In Part 1, I discussed moving my two sections of ARCH 242—Design Principles (which I call “Studio-Lite”) online. From my perspective, this has worked well, because online tools such as Microsoft Teams do a reasonably good job of facilitating the heart of design studio— the one-on-one design crit. But what about my other classes?
ARCH 119—Sustainability in Architecture: Introduction
This one-hour, freshman-level class is a lecture-based history course. A lot of material is crammed into fifteen 50-minute lectures. Neither the amount of material nor the size of the class (note 1) encourages a lot of back-and-forth feedback. To encourage active learning in the lecture-heavy face-to-face version, I use Turning Technology clickers and peer instruction (note 2).
When we moved online, I decided to record lectures through PowerPoint, which provides audio and a small video of the instructor on the bottom right corner of the screen. My PowerPoints are image heavy and text light, so they do not work without additional explanation. I decided that recording my lectures rather than adding explanatory notes would be both quicker and more effective.
My first online lecture (which was an ARCH 362 lecture) was rough. My presentation style in that lecture could best be described as rigor mortis. Subsequent lectures were progressively better—how could they not be, when the first had a living dead quality to it?—but I am still not super comfortable with the format.
Concerning the in-class clicker questions, I decided to post a series of quizzes on Blackboard, which were mostly constructed from the clicker questions, which I had removed from the online slideshows. Looking forward, with an improved set of questions, and more complete feedback, I believe the quizzes could be effective teaching tools.
Finally, I did hold one “town hall” style meeting with the ARCH 119 class on Zoom. Because the class has 37 students, I created three separate meetings, limiting each meeting to 12 students (due to technology issues, I knew some students would not be attending; note 3). Connecting with the students was good, but my agenda was light, which made the meetings feel somewhat perfunctory.
ARCH 362—Environmental Systems 2
This is also a lecture class, so I encountered the same issues with lectures I had in ARCH 119. However, the major difference was the group of students, who I knew well from several previous classes.
After Spring Break, the students were scheduled to design a sound isolation box. Because the students could not access the sound meters, or work in teams, which has been a requirement in the past, I scrapped the sound box project and substituted a comprehensive environmental systems project based on a third year design studio project of each student’s choosing. To compensate for the extra time needed to complete that project versus the sound box, I scrapped the comprehensive final.
The most important change I made to ARCH 362 was alterning the format of Exam 2 and Exam 3. My typical building systems exam is a combination of multiple choice questions (à la the A.R.E.) and short answer questions. Because these tests become, in essence, take-home exams, I switched to a series of application questions. Within each application question, I asked students to identify and use key terms and concepts. In every way, I believe this proved to be a superior exam format, and I wish I had switched to it years ago.
Note 1: The class is only 37 students, which is not very large, but I have trouble hearing individual student questions or comments in a room large enough to accommodate them. I use clickers as a way of holding at least some level of back-and-forth “conversation.”
Note 2: In peer instruction, the instructor poses a challenging questions, the students respond individually, and if the fewer than 70% of the students answer correctly, the instructor reopens the question and encourages the students to work with each other to solve it. To work well, a certain kind of question should be asked (questions that simply require rote memorization are not terribly effective).
Note 3: I worked with the students who could not attend the Zoom lectures through other means, including telephone conversations.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/125135071@N06/15071668497
Copyright © 2020 Christopher L. Cosper