Online Teaching Methods
A paper on the topic of online teaching methods during the pandemic was published this week entitled, "Learning During the Pandemic: It is not who you Teach, but HOW you teach" by Orlov et al. The authors used course assessments for seven Economics courses to examine student learning during Covid. They found that students performed substantially worse when compared to prior terms. Results suggest that teaching methods that encourage active engagement (small group activities and projects), played an important role in mitigating this negative effect. The researchers focused on two easily measured practices: the use of student response systems (polling), and structured peer interactions (think-pair-share, small group activities, encouraging students to work together outside class). [Colleen Flaherty shares a nice summary of the Orlov et al article in her recent Inside Higher Ed post.]
If you would like to expand on your current active teaching strategies, here is a link to 288 Interactive Techniques by Yee (2020).
There is substantial and on-going research (Deslauriers, Schelew, & Wieman, 2011; Freeman et al., 2014; Stains et al., 2018; Belcher, 2019) that has shown how active learning provides benefits for all students in all contexts, so the findings for this recent paper continues to support that notion. Creating an Accessible, Inclusive learning environment has always been a critical aspect of effective teaching and course design. Mintz (2020) reinforces these approaches in his Inside Higher Ed article, "Higher Eds Dirty Little Secrets" this week. A few notable ideas include:
Most professors have no formal training in teaching, learning or course design;
Our system for funding higher education is profoundly inequitable;
Our system of nonprofit higher education contains many misdirected incentives ("training in pedagogy and course design remains largely voluntary and most institutions lack the ability or will to identify and address achievement gaps in key gateway and advanced courses"); and
Many institutions’ appeal lies not in education but elsewhere.
Orlov, G., McKee, D., Berry, J., Boyle, A., DiCiccio, T., Ransom, T., Rees-Jones, A. & Stoye, J. (2020). Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: It Is Not Who You Teach, but How You Teach. NBER Working Paper No. 28022.
