-: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
We know that you had options and we appreciate
you taking the time to join us.
My colleagues and I are presenting our research
that we did last year based on the transition
of our face-to-face classes to the online mode
or the remote version due to the pandemic.
My colleagues are Dr. Carie Kracl, teaches Education.
Dr. Miechelle McKelvey at Communication Disorders.
Dr. Sharon Obasi in Family Sciences.
All of us are in the College of Education, UNK.
So of course, like everybody else,
basically all over the world, when the pandemic happened
we had to quickly adapt ourselves
and move from our face-to-face regular classes
to an online remote mode.
Obviously it was unexpected, none of us were prepared.
And on the top of that dormitories were evacuated.
Students were forced to go back home.
A lot of them live in remote places
with no access to devices or internet
which basically made this transition very difficult.
And on the top of that, many of us were challenged
with taking care of our loved ones and being anxious
and worried about this pandemic
that we had very little knowledge about.
In normal circumstances, online teaching and face-to-face
are not necessarily better or worse than one another,
they just have different challenges.
In regards with online teaching according to the literature
there are certain challenges that were particularly relevant
to this pandemic situation.
For example, there is always a sense of isolation
when students take online courses
because there is less opportunity
to interact with their peers or their instructors.
It's typically difficult to offer a hands-on
learning activities or practices
and you will see that as an example
that will provide in our graduate course, just in a bit.
And it's difficult for instructors
to have a prominent presence all the time
and provide their support in timely manner
when the student needs it right at a time
maybe it's at a weekend, maybe it's at midnight.
So there are challenges that are
related to online courses in general.
In this study we looked at
the courses that were offered face-to-face
in a regular circumstance, but now due to the pandemic
we were forced to go online rapidly.
These cases were either undergraduate or graduate courses.
And what we did in this research
was that we provided information
on how the courses were managed
when they were offered face-to-face,
then what we did to adapt ourselves
and to help the transition to be as smooth as possible
for the students and to actually make
the learning happen during the pandemic time
when the universities were shut down.
Self-reflection on what went well and what didn't go well.
And also we surveyed the students on their experiences
and perspectives and what they thought that it worked
and what didn't.
In this presentation we've chosen some examples
that we will present if you're interested
in learning more about all of these courses
and more in depth discussions
we invite you to read our paper
which was published a few months ago.
Dr. Crackl will take it from here.
-: So the class that I was teaching
it's called the Primary Literacy Block
and it's an undergraduate class.
It is face-to-face Wednesdays and Fridays,
and Mondays, they have a full day field experience
so they go, we're based in Kearney,
so typically our students go to Grand Island
or Lexington on Mondays, and they are there
from the start of the day until the day is finished.
And so this is one of their final classes
they take before student teaching.
It is a face-to-face course.
There are some online modules that I had created
that they would do while they were still face-to-face.
So it wasn't like I didn't have anything built into Canvas.
And last Spring, we had 52 students in two sections.
So at the time of the transition, the students were
about halfway done with their field experiences
we were getting different messages
from the schools they were going to.
Yes, you can keep coming.
No, you can't and then eventually, of course,
all the schools were closed anyway.
So we still had several topics that we needed to cover
and a literature review that we do at the end
that I usually teach quite a bit of the content about
just because they have a lot of them come in
with very mixed ability levels on a literature review
and then their field experiences.
And then one of the things they do
in their field experiences is they complete an assessment
and then they also do a whole group teaching assignment.
So those were things that still had to be done
and that we wanted to do.
One of the biggest debates we had at UNK
was should we stay synchronous with our meeting times
or should we just create the modules
and let the students work on them as time allows?
And I chose to not have synchronous meeting times.
What I was hearing from my students was
because they're at their education majors
a lot of them are employed by daycares.
And they actually, so school-aged kids
it's now since they weren't going to school
they were going to daycare
because most Kearney has a very large,
has many several healthcare facilities
and so the nurses and the doctors
and everybody involved in healthcare,
they were still going to work.
And so the daycares actually increased their capacity.
So many of my students were working hours
that they wouldn't normally work.
And so I chose not to have designated meeting times
I just did the modules.
One thing that I did to try to stay connected
was I did weekly videos using VidGrid.
I love VidGrid, I think it's really easy to work with.
And so I felt like by me walking through the assignments
on Canvas, opening things up, showing them examples
then that would help the process.
The field experience was something
that was a little more tricky.
How was I going to replace a full day field experience?
There was just no way to do that.
So I did spend a lot of time looking at high quality videos
of classroom instruction, trying to find videos
on the topics that we had left to discuss
in our discussion boards and students watch those instead.
So instead of a full day field experience
they were watching maybe a 60-minute video.
So I know in no way replaced what they were getting out
in their field, but at least it allowed them
to see some high-quality teaching.
As far as some of the assignments they had left to do
so instead of them reading out loud to live students
now I will say I had some creative students who said,
"Hey I'm working in a daycare. Can I just do my read aloud
for the kids that I'm teaching in my daycare?"
And yes, definitely, it's much more exciting
to do a read aloud in a lesson with children
that can respond and participate and so
and some did it that way and others just
video themselves doing the lesson.
So just some of the comments that I got back
that I felt were important was 90.5%
of the responding students felt like they had access to me,
which was important and I thought,
I think the videos helped me stay connected to the students.
81% felt that the transfer was efficient.
Some of the comments I got was like
there's so much work involved.
You've created more work for me to do
and I didn't change any of the assignments
from what we would have done if we were face-to-face online.
So I'm not sure why they felt that way.
Maybe its overall when they had
all of their classes together
they felt like it was a little overwhelming
but I didn't change any of the assignments.
And then one of the most concerning things to me
was that 52.4% missed the in-person interaction with me
and 61.9% missed the in-person interaction
with their classmates.
So definitely I think if we would've started online
it would have been different
but because we were face-to-face and then all of a sudden
they're moving away, it's their last semester
before student teaching, it's their last chance
to be with their classmates
that they may have had four years with it felt very sudden.
Some of the quotes that I took,
"The biggest struggle for me was knowing that
if I was in a face-to-face class,
I would have learned so much more."
That was their perception.
I felt like, you know, we did a pretty good job
covering the content but they felt like
they would've learned more.
You know even this semester teaching
whether it has been different
I have been very lucky to teach the same course
face-to-face in the Fall and the Spring.
And the only difference is that we usually sit in
in pods of four and we've been spread six feet apart.
So I know the conversations haven't been the same
as what they typically would
but I was thankful I got 'em to face-to-face.
I would've much rather been able to finish the course
in person because we had much better discussions.
And it was one of the most helpful education classes
I've taken so far.
So again, how to keep those discussions robust
even when we switched to online.
"And then I miss the interaction with classmates
and making those lifelong connections.
This was my last semester with them before student teaching
and I felt like I didn't get to say goodbye."
When I was hearing these comments, you know, I thought,
do I wanna switch to synchronous
or do I wanna stay with just the modules?
And I was here getting mixed messages
on yes we wanna be together and no, I can't
I have too many conflicts.
And so we didn't really get that goodbye
that I wish we would've gotten.
-: Hello, my name is Miechelle McKelvey
and my example is for a graduate course
my graduate course of motor speech disorders
is required course two-credit hour course.
That was an eight-week section.
I had about 18 students in there
and the content involves diagnosing
and demonstrating treatment strategies
for dysarthria and apraxia of speech.
They typically have textbook assigned readings
in addition to some articles, three exams,
and a couple of group activities that involved hands-on.
So they do hands-on motor speech assessment
which involves students working in pairs
doing oral mechanism exams,
and then also doing a motor speech assessment
with their peers.
So they're taking voice samples, they're analyzing those.
And then the treatment activity is demonstrating
treatment approaches working with pairs again
instructing your partner on how to,
as if they were a patient on how to perform the strategy
and then giving each other feedback.
So that was not possible because they obviously
weren't able to touch each other
so that they couldn't do those evaluation things.
So one of the things that I did do was use Simucase.
I had taught online before
but I had not taught this particular class online.
So moving the content and changing the activities
had to happen pretty quickly
because this was only an eight-week class,
we were two weeks into the class when everything shut down.
So we were right at the point where we were gonna begin
doing some of these hands-on things.
I chose because I spoke with the students, again,
much like Dr. Kracl I gave them the opportunity
to either we could do this in modules
where they just did it completely online
or we had an asynchronous time.
And overwhelmingly they wanted an asynchronous time with me.
So we kept our meeting time the same,
it was the same that they would have had
if they were coming in face-to-face,
I also provided them with an opportunity
I was on 30 minutes before class and stayed 30 minutes
after class so that if they had any questions
or if they wanted to meet in small groups
they could get together with me that way.
I chose to instead of using the two major exams that I had
I transitioned those into smaller weekly exams
so that it was smaller chunks of information
and possibly alleviated some stress for them.
There were two major projects like I said before,
the Assessment Project and the Treatment Project
that were so I combined them
and gave them all the same video patient
to do the project on.
And so that made it a little bit easier in terms of
doing the assessment and providing that assessment plan.
I used a computer program that they were familiar with.
We have Simucase, which is there are simulated patients
within there that show different assessment tasks
and treatment methods.
So the patients that I chose was something that
through a method that they had already used before
so they didn't have to learn something new
to access that material, which also I think was
a little bit of a stress reliever.
Also in motor speech, we typically have a lot of labs
because there's equipment that they need to learn
how to use to evaluate the speech.
Of course, they weren't able to come into the lab to do that
because we didn't have those things
but I mined through Simucase and found several videos
of people demonstrating that particular equipment.
So again, it wasn't perfect,
but they got to see the equipment in use.
And then I recorded short videos
where I explained the results
and why and how they were using the equipment
for this particular patient.
So they saw the video on Simucase
and then they had, you know, like a five-minute video
that they watched me sort of interpret that with them.
So that was the best I could do
to replace that lab equipment.
Then after the survey was completed,
one of the things that the students commented on
is that the transition was very quickly.
I had stuff up for them right away.
They were able to access things really efficiently.
They felt that it was that transfer of information
their ability to access it was efficient.
And they appreciated the flexibility that I used
when condensing assignments, minimizing things,
changing things to be in smaller chunks
so that they could do them and not big examinations.
They were missing those personal interactions
so that was the number one thing,
they were missing that had interactions with me.
And they were missing that interaction with peers.
And if I did it all over again I would allow more class time
for them to have to interact with one another.
And that was something I was just so concerned
with getting content that I was worried about that.
And then they still felt engaged,
they felt that they received timely support.
That was something that I was really vigilant at.
If they emailed me I tried to get it back to them
very quickly so that there was no
something that they were stressing about.
Many of them felt that if they had to do it online again,
they could do it.
They would prefer to do it face-to-face.
And only one of my students unfortunately experienced
an illness that prevented them
from attending a lot of courses
but we just worked through it.
A lot of them 43% felt that stress of the pandemic,
but the remote learning they didn't feel
that the remote learning was as large of a cause of that.
Outside of the class, I provided an opportunity for them
to have movie nights with me.
I gave him a choice on a survey,
they got to pick the movie it was about
an individual with complex communication needs.
And we watched the movie together through Netflix Party.
And then we had a discussion afterwards
about that movie and they really really liked that.
So we did the best we could.
We just turned it around to use the things that we had.
And I think the students learned from the experience
if nothing else, flexibility with having to turn on a dime
and also using different types of content
to represent materials.
Obasi I think you're next.
-: I was not so sure if ready or not.
Anyway, I'm Sharon Obasi, they found me science at UNK.
Can I get the last, the next slide please?
Thank you.
So this project allowed us to get a glimpse of
the experience of going to remote learning quickly
from both the perspective of the students
and also the protective of instructors
and there are like several lessons
that we got from this exercise.
But three broad areas we can sort of like summarize
would be as follows, definitely the need to be flexible.
I think we all appreciate the sensibility in terms of
of instruction before the pandemic occurred.
I think we learned to appreciate in a different way
during the pandemic and hopefully post pandemic as well.
We all emerge as rapid responders.
We all had to be responsive to our students.
We also had to be responsive to colleagues.
We had colleagues who for various reasons
had never taught online before.
And so we found ourselves being like, you know
it helps experts sometimes
along with our instructional designers
into helping call these kind of get courses online rapidly
and being able to do what they wanted to do
within their particular fields.
Flexibility in terms of evaluation measures
like Dr. Kracl having her students
elementary students to use their art work story time
as part of her class, as Dr. McKelvey mentioned
finding similar tasks and other sources to use
to help her students understand how to use
their the equipment appropriately
once they go out in the field.
The other thing is we really paid attention to was this
we were forced to pay attention to, to attend to
is this digital divide, the observation that
not all of us, there's a lack of equity in terms of
accessing appropriate equipment, accessing reliable wifi
having the luxury of time to do some of these forces.
I know it taught me science.
A lot of our students work other jobs.
And so the debate, as Dr. Kracl mentioned
in terms of asynchronous learning became a huge one for us
because we had students who, you know, worked outside
of going to school full-time and things like that.
The issue of digital literacy,
I think we all assume sometimes that our students are
because they're digital natives that they understand
how to use technology, how to use software
and things like that.
Sometimes they don't.
The other recognition is that we have several generations
working in the higher ed space
and we all communicate differently.
And so we have to attend to some of those issues as well.
And the last thing I think that really resonated
with me in particular was this idea of focusing on wellbeing
In family science we always talk about things
like resilience and mindfulness and so on.
And I think across higher ed, irrespective of discipline,
those words became even more important.
We had to learn to lead with grace.
We had to learn to give our students the chances
to complete their courses in ways that fit their schedules
what they're experiencing as Dr. McKelvey mentioned
we had several students who indicated
that they were having concerns in terms of
the stress of the pandemic itself was having on them
as individuals, as families, communities, and so on.
So we had to attend to those issues as well.
So next slide, please.
So thank you for listening.
Thank you for spending time with us.
If you have any questions, comments, queries, or concerns
please contact us via our emails listed there
and as Dr. Ghazi Saidi mentioned,
feel free to take a look at our publication
based on this work.
Thank you.
Kozak: Alright, thank you so much
to our presenters from UNK.
We've got a few minutes here left
if anyone would like to open up their mic
or their camera and ask questions feel free to do so
in addition to chat.
I'm gonna share my screen here.
In addition, we would like you to complete
one of the evaluations at the agenda URL there
and I'll also post this in chat as you're working.
I do have a question, where's it?
Miechelle, you mentioned Netflix Party.
I've never used that, I don't know what that is.
Can you explain that?
-: Are you on mute?
McKelvey: When you log into Netflix
there's an app that you click on
and it's so that you can all watch
the same movie at the same time.
And then you can have a little chat group
and all of the kids had it.
Like I knew they all had Netflix and I could
if they didn't have a subscription
then I could invite them to my Netflix Party
so then they didn't have to pay for Netflix
and they could watch the movie
at the same time that I was watching it.
And it was kind of fun to do the chat with them
during the movie, because I'm kind of a movie geek.
So I would be chatting with them
different statistics about like the one movie we watched
one of the movies that we watched was 'The King's Speech.'
So I would, you know, text them information
about the statistics of stuttering
or anything that I knew about the characters.
And when they were making the movie
how they learned to stutter efficiently
how the lead actors learned how to do that.
And some of those fun kinds of trivial things.
And then they had all kinds of questions afterwards.
Typically at 10:30 at night, and I was like,
"Okay, you guys we gotta stop for now
because I was (indistinct) go to bed
they were still talking.
But it was a great interaction
in a way to kinda bring course content to live
and also to keep connected with them
and make sure they were okay.
Kozak: That's awesome, thanks for sharing that.
Kozak: Just a question for all the presenters
how much of the feedback do you think was tainted
by the fact of the circumstances?
So in evaluating, you know, the online
the pandemic effects can't be mitigated.
And the fact is that a lot of the things
people recommended dealing with the pandemic
kinda go counter to what you were able to do
as far as keeping the same routine so
what do you think that had
or how much do you think that had to do
with results that you got back?
-: I would take his first in our safe survey,
we really tried to be clear and specific and explicit
that these questions are about the pandemic.
For some of the questions we did have a tag like
in regular online class what is your opinion about this?
And then in the circumstances that we're at or
due to the transition, what is your opinion about this?
So we tried to be as explicit as possible
about the circumstance.
And some of the questions were really just
geared towards the pandemic,
but you're right.
Some of the issues are not just, you know,
it's an online versus face-to-face issue
not necessarily a transitional issue.
I don't know if anybody else wants to complete my answer.
-: No, I would just add that.
You know, you did pick up on a little bit of fear
in some of the comments from some of the students.
They were unsure of what was happening.
You know, my students we're getting ready
to go student-teach in the Fall,
where are they gonna get to go student-teach
where school is gonna be open.
So there was a lot of fear and we did this.
I mean, we did this right away, like in end of May
I'm thinking we started on this so June, so there,
I mean it was still in the middle of everything happening.
And so I think, you know, gosh if we went back
and asked those students now a year later
some of their thoughts, they would probably be different
but this was right when everything was happening
and there were so many questions.
And so I think there was a lot
of fear and uncertainty of what things
were going to look like in the Fall.