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Online Yet More Personal: Professors Respond to COVID-19 Crisis

Authors:
  • Cultural Keys LLC

Abstract

This article represents a Work in Progress. COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way we conduct our lives across different segments of society. Higher education's organizational activities were rearranged as instructors and students were forced to switch from in-person to online and hybrid class activities. We examine how COVID-19 reshaped teaching at an engineering school in a large, public research university in the U.S. Midwest. In our earlier studies (during the pre-COVID-19 era) we found that faculty culture prioritized research over teaching. We also discovered that students avoided interactions with their instructors for several reasons, including the perception that their professors were too busy. Still, a professor's role at a research university involves teaching one to two courses per semester. With the advent of COVID-19, one of the many emerging crises in higher education was that instructors were largely unprepared to teach online and were left scrambling to adjust. Our most current research revealed that instructors had to develop proficiency quickly in various technologies to enable them to pre-record lectures, offer help sessions remotely, and design and administer exams. The learning curve was steep and led to a significant increase in instructor preparation time. This rearrangement of activities seems to have influenced professors' attitudes since they placed higher emphasis on quality of teaching, devoted more time to interacting with students outside class sessions and were more flexible in terms of students' academic challenges.
Online Yet More Personal:
Professors Respond to COVID-19 Crisis
Fredy R. Rodríguez-Mejía
MEERCat, School of Engineering
Education and School of
Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
W. Lafayette, IN, USA
fredyrafaelrodriguez@gmail.com
Elizabeth K. Briody
Cultural Keys LLC
Troy, MI USA
elizabeth.briody@gmail.com
Daeyeoul Lee
Teaching and Learning Center
Rider University
Lawrenceville, NJ, USA
ORCID: 0000-0003-1111-9691
Edward J. Berger
MEERCat, School of Engineering
Education and School of
Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
W. Lafayette, IN, USA
bergere@purdue.edu
Abstract—This article represents a Work in Progress. COVID-19
pandemic has affected the way we conduct our lives across
different segments of society. Higher education’s organizational
activities were rearranged as instructors and students were
forced to switch from in-person to online and hybrid class
activities. We examine how COVID-19 reshaped teaching at an
engineering school in a large, public research university in the
U.S. Midwest. In our earlier studies (during the pre-COVID-19
era) we found that faculty culture prioritized research over
teaching. We also discovered that students avoided interactions
with their instructors for several reasons, including the
perception that their professors were too busy. Still, a professor’s
role at a research university involves teaching one to two courses
per semester. With the advent of COVID-19, one of the many
emerging crises in higher education was that instructors were
largely unprepared to teach online and were left scrambling to
adjust. Our most current research revealed that instructors had
to develop proficiency quickly in various technologies to enable
them to pre-record lectures, offer help sessions remotely, and
design and administer exams. The learning curve was steep and
led to a significant increase in instructor preparation time. This
rearrangement of activities seems to have influenced professors’
attitudes since they placed higher emphasis on quality of
teaching, devoted more time to interacting with students outside
class sessions and were more flexible in terms of students’
academic challenges.
Keywords—Distance teaching, faculty cultural change, COVID-
19, crisis adaptation.
I. INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled society to re-arrange
itself in creative and unexpected ways. Education constitutes
one of the social arenas that needed to implement significant
changes to its modus operandi to maintain some sense of
normalcy especially for instructors and students. While
preliminary reports have begun to examine how engineering
educators have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in
matters such as instructional impact, research, finances,
productivity and personal well-being [1] [2], more time is
needed to get a clearer picture of if and how cultural change in
education settings has occurred as a result of COVID-19.
Our goal was to examine how COVID-19 reshaped
teaching at a large, public research university in the U.S. In
the pre-COVID-19 era, the increasing diversity with “very
high research activity” [5] reinforced the high value tied to
research relative to teaching. In our earlier research we
discovered that students avoided interactions with their
instructors for several reasons, including the perception that
their professors were too busy [6]. Still, a professor’s role at a
research university involves teaching one to two courses per
semester. With the advent of COVID-19, two crises emerged.
The first, related to public health, led to a state-wide shutdown
of all but essential services (e.g., grocery stores, hospitals).
Since one crisis can lead to one or more others [7] the
combined effect can be both complex and unexpected. The
second crisis, that instructors were largely unprepared to teach
online, left them scrambling to adjust. This new pattern of
distance teaching continued throughout the summer session.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Crises and Their Management
Business scholars, among others, have studied crises, events
that negatively affect “the whole of an organization” [7, p.
34]. Neither the cause of the crisis, nor the appropriate
response to it, may be known or understood by all of the
organization’s stakeholders [8, p. 6]. Nevertheless, crises
should be addressed as quickly as possible, with
communications extended both internally to organizational
members or employees and externally to relevant publics.
Because “any crisis is capable of setting off any other
crisis,” multiple crises may be in play simultaneously [7, p.
38]. Bernstein (2011, 2) identifies types of crises, two of
which are relevant. In “creeping crises,” foreshadowed events
are not viewed as contributing to a pattern and little
preparation for interruption of activities occurs. The U.S.
response to COVID-19 is one such example. “Sudden crises,”
as the name implies, appear quickly; damage is incurred and
stakeholders seek a response [9]. We liken this crisis category
to the successive changes that took place in higher educational
systems as mandatory lockdowns got underway. Indeed, the
lockdown was the “trigger event” [8, p. 6] that put in motion
“emergency remote teaching” [10] and numerous other
follow-on crises for individuals associated with universities.
B. Adjusting to New Social Realities
As a roadmap that informs people’s realities, behaviors and
decisions, culture plays an intrinsic role in how people adjust to
social changes. Ratten (2020:510-11) has argued, for example,
that “culture influences the behavior of individuals and how they
act in a collective manner…[in this sense], culture is viewed as
a way to understand shared meaning systems” [11]. With a focus
on organizations, organizational culture includes the “signs and
symbols, shared practices and underlying assumptions” of a
given organization [12, p. 1737]. When significant changes
occur in the organizational environment, organizations are
compelled to re-adjust their culture to work within emerging
“environmental realities” [12, p. 1737). In the same vein, other
scholars have written about people’s ability to cope, culturally,
in times of crises. For example, with a focus on cultural
identities, Guan et al. (2020) argued that identities can be
“activated by relevant cues to help individuals adapt to the
changing situational demands” [13, p. 3). Understanding the role
of culture during crises, can “provide important guidance for
individuals to develop a more flexible and adaptive way to cope
with…emerging challenges” (13, p. 3).
C. Emerging Technical Demands During COVID-19
In the realm of teaching, many faculty members across the
nation have focused their energies adapting to “digitally
enabled” teaching strategies; others continued to teach without
using technology tools. A related issue, as described by
Bowles & Sendall (2020) emphasizes the importance of
educators moving “beyond the fads of the latest educational
technology to a robust discussion about creatively engaging
with student perspectives and learning preferences” [14, p.
157). COVID-19 affected both issues and led to the surge of
“emergency remote teaching,” involving the use of fully
online formats. Considering that emergency remote teaching
provides students with access to instruction—whether
synchronously or asynchronously—it has been difficult for
many faculty members to offer a high-quality course during a
crisis [10].
Some studies have focused on the development of
effective teaching methodologies during social distancing
restrictions. An important consideration for successful
digitally-enabled instruction is maximizing simplicity,
communicating frequently with students, and being more
flexible in terms of performance expectations [15]. Technical
proficiency is another key consideration for a successful
transition to distance teaching. In a study that examined both
faculty and students’ reactions to the online-teaching and
learning transition, Roy & Covelli (2021, 11) found that the
transition was easier for individuals who were somewhat
proficient and comfortable with online teaching and learning
settings [16].
Once new content delivery methods are designed and
implemented, students begin to adapt to new forms of
learning. Sadid-Zadeh’s (2020) study examined the insights of
presenters and participants of a series of 81virtual lectures.
Over 96% reported being satisfied while 79% of the audience
indicated that the virtual lectures “were as effective as
traditional classroom lectures, or more effective” [17, p. 1].
D. Increasing Evidence of Technology’s Benefits
Although the transition to online or distance teaching and
learning has been challenging for many students and
instructors, the increased connectivity provided by online tools
has enabled some universities to bring students, alumni and
industry personnel together via platforms like Zoom [18].
Since the late 2000s, universities have been emphasizing the
development of online teaching tools and platforms. As
Appana (2008) indicated, “There are many rationales for
offering and investing in online education, ranging from
increasing access, to improving the quality of learning, to
reducing costs, to preparing students better for a knowledge-
based society” [19, p. 5]. Other studies have emphasized the
increase in student enrollment in online graduate programs
which offer students the opportunity to work with each other
despite geographic distance [20].
The role of teaching at undergraduate institutions in
relation to other elements of university culture (e.g., research)
has been examined by some seminal works [21], [22] that call
into question the “publish-or-perish” model that dominates R1
institution culture. Thus, the expansion of teaching
opportunities afforded by new digital technologies has the
potential to reinforce the central role of teaching in university
culture (Barnes et al., 2018).
We present our preliminary results on how the pandemic-
related restrictions for in-person teaching led instructors to
teach differently. Our research questions were:
RQ1: How did instructors respond to the new teaching
conditions they faced?
RQ2: What effect did the instructional changes that
instructors made have on their role in the university?
III. DATA AND METHODS
This research is part of a five-year study about organizational-
culture change in an Engineering School (ES) at a large, public
university in the U.S. Midwest. Our ethnographic methods
involved a combination of approaches (i.e., interviews, focus
groups, documents, surveys, observation) [24], [25]. Here we
examine responses from individual interviews and focus groups.
From June – July 2020, we interviewed all 11 of the instructors
teaching ES summer courses. The interview on teaching
experiences was divided into four segments: 1) prior to spring
2020, 2) during spring, 3) during summer, and 4) expectations
beyond summer. Our questions pertained to prior familiarity
with distance teaching, resources used, workload, synchronous
vs. asynchronous teaching, concerns expressed, and lessons
learned. The average interview length was 58 minutes. Among
the sample were eight tenured faculty members and three
lecturers.
IV. RESULTS
Our initial findings are suggestive; we expect more insights to
emerge as we continue to analyze our data. We have identified
two salient findings: 1) contextual adaptation to distance
teaching formats based on individual circumstances; 2)
increased instructor attention to the quality of teaching and
learning. These findings are situated within the period of time
transitioning to and during the pandemic. Before COVID-19,
instructor time was minimized when teaching materials had
been previously developed and when instructors were able to
respond to any student concerns (and resolve these concerns)
during in-person class sessions. Furthermore, at least half of
the faculty members interviewed were already using a “flipped
classroom” teaching methodology wherein students are given
access to online materials and class meetings are devoted to
discussion.
A. Responses to Distance Teaching based on Individual
Circumstances
When social distancing requirements compelled universities to
make the switch to distance teaching, many instructors faced
significant challenges. The majority of the faculty interviewed
(at least 80%) reported an increase in workload related to
setting up virtual meetings, responding to student concerns via
e-mail, and figuring out the best way to deliver discussion and
problem-solving sessions. Moreover, factors such as prior
technical experience, parenthood, health conditions and
language barriers influenced different faculty members’
decisions to adopt different teaching strategies. For example,
some instructors chose to implement asynchronous teaching
formats because their health conditions would have made it
too risky for them to plan hybrid (i.e., in person and remote)
sessions. However, if they did not have prior experience
recording class material, they found the process challenging
and time consuming. Some instructors sought out another
professor for specific advice and mentoring on the technology
– someone who had previously taught online global courses.
Others spent significant time recording their lectures to
eliminate any accidental errors. As one faculty member
indicated: “I think…recording things is definitely a challenge
compared to in-person, because…it’s just easier to…recover
from mistakes when you’re in person and therefore it’s less of
a concern of messing something up…”. Similarly, instructors
whose native language was not English had to be extra careful
when recording their presentations and even sought technical
support to make their recordings more professional. As one
lecturer indicated: “I cannot deliver information, the content
and the technical information at the same speed as native
speakers…the point I’m trying to make is that in the regular
semesters, I try to overcome that with more and better
interactions, personal interactions in the classroom…so I feel
like I could overcome those kinds of areas having better
interactions at office hours and even classroom interactions”.
Other instructors had young children, so it was easier for them
to record lectures on their own time and make them available
for students rather than follow a traditional live teaching
schedule.
B. Increased Instructor Attention to the Quality of Teaching
and Learning
Most members in our sample had to develop remote teaching
proficiency quickly in various technologies to enable them to
pre-record lectures, offer help sessions remotely, and design
and administer exams. The learning curve was steep and led to
a significant increase in instructor preparation time. The
centrality of teaching became evident in various changes
implemented by instructors. First, they made themselves more
available for students when students needed help. One faculty
member said: “I offered many additional office hours so that
the students had as much access to me as possible based on
my other time commitments.” Another instructor indicated that
due to increased opportunities to meet virtually, students
began to attend office hours more regularly and ask questions
more freely [during these sessions]”.
Second, instructors expressed greater flexibility in terms
of their academic expectations of students. One faculty
member explained that “It was okay to relax a little bit in
terms of academic rigor and to really put focus on, Are they
doing okay? Are we all doing okay? Are we all staying
connected?” Another professor indicated: “[it was important
to be] fair…at the same time being compassionate—that
students could be experiencing challenges”.
Third, instructors sought feedback from students and
implemented changes. One professor stated, “[I sought
feedback by] sending additional surveys, getting feedback. I
had an FAQ to-do list that…they could anonymously submit
questions through and I would address those”. Another
instructor said, “I think that’s part of what has made me a
successful instructor…is just the ability to adapt and adjust
and take in their feedback and they see that I’m using it and I
value it”.
Fourth, instructors worked closely with teaching
assistants (TAs) to maximize adequate class content delivery.
One faculty member indicated: “I told the TAs to actually sort
of take care of them [students] when they do meet and then try
to accommodate [them] as much as possible—ask them
questions with how they’re doing. If the time has to be
changed because of time zone we can do that.” Another
instructor offered, “In addition to making it a group project, I
also required them to…have a WebEx meeting with the TAs
weekly, which again helped with that connection, making sure
that they were at least talking to each other at least once a
week”.
Allocating time to design engaging teaching approaches
was a fifth change in instructor behavior. Faculty members
used a combination of reflection time, discussion boards, live
problem-solving sessions in-class, and interactive tutorials.
One professor stated: “I want students to reflect in real times
[sic] in corona. And I give them time, so if the question is
posed, we take 10 minutes [to] write down their thoughts, and
then they crystallize them as much as they can in a given time,
and then they talk. So, it is the interactive dialogue”. Another
professor said: “my style has been to write things with them,
solve problems with them so that they can ask me questions”.
A related result was the professors’ involvement with
research during summer 2020. Of the 11, only two individuals
freely indicated that they engaged in research. We know that
at least five of the remaining nine did not conduct any
research—due to their ES administrative or teaching roles. In
general, we suspect that research output was low because
campus laboratories were closed due to the pandemic. In
addition, teaching preparation time increased significantly as
this individual stated: “I spent much more time/effort
considering student interactions and fostering student
engagement (both during class and with each other). Looking
ahead, I feel my teaching has improved, having
experienced/survived the last year + of altered class
delivery”.
V. DISCUSSION
We start with RQ1: How did instructors respond to the new
teaching conditions they faced?
The crisis experienced in ES seems to have refocused
attention on the fundamental element of university life:
teaching [21], [22]. Members of our sample reported spending
their work hours teaching or preparing to teach. Much of this
time, of course, was connected to learning and using the
various technologies in order to teach [10]. As the pandemic-
induced crisis impacted the organizational culture of ES,
faculty members activated the teaching aspects of their
cultural identity to adapt to fluctuating “situational demands”
[13] and new “environmental realities” [12].
However, the adoption of “emergency remote teaching”
[10] among ES faculty reveals a high level of variation. Those
who had prior experience with distance teaching technologies
expanded their knowledge base and use of the available
technologies. For example, the delivery of their lectures was
highly polished and produced in a studio setting. There they
had access to multiple cameras making the integration of
video clips, the professor speaking, and white board problem
solving seamless. By contrast, other instructors were either not
able or chose not to access such resources. Similarly, while
some instructors sought and/or contributed to an ES lessons-
learned document related to distance learning teaching tips,
others never tapped that resource. These differential behavior
patterns indicate that adaptation was not monolithic. While
instructors had no option but to engage in the distance
teaching mandate, their accommodation of it was a function of
individual circumstances and their prior experiences with
distance teaching. Our study helps make explicit that crisis
response may be “successful” from the standpoint of
delivering a course using distance teaching methods, though
the preparation and quality of that delivery had the potential to
be far less successful in terms of student learning.
Another critical aspect involved the time instructors
devoted to students and their ability to learn the course
material. There was an outpouring of concern by instructors
for their students—in an effort to ensure that the students were
coping with the effects of the pandemic as well as the distance
teaching format. Instructors sought to maximize connectivity
between themselves, students, and TAs. The sentiment was
much more about the “whole” person rather than the mastery
of the course content. Several instructors increased their
interactions with students (e.g., additional virtual office hours,
more emails) and expressed greater flexibility in terms of
performance expectations—all of which are considered
intrinsic to the success of “digitally enabled instruction” [15].
RQ2: What effect did the instructional changes instructors
made have on their role in the university?
The university switch to distance learning had the effect of
compelling instructors to allocate more time to their teaching
obligations. The technologies were in place, as were the levels
of connectivity that facilitated more opportunities for
interaction with students [18]. Not in place, among most of
our sample, was the expertise required to apply these
technologies effectively. A significant amount of instructor
time was devoted to becoming proficient in the use of these
technologies. (While we are unable to assess the impact of
COVID-19 or the subsequent shutdown on faculty research,
we can say that no one in our sample mentioned research
activities during the interview.) Currently, it is unclear if this
ability to use and apply new technology in distance teaching
will endure; it is contingent on several factors including 1)
routine technology integration into course content, 2)
continued expansion of a global curriculum, 3) instructor
choice, 4) university administration decisions about the
relevance of crisis preparedness in the university’s future.
VI. CONCLUSION
As we continue to move forward with a potential return to in-
person teaching in the upcoming academic year, the
organizational culture changes at ES have offered some
lessons. 1) Teaching has gained prominence during the
COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains to be seen whether this
emphasis will continue after the crisis. Many instructors
continue to be uncomfortable with distance teaching and
would prefer to revert to their prior in-class courses. Crisis
management experts would advise an all-instructor
proficiency strategy in distance teaching to reduce future risks.
2) Teaching was possible because of online technology which
forced instructors to learn how to master at least some of its
functionalities quickly so that they could fulfill their university
obligations. Universities had this option available and in use
prior to COVID-19. From both a cultural change and crisis
management perspective, distance teaching with its various
technologies should be expanded and strengthened or
universities will not be able to address similar future crises. As
Mitroff (2001:127) pointed out, “the fatal error is not to learn
from previous mistakes.” 3) As some instructors expressed
concerns about their students’ ability to cope during the
pandemic, they put strategies in place to maximize both their
and their students’ abilities to complete the course
successfully. Instructors and their students seemed to pull
together to deal with both the unexpected and the frightening.
Indeed, we had the sense that the professors took on a kind of
protective role, in loco parentis, because of the enormous
pandemic challenge and its consequences for teaching and
learning. Organizational culture changes such as the one
experienced by ES during COVID-19 contributed to some
unexpected modifications in instructor behavior that speak to
human adaptability in moments of crises.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are thankful for our participants’ willingness to interview
with us during a time of hectic teaching changes. Their
perspectives and actions helped us understand and identify
important cultural changes at ES during a pandemic-induced
crisis.
This research was supported by the U.S. National Science
Foundation under Grant No. 1519412. For one author (EJB),
this material is based upon work supported by (while serving
at) the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings,
and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.
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... Changes in ABET level over time indicated the impact COVID-19 had on Significant Learning -Technical (ABET 2) and Significant Learning -Professional (ABET 3 and 5) in lecture courses. This was not unexpected, as many instructors experienced struggles with implementing design, communication, and teamwork activities in a remote space [16], [17]. Lecture/lab courses saw the most changes due to the disruption. ...
... As instructors transitioned to ERT, they faced a number of difficulties. Rodriguez-Mejia et al. [14] found in one study that the majority of instructors surveyed reported a significant increase in workload with the shift to ERT. Workload increases were due to student concerns, a general increase in meetings, and finding new, effective course delivery methods. ...
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