As a forty-something Humanities professor, I have not taken a laboratory or art class in many years and I have definitely never taught one. For teachers like me who trade in books, exams, and essay assignments, moving a class online is a relatively simple proposition compared to the challenge faced by our colleagues teaching hands-on classes. It can be very hard to imagine how to translate tactile learning experiences into virtual learning experiences.
In recent weeks, I have received requests to address this challenge, especially as we prepare for a summer of online teaching, and in this blog post I will do my best to share resources and advice from the experts. But just so we’re all clear, I am no expert on this topic. What I will say here is necessarily general and, sadly, fairly basic. Those of you working in these disciplines are the best source of information so please continue to share resources with your colleagues. If you have something to add to what I will share here, please share it with me for a follow-up post.
In general, the best advice that I have found is to be flexible and open-minded in adapting your class online. Stay focused on the end goal (your learning outcomes for students), and be creative in adapting the means by which you achieve those ends (your learning activities). That is the case for all teachers moving online, but it is even more challenging to put into practice when your usual means for achieving your end goals are gone.
Adapt to your new circumstances and remember the old adage that something is better than nothing. In fact, one of the most surprising things I kept coming across while researching this topic is instructors are finding that while moving their labs or studio classes online precludes certain learning activities they did on campus, it also makes possible new learning activities they would never have imagined. It forces them to be more innovative as instructors, albeit sometimes uncomfortably so. You may find that limitations in materials and tools can provide students with an opportunity to think more critically and experimentally about your discipline.
How can you link your class to social media in new ways? How can you incorporate local public health programs? How can you prioritize analyzing data and evaluating interpretations in the absence of opportunities to collect data, and what benefits could this shift in focus have for your students? How can you modify projects to incorporate sound, video, and photo in ways that you might not in an on-campus studio project? How can students develop strengths in cross-training and body awareness while practicing dance at home? These are just some of the ideas being practiced by those who are teaching these classes online.
Let me address science labs first.
Several companies (Hands-On Labs, eScience Labs, and Carolina are a few) provide at-home kits for students to perform lab activities at home. The downside of these kits is that they can be expensive for students, but at some colleges departments have been able to use lab fees to cover these kits depending on the school’s collection and treatment of these fees.
There are many virtual tools and resources that replicate part of the lab experience, including video demonstrations of labs, simulations, virtual dissections, etc. Some textbook companies provide virtual labs as part of their package. Free resources include PhET simulations, NCBI Blast, HHMI BioInteractive, and Journal of Visualized Experiments. Labster and Visible Body provide simulations for students for a fee, though many of these services are temporarily free for instructors to use during the COVID-19 crisis. Zooniverse allows students to gather and sort data. Merlot is recommended as a good resource for free resources in several disciplines, and they seem to have a lot of science materials.
Many lab instructors are shifting their focus from data collection to data analysis, demonstrating data collection for students via video and providing that data for students to analyze or using online repositories of data for student to sort and analyze. While this does not provide as comprehensive a lab experience, it does allow students to practice some of the key learning outcomes of the lab.
In tactile classes such as studio art or dance, different approaches will be needed.
Video demonstrations of techniques are an obvious choice. Instructors can create these videos themselves or utilize the many online resources available. Dancing Alone Together and the Dance Studies Association provide tools for teaching dance online. There are many online tutorials demonstrating techniques in visual arts, including free YouTube tutorials and individual websites like ArtProf.org. RedShelf and VitalSource are providing free access to electronic textbooks, including several books useful for art classes.
Many instructors will find great success livestreaming through Collaborate Ultra and videotaping themselves providing instruction, demonstrating techniques, and critiquing student work. Students find it much more engaging to see your body language and hear your voice than to just read your words, and it takes a lot less time to speak your ideas than it does to type them up.
And, as with online labs, art and dance instructors are experimenting with alternative ways to get things done. I was inspired to read about glass making teachers creating recipes for sugar glass or ceramics professors asking students to analyze found vessels and make vessels out of whatever materials they have at home.
The reality is that suddenly transitioning hands-on classes like labs, dance or studio art, to an online format is extremely frustrating and overwhelming. As we adapt to these challenges, I hope that instructors are able to focus on what they can do.
