As this photo shows, our kitchen now doubles up as my aula and office. Occasionally, in good weather, our small city garden, too, serves as my office. Those who have visited my office on campus will not be surprised to see me surrounded by plants or flowers. They cheer me up and keep me going when my tinnitus gets really bad, so I honestly don't mind that my husband has taken over our home office. At least, I can now easily escape into the garden (if need be with a thick sweater and a blanket).
When the campus went into lockdown, I was in the middle of teaching 3 courses of English literary studies, to first-year, second-year and master students of Linguistics and Literary Studies. As I wasn't a particular fan of online teaching, I initially asked my students to focus on their reading assignments, with the idea that we would discuss the literary texts in class after the Easter break. But the following week the university extended the lockdown to the end of the semester, so I radically altered my plans and decided to start teaching via Canvas Conference. Having never done this before, I was grateful for all the "tips and tricks" that the Education & Innovation team and my colleagues were sharing and, by the second week of the lockdown, I was teaching all my classes online.
I must say my students responded to the digital switch with amazing flexibility. I am so very proud of them.
Our family holiday plans having been cancelled, I was able to spend the Easter break taking webinars and even several one-on-one coaching sessions organised by the VUB Education & Innovation department on various aspects of online teaching and examination. To be honest, they are my personal COVID heroes, not just for their useful practical tips, but also for reassuring me that I was on the right track! At one point I also participated in a Europe-wide webinar organised by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, together with one of my best friends from university. Thirty years after sharing a bench in an aula, scribbling our lecture notes with a fountain pen, there we were in the same class again, this time learning the ins and outs of emergency remote teaching, armed with ear plugs and mobile devices!
I must say my students responded to the digital switch with amazing flexibility. I am so very proud of them. My courses largely consist of discussion seminars and where students ordinarily would engage orally with their peers' presentations, they soon got the hang of giving written feedback in the public chat (during class) or in the discussion forum (after class). All in all, I think it worked quite well, so that I am convinced my students have learned as much about the Gothic Novel, Modernist Poetry or Black British Women's Writing as they would have in a physical class room.
Of course, there were small and unexpected hurdles, as when the wifi broke down in one of the halls of residence and a student had to phone in, or when a student with dyslexia told me that she was too intimidated to write in the chat, so the chat was ruled a grammatical and ortographical 'free zone'. And in the final class, when we were test driving the Canvas Quiz for those with digital written exams, the quiz would not open and I had to write a new one during the break.
I am confident that students will also be able to meet this last challenge
I tried to be encouraging and patient with my students, and so they were with me. I don't know how many times they had to tell me I had started speaking with my microphone still switched off. Then there was that class that my audio wasn't working properly and, instead of leaving and reentering the session, I accidentally threw everybody out of the conference, but we all simply had a good laugh about this! I am also grateful to the thesis student who kindly volunteered to be the guinea pig when she noticed me testing out the Canvas Conference option on a Sunday afternoon. And to the student who emailed me towards the end of the course, to thank me for having continued teaching my classes as planned, in spite of my personal reservations. In fact, I never would have thought I would be saying this, but teaching online this semester has been a far better experience than expected. And the extraordinary students of 2020 can largely take credit for this!
I wish them, and all other VUB students, the best of luck in their exams. With all the practice they have had and all the hurdles they have already taken, I am confident that they will also be able to meet this last challenge.