Home Page

By: Carrie Jackson, Ph.D., Penn State Professor of German and Linguistics

Teaching during a pandemic is hard. Even with 15 years of teaching experience at Penn State, the first week of the fall term was so draining that when I was done teaching each day, I would come back to my office and cry, or at the very least put my head down on the desk and collapse in exhaustion. Pretty much every professor I know—here at Penn State and elsewhere in the US and Canada—all said the same thing at the beginning of the term. There is so much more to keep track of than usual: students in-person in the classroom (affectionately called “roomies”); students participating remotely via zoom (affectionately called “zoomies”); the podium computer connected to the classroom projector and signed into Zoom; my laptop screen also signed into Zoom so that I can take advantage of the dual display function to share my screen for class activities while still seeing the gallery view of that day’s zoomies; the chat function in Zoom where students may type when their microphones don’t work; and maneuvering students into breakout rooms and back out again for small group discussions. By the third week of the term, I’d more or less figured out most of the bugs and class usually runs smoothly. That is, until suddenly one day it doesn’t! By now my students and I are prepared to expect the unexpected this term.

But it’s not all bad. I’ve discovered that I actually like figuring out some of the technical challenges this semester has thrown my way. Similar to when I finally figure out the coding for a new statistical analysis to crunch my research data, I get excited when I find a workaround to make Zoom or CANVAS do things the way I want them to function, or I successfully integrate a new gadget or freeware program into a class period to help break up the tedium of a 50-minute class period all on Zoom. I’ve had to adjust my syllabus and my semester goals to reflect the new reality. In my German speaking and listening class, I have devoted more class time to developing students’ learning strategies, even if it means covering less material overall. This is because I realized early on that teaching my students to be better foreign language learners on their own, rather than always relying on me for direction, becomes even more important during a global pandemic, when I unfortunately won’t ever meet some of them in person.  In my general education course on German history and culture, I’ve come up with new ways to get them to discuss things during class via a group Google Docs (or other methods), because a 50-minute lecture from your professor while attending a class in person is bad enough; on Zoom it’s even worse.

In the end, I’d say that my teaching (and my students’ learning) this semester isn’t better or worse than usual. It’s just different. It’s harder to gauge what my students are learning when I face a sea of black boxes on Zoom, so I’ve come up with different ways to interact with them. For example, in my German speaking course I require students to complete short video assignments that they upload to CANVAS. I then respond to their videos via the video recording function in CANVAS to create a mini-dialogue of sorts.

The new reality has also led me to develop new in-class activities to take advantage of the fact that everyone now has a laptop in front of them during class. For example, one day in my German history and culture course, we took a virtual tour of Schönbrünn Palace in Vienna. Another day, students had to choose a favorite piece of artwork from the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich (all available online) and then discuss why that particular piece of art was their favorite. Thanks to the chat function in Zoom, we got quite a debate going. It was great!

The realities of COVID-19 also led me to include a unit in my German speaking class on the impact of COVID-19 in Germany, because I felt it was important for them to have the vocabulary to talk about the pandemic in German. In my German history and culture course, I incorporated firsthand accounts from people who experienced the Bubonic Plague that ravaged Europe in the 14^th Century, and my students were amazingly adept at drawing comparisons between then and now. But I make sure these are not the only topics we talk about. Students also need to have some sense of normalcy this semester, and that there is life beyond COVID-19.

The other reality of this semester is that I have become more attuned to my students’ mental health than ever before. Every so often I begin class by putting up a whiteboard on Zoom and I ask my students to use the annotate function to place an “X” on a scale of 1 to 10 to indicate how they’re feeling that day. Earlier in the term, I gave my classes the homework assignment of exploring  somewhere off-campus (or away from their house for those enrolled remotely this term) and taking a photo to post in a Google slideshow for the whole class the following Monday.  (I have a friend in the Smeal College of Business to thank for this idea). The goal was simply to make sure they got outside and away from their dorms or apartment for a while. At times during the semester, I’ve also admitted to them when I’m having a bad day, so that they realize it’s normal to have more emotional ups and downs than usual this term. It’s no different for their professors than it is for them.

I have to say, my students this term have been awesome! With only a very few exceptions, they continue to come to class and participate every day (even when their internet connection is on the fritz). They are patient when the technology in the classroom goes awry. Many even pause to say “thank you” when the class period is over. To borrow two buzzwords of the current buzzwords of our times, they are troopers and they are resilient. And somehow, I know we’ll all make it to the end of this pandemic in one piece—and maybe we’ll even have learned one or two things about how to teach, how to learn, and how to live that we can take with us even when we return to more normal times.