are often radically at odds with one another. This is a perfect example of the way that even though higher education may have come screeching to a halt, the nature of the conversations we were having in this “halted” moment mimicked the ones we had been having all along. And, along with the student of the extraordinary hats, both Steve and I share the fear that everything will go back to “the way it was before” once this is all over. This is not a place we want to go back to.
Adventures in Virtual Learning
The series of emails leading up to the closure of DePauw’s campus tell a story of tempered caution, a warding off of the seemingly not-terribly-present-danger of being blindsided by a pandemic. On January 24, the college’s office of communications sent a message to the entire community on “coronavirus awareness and prevention,” providing “key resources” and CDC recommendations (primarily with regard to “avoiding non-essential travel to Wuhan, China”). On March 2, there was a follow-up message, an update to CDC guidelines on prevention and travel, along with a message of calming assurance: “while the risk of coronavirus COVID-19 in the U.S. remains low at this time and there are no confirmed cases in Indiana or at DePauw University, we continue to prepare for a potential outbreak or pandemic.” Less than a week before the notification of the closing of campus, on March 7, faculty received an email from the vice president of academic affairs. The college was, as the email stated:
taking the cautionary and preparatory step of suspending in-person class instruction during the two days leading up to spring break (Thursday 3/19/20 and Friday 3/20/20). This suspension will provide faculty with the opportunity to develop, revise and/or test plans for online instruction should that be needed due to a future suspension of in-person class meetings (e.g., as a result of COVID-19 cases on campus, weather emergencies, etc.) or because some students cannot attend classes in-person due to illness.
Despite the tempered caution, and despite the best efforts of those tasked with devising preparations and a plan, we were blindsided. Four days before the unprecedented event of closing a residential campus for the duration of the semester and without an end in sight, the language was still entirely hypothetical, the pandemic just one emergency scenario among any number of hypothetical others. All of a sudden, we were unmoored. A week of incredulousness, denial, anger, fear—accelerated stages of mourning—slid into another, a week that had been originally scheduled to be our spring break. And then that week slid into a full-on plunge into a brave new world of teaching and learning that none of us had any clue how to navigate.
As the adventure took hold, my students (with whom I was “meeting” in independent and small group sessions on Google Hangout—students chose which model they preferred) described their new realities and what it felt like to have entered into this strange learning space that none of us were prepared for. In the first week, the stress on some of their faces was hard to miss. One student in particular looked lost and drained; ten minutes into our conversation, she covered her face in her hands, tucked her legs underneath her with a jolting motion on the bed she was sitting on, and let out a despondent sigh. “I just wish this would all be over,” she said. Most students reported feeling bored, completely unable to focus, anxious, and sad.
The range of learning experiences varied widely from class to class. Some faculty members entirely missed the action, some created asynchronous video content that students could watch on their own, and others conducted synchronous Zoom meetings for twenty or more students that lasted an hour or more. Students reported various levels of success with these meetings. In some cases, the technology held up well and they were glad for the chance to see others and to think about something other than COVID-19. In others, the platform couldn’t sustain the traffic, people talked over each other without being able to hear what others were saying, or the professor lectured in real time to students who, zoning out, used the time to work on other projects. Some faculty, undeterred by the curveball the pandemic had thrown, continued to deliver their course content without any attempts to pare it down or make it relevant to the current situation. Others entirely revamped their classes to accommodate the new reality. In most cases that students described, this revamping meant an easing up on requirements that could no longer be fulfilled in this new setting. Some students, however, suggested that their professors were upping the ante, adding considerably more assignments than they had included in the course’s original iteration, assignments that felt to them like busywork or box-checking, designed primarily for the purpose of taking attendance rather than as a vehicle for learning the material.
A month into the online transition, a DePauw senior sent the following email to the vice president of academic affairs (VPAA) with the subject heading, “This isn’t working” (the following is excerpted and included with the student’s permission):
I really struggle to write this email. I had a horribly lonely freshman year here at DePauw. … I contemplated transferring every day. … Two things kept me at DePauw: First, I applied for and was offered a position [as an RA] for sophomore year. This effectively put me into a large caring community. … Secondly, I had great reverence for DePauw’s academics and embraced the liberal arts philosophy. Academics were challenging and from time to time I would resent certain assignments or readings … but I did get so much enjoyment from the product and from the work. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
I know the circumstances of this pandemic and the extended, mandated period of social distancing is new for all of us. I know it was impossible to plan for and has been exceptionally difficult to reorient curriculum to work for the circumstances. While my current professors have been very accommodating and understanding, the plain fact is that reorienting the curriculum has been a disaster for me and every single peer I’ve communicated with. I can tell that the reorientation has had major consequences on faculty—some have admitted it—and I can only imagine the difficult decisions that administration is having to make throughout this precarious crisis.
I say all this to show that the expansive repercussions of COVID-19 are not lost on me—I’m not sending you this email because I’m having a hard time and I want some help; I’m sending this email because this isn’t working. This isn’t working for anybody. …
I’ve been ripped away from my home of the last four years. That was, obviously, the right call; however, I did almost everything for four years inside a one square mile plot of land. I lived, worked, slept, ate, felt every range of emotion, calibrated every facet of my academic life within that one square mile. All of my routine, all of my community which I rely on to stabilize me and help me be successful at DePauw is unavoidably gone. Seniors, like myself, have the added burden of never being able to regain that particular stability or get any semblance of closure for having lost it. One of DePauw’s defining characteristics is its status as a residential campus. The purpose of this residentiality, as stated on the DePauw website, is that “by living on campus, DePauw students engage in diverse communities that foster learning with & from others.” I’ve grown accustomed to this system, and it has completely fallen away, leaving me floundering.
I would be remiss not to address my privilege. My home life is stable, my parents have kept their jobs and aren’t currently worried about losing them, my family has remained healthy, systems in general are very much stacked in my favor, and yet the work I’m supposed to do feels impossible—the task seemingly insurmountable.
I wish I could offer a perfect solution—if there was one I’m sure I wouldn’t be feeling the way that I am. I don’t want to make a drastic recommendation that won’t be taken seriously, though I have some of those recommendations. I don’t want to make a milquetoast recommendation that won’t end up making me feel better. I don’t want you to not take this seriously because I don’t offer a solution. All I know for sure is that I can’t keep feeling like this, and that my peers can’t keep feeling like this, and that my professors can’t keep feeling like this. None of us deserve to be feeling like this, and this feeling is not simply an unavoidable consequence of the pandemic. The current demands on all of us, while designed
