Richmond, Ind. - When students return to finish their spring semester at Indiana University East this week, classes will be held online only. Students will be welcomed to their virtual classrooms by faculty who have spent an extended spring break, March 16 to March 29, preparing for their return.
IU East is suspending face-to-face courses and moving instruction online as part of Indiana University’s response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in support of the well-being of all students, faculty and staff. Courses already being held online will continue as originally planned.
As announced on March 27, summer courses will also be held entirely online.
Though the change to go fully online mid-semester was unexpected, IU East students, faculty and staff have worked through the process.
Two important factors in making this transition as smooth as possible are that most IU East students are already adept at taking online courses. IU East faculty are prepared and skilled at online teaching.
IU East established itself as a leader in online education before its first three online degree completion programs were offered in 2008. Today, the campus offers 14 online degree completion options and three graduate certificate programs.
Online programs are a popular option for students.
At the start of the spring semester, 80 percent of IU East students were taking at least one course online.
There are now 3,766 students taking 1,215 class sections online. Only a few will be taking an online course for the first time.
Dennis Hicks is the registrar at IU East. His department tracks enrollment figures and maintains the course catalog.
“Before we moved to online only, we already had 936 online class sections, being taught by 167 instructors,” Hicks said. “After we moved totally online, that impacted 279 face-to-face class sections.”
Unprecedented Times: We’ll get through this as one Red Wolf family
IU East Chancellor Kathy Girten welcomed students back from spring break with a virtual message on March 27.
While COVD-19 has impacted the campus community, Chancellor Girten reassured students she understands that they are personally affected in many ways, both through work commitments and concern for their families. She also recognized that many milestones such as student celebrations, athletic contests, recognition ceremonies, or commencement, are now moving to an online platform, or are now postponed or canceled.
Despite the changes, Chancellor Girten said faculty and staff are prepared to “make the semester excellent.”
“One thing that I have found during my seven years at IU East is that the people on this campus care for one another, and they rise to meet a crisis,” Girten said. “We’re in this together as one Red Wolf family. Students, you have an opportunity to meet this challenge head-on and be successful - and, we are prepared to help you do it.”
IU East has a reputation for creating an environment that feels like home to students, faculty and staff. This close connection isn’t just in face-to-face classes, it’s present in online classes as well.
Understanding what students may feel during this time is a valuable insight faculty are tuning into while preparing classes online, and preparing a virtual meeting space to maintain a connected community among students.
Chera LaForge, associate professor of political science, remembers taking online courses as a student at Northern Michigan University in 2004, but then, online classes were more like a correspondence course, she said. She began teaching online as a graduate student at the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at IU East in spring 2013.
Her experience gives her some insight in what students may feel during isolation and the impact the coronavirus may have on students the remainder of the semester.
“Students are stressed and anxious! Faculty are anxious too,” LaForge said. “We’re all working through unprecedented times. While I’ve never felt exactly like this, the closest that I can compare it to is the days after September 11. Most of our students were just babies or toddlers during that time, so they’ve never had to deal with a nationwide or international event that shifts the ground under their feet like this.”
To help alleviate stress her students are feeling, LaForge said she is being as flexible and understanding as possible. She’s sending messages - even over the extended spring break - to provide information on free or reduced internet services, campus services for students available online, and access to student support programs.
“Communication, flexibility, transparency, and understanding should drive our teaching over the next few weeks,” LaForge said. “We can’t expect things to just proceed as normal. Students, just like faculty, may now be responsible for child care and home schooling. Some may have been laid off and lost their jobs as restaurants and other businesses close to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Some, unfortunately, may become ill themselves. At times, those are all things that might need to take precedence over our course material. We can, and should, still maintain high standards and deliver the important content we’re responsible for, but we should keep those other pressures in mind.”
Christine Nemcik, assistant professor of History and World Languages, started preparing her students to move fully online when the announcement was made. She added most IU East students are accustomed to online classes, but she regularly includes online components as part of her face-to-face classes to help introduce students who are not accustomed to them.
She understands some students are concerned about being fully online, and appreciate communications from their professors about how they will handle the change.
To help students adjust, Nemcik initiated Zoom meetings with her students, for whoever wanted to attend, to discuss how changes could be made to classes going fully online. The Zoom meetings were recorded for students so they could watch at their convenience.
Communication is key, Nemcik said.
“Addressing that this is not an ideal situation, but that we will work together to still have positive learning environments and learning experiences seemed to help them,” Nemcik said. “I think that for those students who were not already online, recommending that they check-in with the class as they normally would (for example twice a week during usually scheduled class time) is helpful.”
Wes Tobin, assistant professor of physics, also recognizes one key to student success is communication. He too started teaching as a a graduate assistant in 2006, and has continued teaching online every year since, as well as face-to-face.
Tobin agrees it is important to regularly contact students, through course announcements and individually. He said the biggest hurdle for most students is to regularly interact with content, making sure that students don’t “forget to access the course and to complete work on time.”
“Many online instructors have gotten used to the idea of regularly communicating with students to help them keep on track and not fall behind,” Tobin said. “Keeping an eye on the gradebook helps to let instructors know when a student has missed a deadline and when a student scored poorly. Quickly reaching out to the student can often solve the problem before there is one.”
We’re Ready: The move to all online classes
Stephanie Whitehead is the director of the Center for Faculty Development (CFD) at IU East. The center provides resources and online teaching support for faculty. Whitehead is also an associate professor of criminal justice and she is a certified Quality Matters instructor, a nonprofit organization that provides the gold standard for certifying the quality of online courses and programs.
During the extended spring break the Center for Faculty Development has worked with faculty to move face-to-face courses online. The center also provided support for other centers across Indiana to host webinars and contribute to Keepteaching.iu.edu, a resource for faculty provided by the Teaching Center Consultants at IU.
“We keep reaching out to faculty with reminders of webinars, best practices, and other helpful tips,” Whitehead said. “We are sharing important information and websites on our Facebook page. We’ve been responding to inquiries as they come in and holding consultations with individuals who need help in transitioning to online. We’re here to serve in any way we can during this time and hope that faculty who are struggling will continue to reach out.”
IU East has 126 full-time faculty members. Whitehead said the majority of the faculty have experience teaching online. IU and its regional campuses use an online learning management system, Canvas, for course management and teaching. Canvas allows instructors to post assignments, course materials, and provides ways for class members to connect virtually.
“Our faculty are ready to tackle the transition to fully online,” Whitehead said. “All our faculty receive Canvas training at New Faculty Orientation, Part-Time Faculty Orientation, and in other ways throughout the year. So, they have had some type of training at one point in their time at IU East.
With the move to go fully online there have been several discussions about how to handle some courses virtually, in particular science labs or arts courses.
Yu Kay Law, associate professor of chemistry, has taught online for nearly seven years. He knows the challenges faculty are facing. He teaches both face-to-face and online courses.
“Most of the classes I teach or coordinate have not been taught online previously,” Law said. “The big idea here is to start by looking at what we’ve got left (to move online), and try and adapt the course design so it’s compatible to student expectations and doesn’t harm student grades, or minimizes harm. The approach is different for each class.”
Some of the most challenging to move online are laboratory classes.
“Mostly, we’ve used a mixture of virtual lab simulations (particularly in general chemistry) and other exercises that would model the learning experiences that they would have received,” Law said. “While some of the lab expectations have been adapted, these weren’t changed too dramatically in many cases. For lecture courses, I have decided to mirror what works well for online classes and focus on relatively flexible models that allow for asynchronous interactions, with explanations given by video and students being asked to share with each other via online discussions of various types.”
Parul Khurana, associate dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and associate professor of biology, is working with her laboratory coordinator, Heatherlynn Barrett, to move her face-to-face class lessons online with adjustments that will help meet most goals in a virtual environment. According to Khurana, the ultimate aim is to still provide students the opportunity to learn, explore concepts, and develop their scientific reasoning skills.
For example, Khurana was planning for students in her Cell Biology and Introduction to Plant Kingdom class to have oral presentations. The student presentations about scientific articles or a phylum or group of plants will now be recorded on Zoom or Kaltura and shared with the class for a forum discussion.
Khurana and Barrett are compiling unique videos to share with students. Khurana recorded videos showing fluorescence and confocal microscopes to students, explaining how they work and showing slides as observed through the eyepiece. This is similar to what they would have done in lab. In addition, students will review microscopic images to identify or compare cells and techniques. Students will complete worksheets, as typical in Khurana’s face-to-face classes, with discussion moved to online Zoom sessions. For a plant lab, students will continue studying phototropism, or how plants grow toward light.
“Students normally sterilize seeds and plate them on nutrient agar plates, growing them in complete light, dark and darkness with a hole (to mimic a window),” Khurana said. “Since we are unable to grow these plants in the classroom, Heatherlynn recorded a video of my research student, William O’Farrow, sterilizing seeds in the biohood to show students the process. We are going to take pictures of the end results and share these with students to analyze.”
Across all academic schools, faculty prepared how to meet specific challenges of their courses for the remainder of the semester.
The School of Nursing and Health Sciences faculty are developing virtual classes to that could supplement the hands-on experiences nursing students typically receive through in-class instruction, nursing labs or clinicals.
LaDonna Dulemba, assistant professor of nursing, collaborated with faculty for the Nursing Synthesis course to organize a virtual panel discussion on Zoom related to how graduating nursing seniors can effectively cope with stress, burn out, and self-care as they enter the profession during the COVID crisis. The panel includes Jennifer Claypoole, director of Behavioral Health at IU East, and several nursing alumni including recent graduates Keaton Akers and Morgan McKinney. Clinical Assistant Professor Shelly Burns is offering hands-on learning through a virtual platform for the sophomore nurses in the fundamentals class. Gloria Dixon, clinical assistant professor, is developing virtual simulations for nursing students.
LaForge said she was fortunate to talk with students in her face-to-face course before moving online. Students requested a few live class sessions, which she doesn’t typically include in all of her online courses. She is working through the decision of what will work best for live class sessions or for asynchronous work.
This semester, LaForge is teaching POLS-Y 319: US Congress. She hopes to connect the remainder of the class to current events whenever possible, including congressional leadership in response to the pandemic, presidential negotiations, the economic crisis, executive-legislative relationship, and congressional oversight on bureaucracy, especially with the Center for Disease Control.
LaForge is also deciding a process for running a legislative simulation online.
“My students were assigned to senators just before the news was announced that we’d be transitioning to virtual teaching and they were set to have a committee hearing, markup, and floor speeches just after break,” LaForge said. “I’ve moved that to the end of the semester and am working to see how we can use Zoom to mimic the in-class experience.”
While faculty work through the challenges of moving classes online, there are a variety of tools, resources, and faculty peer mentors available to help.
Nemcik said IU East faculty are excellent at teaching online partly because there are many opportunities to do so, resulting in a comfort level.
“I believe that the support and resources that are available, particularly through the CFD is a key to our abilities,” Nemcik said. “Additionally, at least in my experience, we approach online teaching as a collaborative experience. This is true in learning with our students, but also in the way that we share ideas, resources, and best practices with each other.”
For many faculty the transition to a full-online format will be seamless, Whitehead said.
“Many have taught their courses in online versions previously so they have the materials ready for online work,” Whitehead said. “Those faculty with online experience know how to create modules fairly quickly and should have an easier time to transition. It still takes a lot of work and we should recognize the hard work it takes to create material, but at least they do have the experience in making the transition. I think one of the largest obstacles is time, but the extended spring break has helped faculty in that capacity.”
Part II of this three-part series will be published Monday, April 6. Read the full story at iue.edu/features/ready.html.