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This is a really frustrating thread because it sits on a premise that students were generally not as engaged before but does not account for how online structures derail boundaries of time and space, which in my experience as a student is a more apparent issue here. https://twitter.com/Jodyji/status/1329835339452538885
Taking the example about readings - class discussion about readings, say in a seminar setting, allows students who did the reading but struggled with the content to form deeper analysis through conversation. Many of my peers expressed this when we were in-person.
I am someone who struggles to read. More often than not, I skim a few times and develop understanding through discussion with peers/profs. Guided questions about readings are not a replacement for this experience. Maybe a student could answer questions AFTER discussion...
...but not before. Students who struggle with analysis and don't get discussion to engage in readings will experience analytical assignments as more work because it is. You have to develop the level of understanding you previously got in class in collaboration with other people.
Doing that work alone, especially as a student with less experience, is daunting, and being tasked with doing that alone is absolutely more work. Assignments cannot unilaterally replace class time, because class is a collaborative space.
Which, especially when classes do not have a synchronous element, professors definitely replace class hours with work and assume that this is generally a 1-to-1 exchange. It's not. Classes as physical spaces have literal physical and temporal limits.
You get an hour to an hour fifty to do an in-class lab, with equipment that is (usually) equitably available to all students. Those same labs in an online setting have no such time limit. A student can work on that single assignment for hours to get it right.
And many of my peers feel this. Because there isn't a time constraint, it has to be of a certain quality, but this creates a time disparity - some students may take an hour, others may take a few days. For those that take more time, it is more work.
"But students don't have to spend that much time!" That's a naive and short-sighted response. Consider using discussion boards to replace seminars in order to generate that literature analysis you think you aren't getting right now.
It takes me less than an hour to write a robust discussion post (usually 800-1500 words). My typing average is 90-100 wpm and I can mentally edit as I go. Even so, what I can say in a discussion in that time would take me seconds to minutes in a seminar setting.
By comparison, some of my peers struggle to eek out 300-400 words in several hours. They are not fast typists and their writing, while still earning good grades, requires more extensive on-paper editing. This isn't a reflection of their skill. They demonstrate mastery of material
But it is more work for them. It is considerably more work for them to demonstrate, after hours of work, a fraction of mastery they could verbally demonstrate in a seminar setting. There is no limit of time or space to equalize this disparity. It is more work for them.
That thread also ignores the inherent administrative work of online classes. Especially where faculty do not know how to organize online class materials in an thoughtful display of information hierarchy, finding all the class material you need is *hard*
Amongst my peers, assignments have been buried so deep students don't know where to find them. On here, I have seen numerous parents of grade-schools kids decry the organization of their children's classes, which even they cannot parse, so how could a child?
Before, space and time dictated the access of a large portion of class material. You went to a space, were lectured to or engaged in discussion, were handed assignments and readings, and left with those tasks successful, distinctly concluded.
Now, trying to track down and keep track of lectures, readings, assignments, discussion boards, labs, etc requires sincere administrative work. It is more work than it was before, even if it's not literal graded work. Stuff that took no time at all before now takes hours.
And finally, it just does not hold true that "everyone" is more understanding in this time. I have seen countless horror stories from students with professors paranoid about the concept of "cheating" enacting strict rules about moderated tests.
Things like respondus lockdown browser requirements for the lighting, place, and setup of testing environments. This callously assumes every student has access to at-home academic spaces (lmao), but also punishes students who don't. That isn't kind or understanding. It's cruel.
Many of my peers, including close friends, have had professors assume that students are as free at home as they are on campus. This is SUPER false! Many students, by virtue of being at home, are involved in home activities previously taken care of by university settings --
Childcare (as a sibling), cooking, shared household chores - these are elements students don't have to engage in on campus, especially when work piles up, and many professors really seem to expect that students should have MORE free-time now that we're all stuck at home.
And finally, that thread very generously assumes a general trend of lightened workloads in all educational settings that, per my similarly purely anecdotal evidence, just isn't true. I had ex-residents and co-workers with truly insane workloads in these past 8 or so months.
I'm talking hundreds of pages a reading a week for one class, daily discussion posts with 500-word minimums, daily lecture material well over an hour, weekly papers over 5 pages. Never before was this kind of work expected of them. It's horrific how quickly some of them failed.
Plus, just as a personal nitpick, it seems a little ironic to say claims of more work are "purely anecdotal" and respond with... Anecdotal experiences that come purely from educators' perspectives.
I know many professors and instructors are REALLY struggling. Struggling with work-life balance, struggling to maintain standards of learning, struggling to encourage creative engagement. So share that with your students and then ask WHY it feels like more work.
And definitely don't assume it's just because we're only just now being held accountable and were all skipping work and cutting corners before. I really can't understand having such a low opinion of students, but maybe that's because I am one.
Sorry, thought I was done, one more point! It's not fair to present this issue as all professors going "nyeh, I can give MORE work now! Ha!" That is happening, but from my experience, that isn't the norm. The real issue is coming from those who mean well, but fail.
Professors who don't know how to manage online settings are trying to creatively engage but are ignorant of the lived experiences of students on the other end and what these new tools take in terms of time and labor. They mean well! But they are not adequately surveying students.
And threads like that that blame students and don't account for accidental over-doing class workload is why students don't feel safe engaging professors about their challenges. It's a really unhelpful approach to take, it isolates students, and it perpetuates problems.
We are all trying very hard and we are all hurting each other quite a bit, but students are often far more vulnerable than faculty. As new learning tools are tested, professors MUST engage with students to know what the lived cost of classes are. Please for the love of god. /End
