Keep Teaching is sharing stories of how Duke faculty are implementing remote learning. Here, Michael A. Troxel, Assistant Professor of Physics, details his experience.
My approach was to try to keep the class experience as consistent as possible. I have a lot of experience working on Zoom meetings in my research collaborations, so it wasn’t much of a change for my daily work mode.
I got an iPad so I can easily share it as a virtual whiteboard on Zoom, so the students are watching me write out derivations and the class material can come out live through discussion still. This is as close to an in-person lecture discussion at the chalkboard as I can make it.
To keep things light on the ‘first day’ I grabbed a bunch of scenery photos I had from trips, one of my office at Duke, and a simulated space image from my research (shown above). I switched through them and used the Zoom poll feature to have them vote on their preference, which was a light way to introduce that kind of Zoom-based active-learning feature.
We also talked briefly as a class about whether they thought continuing in this similar-to-in-person mode was best or if they wanted to try any other options, but people seemed to want to continue with this and with the previously planned material (an introduction to quantum mechanics at this point in the course).
One thing that’s actually easier in this format is quickly switching from the ‘chalkboard’ to pulling up examples (images or videos) of things that come up during the lecture or discussion. We’re past the part of the course where in-person demos are feasible, so I’m not losing in that by being remote.
It’s only the first day, but I got about the level of response I get from in-person lectures, so it's seemed to work out ok so far. It helps that my class size is very small, though!