So, my grades are in and "A History of Naval Thought," the summer school class I led, is now complete. It was an interesting class ... and depending on how I consider such things it may be the best class I've taught in my handful of years in the department.

What does that say? That the 8-weel long, accelerated, 100% online, summer school class was the best? I'm not sure. Might not say good things about me. Though maybe it does. Some reflections (this is going to get long, but I've threaded)...

With a group of 20 future navy/marine corps officers we read Mahan, Corbett, Ellis, Sims, Knox, Huntington, Wylie, Gorshkov, Turner, Stockdale, Hughes, Krulak, Mattis, and quite a few that you may not have heard of, including Strong, Landersman, Mumford, etc. (Multiples of some).

The class was designed from the ground up to be an online class. I have never taught this live/in a classroom. It was built around discussion boards where "gun crews" of 6-7 students answered questions and discussed the ideas from the readings. And a sequence of papers.

Every class day had a live/synchronous component where I would talk about what I thought was important from their discussion board posts the day before, and briefly introduce the context/author of that day's reading/topic. After 25-30 minutes, it was off to the DBs.

The discussions were robust. More than one student told me that they were blown away by how smart their classmates are, how much they can learn from each other. Often times they didn't need me at all, and if I kept out of it they discovered things themselves as they traded posts.

The papers were a sequence of 3 synthesis papers where the assignment was to take 2 of the readings and explain and synthesize their key argument(s). Around 1200 words. Then the final paper was to take their favorite of the synthesis papers or topics and write 1800+ words on it.

The results were some fantastic papers reflecting on topics in naval strategy, professionalism, and officership. Every single one of them found something really interesting and wrapped their brains around it. I hope (with some work) you might read some of them in the future.

So why do I say this might be my best class? First, because they all learned. And they all learned key concepts and can talk about them. I can demonstrate it through both assessment and through their feedback to me directly. I'm not always sure of that, but this time I am.

Second, the number of students who asked me why this wasn't a required class at our institution, or who told me that this was a mind-altering/changing class for them. Several explicitly told me that they now feel like they understand why they are here.

(I'm sorry, but that's powerful to hear as a prof.)

Third, the work itself. As I said, a number of these papers (with some more editing and polishing, obviously) have the potential to be published in some of our favorite naval professional and natsec publications/journals.

And finally, I entered the Google Meet "classroom" on the last day of class to hear several of them trading social media handles and talking about keeping their discussions and reading going as a group even after class ended. Will that happen? (Doubts.) But still meaningful.

So ... what can I draw away from this experience? First, online education works. Online classes CAN BE GOOD, and students can learn. I keep hearing that a lot of what we do at my institution "can't be done online" and I'm starting to wonder about some of that.

But ... for an online class to be good, you have to have a hard-working and expert instructor and it has to be designed to be online. I put in a lot of work on this class, tinkering with process, keeping up with my side of the work (reading discussion boards, creating feedback).

If we decide to just "do something similar to what I do in class" and just wing it with some technology, I don't think the results will be as positive. And ... you have to have students who care and want to be there. Some didn't at first but they came around w/in about 2 weeks.

The big question now, is how do I do this again? How do I make it a 16 week class (not really that hard, just spreading the work out more appropriately) ... but how do I take the learning environment that the discussion boards created and have that work in a class/seminar room?

In all honesty, I was thinking this would be a 1 off and I'd return to my regular teaching plan once we're out of the pandemic. But now, I think I need to figure out how to keep this class going. (end thread).