Some Thoughts on Remote Teaching

As this pandemic continues with no let up in sight, really, one wonders how academics will deal with teaching. Grammar School teachers are having enough problems, technology not withstanding. After all, a second grade teacher is not expected to be a technology expert. Also second grade students sitting at home with parents rambling about have the attention span of a gnat.

But University students are different. After all we have had ten years of MOOCs and their kin. But as I have noted again and again at best 10% of the MOOC classes are a worthwhile the rest are a bust. A Harvard professor who is hardly understandable, a pair of U Tenn Profs with accents that makes one wonder if it is some variant of Middle English, a MIT electronics course where the exam software is incomprehensible, and the list goes on. I looked at a Harvard Med class on Genetics and all I could see were cartoons, I guess for the age group that is their level of expertise.

Now as for the Profs trying this for the first time they really should get to use better technology. Try not to use one's laptop with its camera and speaker. It makes one sound like a duck on helium and look like a prisoner of Zenda. The two that I saw working were Eric Lander at MIT where he just put up his lectures. You sat in the lecture hall while he did what he always did. The exams were great and were typical MIT problem sets. You learned something. The second was that Harvard Med Immunology course, not Lander, but good and a learning experience. The worst was the Australian one on Epigentics where one first had to get the language used, it was Australian not North American, and then the thing about peer grading. The latter is something rant with unethical atrocities.

Thus some simple rules in my opinion. Pretend there is a group of students, and lecture as you normally would. Second and just as critical, get a good video and sound system. Your laptop does not work. As for exams, this is the toughest. But from my old MIT days, one can give weekly problem sets, email them back and forth and have a TA grade them. As for exams, same thing, I guess you have to trust them a bit. As for schedules, make them the same as normal class schedules, otherwise they will just put off the class. As for attendance, who cares.

Nature has a week long series on how this will change Universities. There is the question as regards to the elite Universities. Thus can a Harvard allow anyone to participate in the course, albeit not be graded and not get credit, but look at lectures and have access to the problem sets and finals, like a MOOC? MOOCs have become a real mix of quasi money making gambits, because they were made to fit the MOOC model. Perhaps just doing what you did, using the right technology, and giving others a chance is not too bad an idea.

But please, get a decent camera, a decent microphone, directional if you will, and have a decent well lit space with acceptable background. And, yes, do shower and wear clothing......