Draft submitted by Distance Learning Committee: Sheryl Culotta (chair), Rachael Barlow, Jennifer Curran, Jennifer Rose, Rachel Schnepper
On March 11, 2020, Wesleyan announced a transition to remote instruction for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. In the weeks prior to and following this announcement, CPI, ITS, and the Library held a number of workshops on remote teaching, in addition to meeting with faculty on the department level and on an individual level. By early April, a decision was made to move all summer courses for both Graduate Liberal Studies and the undergraduate Summer Session online, as well (and, along with Winter Session, these stayed fully online through summer 2021). Over the summer when it appeared that the pandemic would continue at least into the fall, faculty were offered the choice to teach their classes wholly in-person, wholly online, or a combination of the two. In response, we offered workshops led by members of CPI, ITS, the Library, and the Fries Center. In addition, guest speakers from Muhlenberg University offered a weeklong workshop on Camp Design Online from July 6th-10th, and Melissa Eblen-Zayas of Carleton College led several workshops the week of July 27th on Resilient Course Design. These workshops were intended to help faculty better adapt to distance education for the coming year. During the 2020-21 academic year, all faculty had the option to teach fully remotely for both semesters, and during the fall semester after the Thanksgiving break all faculty were required to teach remotely.
In summer 2020 we piloted a summer first year seminar (FYS) program in which we offered fully remote FYS courses at no additional cost to the incoming class (this was separate from our normal Summer Session program with courses for returning students at a cost). In summer 2020 we offered 16 courses (15 FYS plus one large lecture course) and we filled every seat available with a total of 311 enrollments. Faculty and students survey responses indicated that they appreciated the summer opportunity, so we offered the program again in 2021. In 2021 we ended up with a total of 138 enrollments and had to cancel 5 courses. We are trying this pilot for a third summer in 2022 to gauge the interest in this summer offering for the incoming class as the pandemic settles, and plan to survey participating faculty and students in fall 2022 to determine whether or not to continue this program.
The fully online 2020 Summer Session was followed by online Winter and Summer Sessions in 2021. These sessions were very well enrolled with 3 to 4 times the usual on-campus enrollments. Online course options provide a range of benefits to the students, including accessibility, affordability, convenience, and flexibility. Particularly during the pandemic, these sessions offered students who struggled with their workload an opportunity to catch up on credits. The high enrollments brought in significant unexpected revenue to the University. On October 12, Faculty voted to approve a 3-year pilot to allow online course options as part of Winter and Summer Session. We had planned to offer 10 online courses out of 16 in Winter 2022 but ended up moving all Winter courses online as the pandemic worsened. We project 14 out of 26 courses in Summer 2022 will be offered remotely.
Online GLS courses had been approved by faculty in February 2015 but had not been widely implemented because the available platform (Newrow) was expensive and difficult to use. However, fully online GLS courses via Zoom went very well during the pandemic, and we plan to include a mix of online and on-campus courses going forward (although GLS students cannot currently complete a degree fully online).
Teaching in Summer, Winter, and GLS programs is voluntary, and Wesleyan faculty who choose to teach receive additional compensation. The director of Continuing Studies puts out a call for proposals to instructors and department chairs. A slate of proposed courses is submitted to the Deans and Provosts for the undergraduate courses, who review and approve a final list. GLS course proposals are reviewed by a 6-member GLS faculty advisory committee – their final recommendations are reviewed and approved by the Provost. Department chairs and instructors may choose to teach online or in person; nobody is required to teach online.
When we moved to teaching fully remotely during the pandemic, Academic Affairs put out a guideline that a minimum of 25% of normal course contact hours must include synchronous interaction between the student and the instructor. This means that a traditional 1 credit course that would normally meet in person for 40 hours must include at least 10 hours of synchronous interaction. Most online courses included a much higher percentage of synchronous teaching, and many courses kept the same synchronous meeting hours after they moved online that they would have had if the course met in person.
For about eight years, we have also offered a small number of classes in the Romance Literature and Language department that are co-taught with classes in Spain. The classes are linked via video conferencing once a week.
In fall 2021 Wesleyan partnered with National Education Equity Lab to offer a remote version of President Michael Roth’s course on The Modern and the Postmodern to 70 high school students in under-resourced schools. The course was embedded in their high school, so the students met regularly with a teacher at their school to watch videos of President Roth’s lectures and to discuss the material, and they met once a week for 45 minutes with a Teaching Fellow based at Wesleyan. Students who complete this course will receive one Wesleyan credit. A second course for high school students in partnership with Education Equity Lab is scheduled for spring 2022 with another faculty member. This pilot program fits into a strategic initiative to increase access to a liberal arts education.
As distance education is being standardized, faculty training is being developed with an intention of standardization, as well. For Winter 2022, all instructors scheduled to teach online were invited to meet with staff in Continuing Studies and CPI to discuss online teaching strategies and scheduling. Continuing Studies staff include people with expertise in Moodle and Zoom who support faculty needing assistance. Moving forward, we intend to regularly offer a training program for faculty who choose to offer a course online, consisting of meetings and online content to ensure that faculty have the resources they need.
Student Affairs has provided support for students in online courses during the pandemic. The class deans encourage students behind on credits to take these courses outside the academic year. In addition, they clear some students on medical leave to take online intersession courses, since the students can continue their medical care and family/community support while learning from home. Library Services, ITS and other departments available to on-campus students during summer and winter are also available to distance learners to the extent possible. For GLS students, support for online students equals support for on-campus students because all student advising, enrollment support, help with Moodle etc., are conducted via email, Zoom, or phone.
In the 2020-21 academic year, we provided faculty with a license to Respondus. With its Remote Lockdown Browser, online exams administered through our learning management system, Moodle, locked down internet access on their computers, preventing students from accessing online resources during the exam. While this technology was occasionally used by some faculty, we also heavily encouraged faculty to avoid administering high-stakes exams in the remote environment, instead encouraging them to reconceive their assignments in such a way that they limit the potential for academic dishonesty. We will continue to advocate for this during the training for faculty teaching online in Winter and Summer Session.
To evaluate the program of summer and winter online course offerings, we need to answer a variety of questions:
- Are these courses of the same quality as those offered in person at Wesleyan during the regular semesters?
- How do these courses fit into the larger enrollment strategies of specific academic units/majors and the university overall?
- How do these courses affect students (in terms of their learning, their ability to graduate on time or early, their ability to balance academics with other summer responsibilities?)
- How do these courses affect Wesleyan financially?
To answer these questions, we will collect a wide variety of data, beginning with feedback from the students who participate in Summer or Winter Session during the 3-year pilot program. Wesleyan asks students to complete course/teaching feedback forms at the end of every semester, and this includes both the Summer and Winter Sessions. The Office of Institutional Research plans to compare the results from these forms gathered from courses taught online with those taught in person (during the regular fall and spring semesters or during a Summer/Winter Session prior to COVID). This will give us the ability to have an ongoing check about the quality of our online course offerings relative to what we offer in person over the course of the pilot. Furthermore, we regularly conduct surveys of students who enroll in Summer and Winter Sessions, to develop a sense of why students enroll in those courses and the quality of their experience. Beginning in January 2022, we added questions to these surveys about students’ experiences in these classes (e.g., about the kinds of assignments they completed, the accessibility of the instruction, the amount of effort they have put into the course, etc.). In addition to asking for student feedback, we will also collect a wide variety of data about the courses themselves, including number of contact hours offered by the faculty member (collected from the faculty member prior to the start of each semester), types of courses offered (major requirements v. electives), enrollments, grade distributions, and graduation patterns among students who took courses during the Summer and Winter Sessions. Throughout the pilot period, we will also speak one-on-one with faculty who teaching online during these sessions to gather information about the challenges they have faced.