College of Arts and Sciences

Survey Question 1:

Describe a situation between a student and faculty member (related to the current remote/online teaching) that caused frustration on both sides. What was your role in facilitating a resolve? What (if anything) would you do differently?

Student felt that the instructor was putting forth less effort to teach remotely. I discussed the issues with the student and the instructor and I was able to help the student understand that the instructor was putting forth quite a bit of effort to continue providing course content to the class.
Students are not always online when the class is given. I tried to encourage them to participate in class discussions, by offering extra credit. In future I would give the students more assignments; particularly presentations
The one problem I found was common to all online communication in that tone is lost when communicating by email. We had a student misinterpret a professor's feedback on how to do an assignment as the professor discriminating against him and I believe this would not have been as likely had the two spoken in person about the assignment.
During the Spring shutdown, I had a student who lived in a rural area and had inconsistent access to internet (spring storms caused her to lose power for almost two weeks) as well as an elementary-age child home from school. This student didn't receive course updates, didn't respond to course prompts or individual emails, etc. This student was frustrated with the course's due dates, which they were simply incapable of hitting because of circumstances. The student eventually got in touch with me, and we established a new, personalized deadline schedule for the rest of the semester. It required a different set of work benchmarks than the other students in the class, but it was still (in my opinion) consistent with the expectations of the class.
One way I intervened in this kind of situation since March was in facilitating transfer of credits from study abroad and the Credit/No Credit option. Seeing that students were receiving mixed messages about what they could do, I contacted the appropriate people in CAS advising and study abroad to push for clarity. My effort set off a domino effect in different offices and, ultimately, students were able to choose C/NC for transfer credits.
A faculty member would not respond to a student’s need to take a quiz after the due date. The faculty member was frustrated that students were not able to follow the rules set out before COVID issues and the student was frustrated that the faculty member would not be more understanding. I mainly talked to the student, but also mentioned the need to faculty through a departmental e-mail to be more understanding to individual student situations while remaining fair to all students. I am not sure that I could have done much differently, but trying to obtain an uniform degree of understanding by faculty would be more desirable.
One student reported difficulty with pure asynchronous delivery of one of our summer courses. The student didn't have issues with the faculty member. I asked the faculty to consider adding some synchronous components to the class and the student has not complained since. I will not do anything different. A student recently complained that the MSW program is not yet fully online. We explained that this is a long process and that we will be prepared by Spring 2021 for that model.
I am not sure I would have done anything differently. The faculty had been pushing back some on putting the entire program online until the COVID-19 crisis happened. Do not and can not interact and see students face to face as the on ground teaching environment . Solve some of these problems by using the Zoom and emails to remain in contact. I am teaching the online course this summer. I prefer on ground teaching so instructors and students can interact directly.
Actually, we did not have a difficult situation that I had to resolve. We were worried about some students not doing their work, but they had already done poorly in the first half of the semester under conventional conditions.
A faculty member was teaching synchronously and when a student had issues with reliable wifi during an exam, the professor was less than understanding of the student's issue. Faculty member was encouraged to take access issues into consideration and think of alternative assignments for students in such situations. At some point we as a department will have to discuss this to prevent future issues.