students, each working with local non-profit organizations, weregoing to help develop solutions to problems facing their partners in Armenia.The students had spent months preparing for the project.

The trip was canceled. But the project-based class is continuingonline.

For now, Sakulich has worked hard to find possible US-based partnersto work with. He hopes students can still do interviews and research using appssuch as Zoom.

"My primary concern has been how to keep the students motivated,"Sakulich said.

Barbara Oakley is a professor of engineering at Oakland Universityand Coursera's Inaugural Innovation Instructor.

Oakley believes that the main goal for teachers is to transfer theirskills. In other words, teachers used to working in a class will have to testtheir teaching skills in a new way.

Oakley strongly supports online education. But, she said thathigh-level, specialized kinds of study, such as lab work in engineering, is noteasy to move online. She was quick to add that there is no simple answer forhow to teach specialized subjects.

Opportunities

Although there are many problems, educators also see opportunitiesor bright spots in the sudden move to online education.

Luer, at Cal Poly Pomona, looks forward to trying new teachingmethods.

He wants to use different computer applications to work with hismusic students. For example, one app, Acapella, lets musicians in differentplaces record different parts of a piece of music. Then, the app helps studentsput the different parts together, to create a single music track.

Even if students do not have computers or special recordingequipment, they can still record simple sound files on their phones.

Oakley noted the importance of creativity in the move to onlineeducation.

In the field of engineering, she said, some of the best lab-basedcourses that she has seen teach important scientific ideas rather than specificlab work.

"Instead of perhaps going into some of the nuances of thatparticular lab, they will go into the nuances of what good science actuallyinvolves. And if you are doing good research, what does that involve? How cangood research become bad research? And how can you avoid that? These are veryimportant topics, but they are often not covered in lab courses."

Moving forward

Matt Otto has been involved in online education for more than 10years.

Otto is a music professor at the University of Kansas. He believesthat schools and educators will be able to find a way forward within a month orso. "Most teachers are problem solvers – that's what teaching is," hesaid.

Otto said that online education cannot always recreate the exactsocial environment of a college campus. He noted, however, that he has seenmany online students have great success.

"People who think it's not a good method of teaching," hesaid, "maybe haven't done it. Because I've seen the outcomes."

One student, Xose Miguelez, studied online with Otto over a periodof six years.

"One of my other students [Miguelez] from Spain went from beinga hobbyist to being not only a professional, but he's got a position in auniversity and got the jazz album of the year in Spain this last year, in2019."

Otto said that he has seen other students succeed while studyingonline. "I think that is a testament to how effective online teachingis," he said.

I'm John Russell.