{"id":703,"date":"2023-02-14T13:07:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T18:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/?p=703"},"modified":"2023-02-14T13:07:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T18:07:14","slug":"chronicle-article-on-course-correction-students-expect-total-flexibility-in-the-pandemic-era-classroom-is-that-really-what-they-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/teaching\/chronicle-article-on-course-correction-students-expect-total-flexibility-in-the-pandemic-era-classroom-is-that-really-what-they-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicle article on “Course correction: Students expect total flexibility in the pandemic-era classroom. Is that really what they need?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article<\/a> by Beckie Supiano<\/p>\n

Excerpts:<\/p>\n

…Sarvary\u2019s findings speak to the challenge professors now face: how to provide something like a normal college education when students\u2019 expectations have really changed. When\u00a0students<\/i>\u00a0have really changed.<\/p>\n

Everyone keeps telling professors to \u201cmeet students where they are\u201d \u2014 even if it takes more time and effort. But where are they, exactly? Covid has shaped students\u2019 lives, but not all in the same way. Some are living with health problems or have lost loved ones. Others are recovering from the isolation of the early pandemic, or are making sense of the polarization it has deepened. Their social skills have grown rusty, their concentration limited.<\/p>\n

On top of that, many students are struggling with their mental health, with rates of anxiety and depression being especially high. Some have picked up extra shifts at work, reducing the time they have to study and complete their assignments, and interfering with class attendance. Others are asking for exemptions in situations where they would have made do before.<\/p>\n

Professors have found that students are not where they left them back in the first part of 2020. Many seem unmotivated, disengaged. They struggle to come to class, to keep up with the work. But they expect professors to work with them, and they assume they\u2019ll pass their classes anyhow. That, after all, is what they\u2019re used to.<\/p>\n

Students aren\u2019t the only ones with these expectations, either. On many campuses, faculty members face growing pressure from administrators looking to shore up retention and graduation rates, too.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, though, professors aren\u2019t so sure that this level of flexibility is working. For one thing, juggling frequent absences and requests for recordings, extensions, and other forms of flexibility is exhausting for already-drained professors. But that\u2019s not their only concern. Many professors suspect the extensive flexibility students now expect might also be undermining their learning.<\/p>\n

…The conversation around flexibility versus structure is often focused on the extremes. Karen Costa, a faculty-development facilitator who also teaches as an adjunct, describes those poles as \u201ctoxic rigor,\u201d where students have to provide a doctor\u2019s note or obituary to miss class, and \u201ctotal flexibility,\u201d which serves only those with excellent executive-functioning skills.<\/p>\n

Neither extreme, Costa says, supports learning. The challenge for professors is striking a balance. That work, she says, depends on context, with no perfect answer and no finish line.<\/p>\n

Some teaching contexts make that balance harder to strike. \u201cThings compound if you have a lot of flexibility in a large class,\u201d says Viji Sathy, an associate dean of evaluation and assessment in the Office of Undergraduate Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is also a professor of practice in psychology and neuroscience.<\/p>\n

Another challenge, Sathy says, is that implicit bias leads students to perceive policies differently, depending on who has set them. So if an older, white male professor is very flexible, students might take that as a sign that he trusts them. But if a young woman of color is very flexible, she says, they might assume \u201cshe has no idea what she\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article by Beckie Supiano Excerpts: …Sarvary\u2019s findings speak to the challenge professors now face: how to provide something like a normal college education when students\u2019 expectations have really changed. When\u00a0students\u00a0have really changed. Everyone keeps telling professors to \u201cmeet students where they are\u201d \u2014 even if it takes more time and effort. But where are they, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-teaching"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kathryn Byrnes","author_link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/author\/kbyrnes\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}