Chicago Professors adjust to online learning transition due to coronavirus pandemic
CHICAGO - Teachers and professors at colleges and universities from all over the city are adjusting to online platforms due to social distancing mandates prompted by the coronavirus pandemic currently impacting countries all over the world with Chicago being one of the hardest-hit U.S. cities to date.
Ben Rubin, a fine arts professor at Malcolm X College located on the West Side of Chicago, is now required to teach remotely for the safety of his students and says the transition has required some adjusting. Malcolm X professors prepared for the transition in one week back in mid-March with online learning officially beginning on March 23. Rubin says COVID-19 has impacted his teaching style a lot since he is unable to teach in the same room as his students. He believes that it’s very important for students to experience a sense of community; a classroom is a place where students can speak up and feel respected and have the ability to debate with their teachers.
When Rubin taught his traditional humanities courses his days consisted of face-to-face discussion which made it easier to track visually if a student had a comment to make. This kind of dialogue will be impossible to recreate through a computer display.
“It is very difficult to foster an atmosphere of open discussion and to encourage them to participate when I'm not in the room with them,” he said. He added that he also lost communication with a few students from the changeover, but he believes that his students are still determined to finish this semester and complete the work.
Rubin is very grateful that he still has the ability to teach with the tools the City Colleges of Chicago has provided which includes giving professors access to Zoom, a web-based video conferencing app many schools have been using for remote learning.
The shift from teaching in-person to instructing online was smooth for Rubin for two reasons: “I think there are two big contributors to why it wasn't that hard. We had already spent a lot of time together in-person and I didn't mind editing the class down to the simplest material because we've already covered a lot of the challenging stuff.”
He is concerned that the administration will see this as an opportunity to in the future to put more classes online.
In an effort to keep students engaged, Rubin has had to make other adjustments to his assignments and teaching methods to correspond to students' needs.
“In judging their performance, I'm no longer asking them to do the same things,” Rubin said. “Participation and things like that they're doing fine, but if we were in the same room together, I would be asking more of them.”
Rubin believes it's important to recognize that it’s not about what you teach but how the information is taught.
“What they remember is how they were treated, how the information was presented, how they were either given an opportunity to express themselves and participate or treated as a soldier and told to memorize things for a test which I try never to do. In fact, there are no tests or quizzes in my classes.”