So we're now well into May, and I've had two weeks of Wednesday and Thursday classes and three weeks of Friday classes, so... How is the Online Educational Experience going?
Well, so far I think that in general it is working as well as could be expected. That is, I have not had large numbers of absent or late students, nor of students leaving class early, and the Webex technology is working all right for the most part, and so far I've found relatively few students with problems like their mics not working when I want them to say something, and so on and so forth. I've given three quizzes so far (two to my Reading and Writing class on Fridays for second-year Pharmacy students and one for my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class on Friday), and the Google Forms quizzes seem to work OK (though I did have one question for the R&W class's first quiz that 25 people of 30 answered correctly but were somehow given wrong answer marking for by Google). I copy paste the link to the quiz into the Webex chat area and have the students go at it, usually at the end of class. I have noticed that the most difficult questions for classes are those based on things I tell them in class, whereas the easiest ones are those based on the handouts I assign for homework before class, which I hope is not indicating that a larger number of students have defective or incapable devices than I'm assuming is the case. (I do sometimes ask one or two students what they see and hear when I share certain screens, and usually they can see/hear what I want them to at that point...) ANYWAY. I am finding PowerPoint to be more useful than I thought it would be, and am using it to introduce each class' schedule for that day and to highlight key points and so on. In the three English conversation type classes I'm teaching (Eikaiwa for first-year English majors and Interactive English for first-year Pharmacy and Economics majors), I've begun having students take turns giving 2-3 minute self-introduction speeches, after which I've been asking random students simple comprehension questions to gauge their listening and so on and having random students ask the speech makers questions based on their self-introductions, and so on, and that is generally going OK so far. (Though one guy in the economics class couldn't understand that i wanted him to ask the speech maker a question until I finally told him what to do in Japanese, a surrender on my part, and they seemed to have trouble when I moved too quickly from any questions being asked to follow up questions being asked.) In Gairon I did one of my favorite topics, Native American history in the USA, which is preparation for covering Native American songs next week. In my seminar (for nine third-year English majors) we've begun by reading a couple Native American tales for boys/girls becoming men/women, and I've been giving them topics to prepare and then having them talk a bit about them in turn and so on. That is going a bit less smoothly because I'm having them master literary concepts like character and setting and plot as well as reading stories early on... But overall I've been impressed with the students' ability to speak in English when suddenly called upon. One difficult thing in all this is that our university told us that we must have the students turn off their mics and videos at the start of classes and that we must turn off our own video for class, with the result that they can't see each other nor I them, so it's basically impossible to gauge reaction when telling them anything, and when they give their self-introduction speeches, they also can't get any reaction from their classmates. It's very artificial and constraining. I do turn on my video for the first few minutes of each class to say hello to them as they join the class and so on, just so they can have a face to match with my voice for the class. I have also begun (as I indicated above) to have the students turn on their mics to answer or ask questions and so on. I hope that's not running through their data plans too rapidly, those that are using smartphones for class. About that, I've found that the majority are using computers, but still there are always some using smartphones so I can never let them turn on their videos, etc... Another problem looming on the horizon will be how to do conversation classes when the students can't turn on their videos and are not s upposed to turn on their mics AND when the Webex bought by Fukuoka University does not come with breakout room (small group) capability! I still haven't decided what to try in that context, so I've begun with these self-introduction speech and Q&A sessions to prolong the time until I really must decide what to do with those three classes. Finally, the biggest problem of all is that it takes so much more time to prepare classes now, what with PowerPoint and all, and that it really affects my body now that I have to both prepare classes with my computer AND teach them with my computer. So my fingers (especially my right hand ones) have begun getting swollen and sore (party my fault for assigning 200-300 word writing about themselves to two classes before I realized I'd kill myself replying to each one and stopped assigning that kind of thing), and my left wrist is getting sore and weak, and my right eyelid is getting very twitchy with strain. The first two and a half weeks or so were the busiest I've been at the start of a spring semester in probably 20 years... For years Introduction to Am Cult and Lit has been rather easy to prepare, cause I've taught it for so many years, but this time I've been making PowerPoint slides for everything in it, which is quite time consuming... I haven't been able to write any reviews of books I've read or even to summarize the one I'm currently listening to... I'm always tired and exhausted... the students must be so tired, too! I really hope we'll be able to open the university (and city) soon! the poor students and their families and their teachers! We'll all just have to keep doing our best.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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