With Covid cases dropping and vaccination rates climbing, many facets of life are returning to pre-pandemic levels. Presumably, this means that many faculty members will teach courses in person on campus this fall. That prospect got me thinking about the past three semesters of virtual teaching, and what I’ve realized is that — despite their well-known problems — Zoom classes created some wonderful pedagogical moments for me and my students.
While digital overload and Zoom fatigue were real, the experience was, at times, truly extraordinary. My students and I were able to connect, collaborate, and create community in ways that were unimaginable two years ago within the context of a college course.
Zoom enabled us to peel back the curtain. In a physical classroom, students often come in dressed fairly alike and project a narrow range of personae. But on Zoom, many students showed their homes, their private spaces, and their far more genuine selves to me and their peers. I teach political science, and wall posters of sports figures or celebrities and various books or items in the background led to real, memorable discussions of American and global political culture. It was also the case that parents, partners, family, and friends would occasionally pop onto the screen and jump into our deliberations, adding more perspective.
Perhaps the most memorable day in the past 18 months happened when a student — who had moved home to his family’s farm in New England and often sat by a window where you could see livestock and fields outside — had to excuse himself to help a parent wrangle a few cattle that had escaped their enclosure. While the livestock story may be extreme, it does illustrate a surprising side effect of Zoom: Despite being in a virtual classroom, we were able to share and experience our authentic selves quite a bit more than happens in a “real” classroom, where we tend to project a more-crafted persona.
Our diverse locations changed and enhanced the classroom. I had students in Asia and Italy, for instance, who were able to provide real time impressions about the pandemic there, and share how their government responses were notably different from what my students and I were experiencing in the United States.
In a course on political geography, we read Amy Goldstein’s Janesville. A student who lived near the Wisconsin town had issues with the book, decided to drive to Janesville, and Zoomed into class from the very places and spaces discussed in the book (which cast some serious doubt on how the town was depicted).
We also heard firsthand accounts from students who were dealing with natural disasters in Texas and the Pacific Coast during the pandemic. We saw images and videos, and heard impressions about divergent pandemic responses in vastly different regions, from Massachusetts to West Virginia to California. The real diversity and tapestry of my students’ lives and experiences were on full display via technology. My courses offered a shared, unexpected collective experience because of Zoom: Some days were thrilling, others were sobering, but they were all very real.
The pandemic revealed the best in many people. That came through repeatedly in the past three semesters. For example, guest speakers and experts who — before Covid — would have been too busy or too costly to invite to the campus often eagerly responded to invitations. By Zooming in to talk about their own writings and impressions, they added priceless color to our various course readings.
Moreover, my Gen Z students — some of whom marched in Black Lives Matter protests and were huge “AOC” fans while others listened to Joe Rogan and participated in Young America’s Foundation events — were open minded and respectful. In class they debated ideas from the right and the left without a single blow-up in a year and a half. My students absolutely proved the results of a 2019 survey, which found that 87 percent of first-year students see it as a strength of their generation to work cooperatively with diverse people. What that meant in my seminars is that discussions of faith, family, and private enterprise were as much on the table as topics of reparations, public assistance, and universal health care.
What’s next? I was skeptical about teaching effectively on a virtual platform in the winter of 2020 and I doubt I would have suggested this 18 months ago, but I believe it now: As we think about the fall semester, there are some facets and virtues of virtual teaching that may be worth retaining. Of course no one wants to revisit Zoom fatigue, but the benefits of the virtual classroom do not have to disappear entirely. Among other options to consider:
- Faculty members can hold office hours and student meetings on Zoom, outside of a 9-to-5 window. Many instructors and students have busy schedules and have to balance work, family, child care, and numerous other obligations. Rather than trying to shoehorn in an hour of meetings on a random Thursday afternoon, we could offer occasional evening or morning office hours that work for both us and our students. Boundaries are important but flexibility can be achieved, too, and engagement can happen at times that are more convenient for everyone.
- We can and should reach out to authors, experts, journalists, and other scholars who can enhance our courses. Many writers and practitioners are thrilled and honored to know that their work is being considered in an academic setting. Having direct contact with writers can enhance the classroom teaching-and-learning experience. As so many of us are now comfortable on Zoom, a diversity of ideas, experiences, and views can be brought into our classrooms now — more affordably and easily — without excessive travel requirements and other expenses.
- We should think about how to be both compassionate and empathetic as we move out of this pandemic. Giving students the space to be their genuine selves often results in their engaging more deeply and meaningfully with the material. Of course in certain fields, there are baseline requirements for course content: Certain principles of physics are what they are and there are right and wrong answers. But for many other courses and at many institutions, the pandemic made teaching a bit more informal and personal — why not keep it that way? Education is about lifting up our students. In a world of increasing depression among students and commodification of education, personal connection and understanding can lead to better student retention, engagement, and learning outcomes.
- Zoom and other ed-tech tools have enabled us to connect in ways that were in the world of science fiction only a decade ago. As colleges seek to promote diversity of all forms — including ideological and socioeconomic — we should actively collaborate with other professors at institutions different from our own. Students at my avowedly secular, progressive campus, Sarah Lawrence College in New York, would benefit from having occasional joint programming and discussions with places like Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., which has a deep connection with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and an explicit Christian curriculum. That would help both colleges realize their goals of diversity and intercultural exchange. We have the technology, and now that most faculty members are comfortable with virtual work, we should embrace such opportunities going forward.
Teaching virtually throughout the pandemic had its moments of both agony and ecstasy, and I do not want to gloss over the real issues of depression, technology challenges, housing insecurity, and a host of other troubles that students faced. But I also don’t want some of its advantages to be lost as we return to some degree of normal. Sure, I am looking forward to human contact and having lunch with students once again. But Zoom helped us collectively study and experience a major set of sociopolitical changes, perhaps more vividly than being in a physical classroom. Our sessions were deeply intimate and genuine and may have helped us capture and think about change more profoundly than we would have in a campus classroom.
I look forward to the fall, but I will miss Zoom.
