Remote teaching and learning course case study: Shelley Reuter

Professor Shelley Reuter, Department of Sociology and Anthropology experienced significant challenges with the return to campus when moving from remote teaching back to in person teaching following the pandemic of 2020. The two courses which form the focus of this case study are SOCI 498 D: Motherhood and Childlessness (new SOCI 478) and SOCI 402 Contemporary Sociological Theory. Professor Reuter discovered that these courses worked remarkably well during the pandemic when using Zoom for full synchronous remote teaching. However, with the return to campus the courses became significantly more challenging and stressful to teach while the quality of the learning experience for students was diminished and enrollment dropped drastically. What are the reasons for these changes and which factors may have played a role? Are certain courses better suited for remote teaching based on content and format, as well as student and faculty needs? SOCI 402 and SOCI 498 are both structured and run as seminars in exactly the same way including the types of written assignments apart from the final paper.

Can you tell me more about the course?

John Bentley: We are going to talk about SOCI 498D, the Motherhood and Childless course. It seems to be that it worked really well when you were doing it on Zoom with students remotely, but when you got back to campus was a lot more challenging. We want to understand what's going on in terms of this course so we're going to look at the anatomy of the course. Why don't we start off with a general description of the course in terms of the Zoom experience from what  you recall. Tell me more fully about the overview of the course.

Shelley Reuter: It’s a 400-level seminar course on the sociology of motherhood and childlessness. It’s working from the premise that understanding motherhood and childlessness sociologically can tell us something about social relations in general. The course is anchored in the question of reproductive decision making and begins with various topics and readings related to reproductive decision making and childlessness, both voluntary and involuntary. We go through a few weeks of that and then we shift gears and look at various elements of motherhood, like intensive mothering, theories of motherhood, single motherhood, maternal ambivalence, and maternal regret, which is one of my current research interests. So, we shift gears from childlessness and reproductive decision-making to talk about different aspects of the experience of motherhood.

And then at the end of the course, we talk about the novel, Motherhood by Sheila Heti in which she spends the entire novel debating whether or not to have a child. So, I've book- ended the course with this question of reproductive decision making. We begin and end with that and the idea is that all the stuff in the middle reflects or covers, not all, but many factors that one might consider in the process of reproductive decision making. I run it as a seminar, so every week the students take turns facilitating the discussion of the material, and I don't give tests or exams. The assessment is all based on the seminar leadership and writing assignments.

The students also do a cumulative portfolio type of assignment. Again, on this question of reproductive decision making, so the course starts with a very brief narrative, not a formal essay, just a story about their experience with reproductive decision-making, whether that is something they've experienced or something they've never thought about. It's just a starting point. It's worth very little. It's just for them to start and then throughout the course they have to reflect on their initial account in relation to the readings as we go through them. I ask them to keep a reading journal and to jot down ideas as we go along, about where they connect with the readings and things that they can relate to, etc. And then at the end of the course, they rewrite that initial account in a sociologically informed way, so they retell their story, but they use the course materials to make sense of it. Then they submit everything. They submit the initial account, they resubmit it, they submit all their journals, and they submit a final version and in principle, they should have learned something. They come to this final version of the paper feeling gratified, knowledgeable and successful because they've been able to tie their experience in with the work we've done in class.

John Bentley: What type of students are enrolled in this 400-level seminar course. How many are first year, second year, and third year for example? Is it a mix or heavily oriented to students that are more advanced in their academic careers?

Shelley Reuter: It’s a bit of a problem actually. The first time I taught it, it was not on Zoom, it was the year that the pandemic started (it started that semester). The pandemic started and the course was almost entirely upper year sociology students who had followed me from SOCI 402 the previous term, and a few second- or third-year Sociology students. Then, during the Zoom iteration, it was mostly Sociology students and a couple of students from SDB (Simone de Beauvoir Institute). Then this last time that I taught it in person, it was seriously under enrolled. I had five or six students in the class and maybe two were sociology students and the others were from SDB. I don't think any of them were 400 level, third year students. They were young, very junior undergraduates with little to no background in Sociology.

John Bentley: It's a course that had existed but you redesigned it? How far back does this course date?

Shelley Reuter: It's a new course I was teaching, and just when the pandemic started was the first time, I was supposed to teach it -  I had to go on sick leave about three weeks into the course. The second time it was on the books it was on Zoom.

John Bentley: I remember you saying the course had quite healthy enrollment numbers when you first ran it.

Shelley Reuter: The first year, when it was in person, it wasn't a full class, but there were a lot of students, there were 18 or 19 students.  The second year when I was on Zoom, again it was packed. This year (2022-23) was exceptional, and I attribute the low enrollment this year, in person, to just kind of a generalized problem, I think the students have checked out, the pandemic has broken something, and I would be surprised if somebody said that the enrollment was normal or high generally. I don't know why it was so under enrolled. It certainly wasn't under enrolled the first two times I taught it.

John Bentley: So the first time you taught 498D it was on campus, the second time it was Zoom and then the third time you were back on campus. So you've had three iterations with this new course basically, and the third time is where you saw the big changes being back on campus. So, you had 18 students, then 18 students and down to 5 being back in person.

Shelley Reuter: So, it was something like that. There were 18, 18 and then down to 5.

John Bentley: In terms of there being 18 students, is that a comfortable number for a seminar course? Is that a usual, healthy number for that level course or would you expect to see more students?

Shelley Reuter: It’s quite decent for an elective. I also teach SOCI 402 pretty regularly, which is not an elective, it's compulsory and the cap is also 25 on that. I often get 18 to 22 students. I've never maxed out on SOCI 402, but I always have a pretty full class.

What are some of the major differences between remote teaching and in-person in terms of the experience?

John Bentley: So something definitely changed? You have a few comparisons. One on campus, then the Zoom as remote, and then back on campus. So, you've got a little bit of a data set to look at which is interesting. Let's look at the comparison with your first experience teaching the course when it was on campus. Can you tell me about the quality of the experience in general when you first taught the course? Was it an enjoyable experience? Were the students engaged? What was it like when you first taught the course on campus before having to move to remote teaching?

Shelley Reuter: To be honest, it was really amazing that the students were hungry for the topic. I had a few students in the class who followed me there from SOCI 402 the previous term, as I mentioned. Right from the first day there was a comfort level because a few of us already knew each other and so that put everybody at ease. It was in a good seminar room, sitting around a real seminar table, not having to move any furniture, which is what I have to do in my other classes. And they're at an age where they're starting to think about these questions and so it really spoke to them. They really wanted to be there.

John Bentley: So for the remote teaching, let’s look at the next iteration when you came back from leave.

Shelley Reuter: The next time I taught it, it was on Zoom. I didn’t teach it emergency style like everybody else because I was coming off that sick leave followed by sabbatical. So, I benefitted from a full year listening to everybody’s observations and experiences and I was really ready for it in a way that others hadn’t been when the pandemic first hit.

John Bentley: Tell me what that experience was like globally when you came back.

Shelley Reuter: It was winter 2021 when I got to teach the course remotely. It was kind of life altering to be honest. I have never been, or at least not for a long time, let's say, been so jazzed about teaching as I was that term. I looked forward to it. I was sad when it was over and so were the students. It was amazing. I was honestly so terrified by some of the horror stories I'd been hearing from people about teaching on Zoom that I went into it super prepared. I'm generally an organized person, but I had everything ready and organized before starting and so I felt very comfortable and confident. It was just a really fantastic experience from beginning to end and I know that the students felt the same.

John Bentley: What are the things that made it such a pleasant experience for you as a faculty member? Because if you are deriving a high level of enjoyment from the experience, that is going to translate into a very positive experience for the students. So, what was it about the course? What happened?

Shelley Reuter: In no particular order, the students were really hungry and super engaged. And they loved the readings, and so they read them. And they were ready to talk. There was a very high level of collegiality among them but I'm really good at cultivating that in my seminars. I've been lucky that way, but the vibe in my classes is always positive that way and it translated to Zoom and so I was really pleasantly surprised and relieved that I could do it on Zoom too. I really used Moodle a lot in a way that I hadn't previously. I've always used Moodle a bit, but I jacked it up. I used some of the Google tools to engineer engagement and that really worked. I think for me personally the most important thing that contributed was the fact that I was super present. I was hundred percent present and focused and not frazzled. I hadn't just spent an hour trying to find parking. I wasn't thinking about feeding the meter. I wasn't trying to figure out how I was going to feed myself in the middle of class, which was at a really weird time, 11:45am to 2:30pm. I wasn't worrying about these life things; I wasn't worried about how I was going to get over the bridge in time to get my son from school. I wasn't worrying about life. I was totally focused and of all the things that I've just mentioned, for me, that was the biggest contributing factor to my being so present and focused. And I'm a bit worried about it now going back in the fall. My knees are finished, I couldn't finish the last term in person because I simply couldn't walk to class from my car. I just can't do it anymore. And so I'm already worrying about the fall and how I'm going to teach and not be distracted by the basic life act of getting to work. So for me this started as a pandemic thing, but it has become an accessibility and equity issue for me.

John Bentley: Did students like the fact that they could just come into the classroom and be present?

Sheley Reuter: I mean, I know I've been late for class on occasion because I've been trapped on the bridge and you know, so for sure they have the same kinds of challenges. Some of them I know, one of them told me she was finally finishing her degree because it was on Zoom. Being on Zoom allowed her to finally finish her degree. I think for students who are working, and many Concordia students have to work, Zoom made it a lot easier because they can't be in two places at once or they don't have time to go all the way across town and come back again to work. I think that it allowed for a measure of calm before class started that I had never experienced before. I'm a single mother so calm is really hard to come by. I'm always running, so all I had to do was drive my son to school, be back in 10 minutes and just get ready for class. I never get to do that in normal times.

Creating effective engagement through peer supported course design

John Bentley: So, the quality of the teaching and learning experience for you and the students is going to be better because those concerns are limited, and you can just focus. So of course, it makes sense that the quality of the teaching experience and the learning experience for the students is going to be that much better. Do you think because the students are more advanced in their academic careers that they tend to have other competing priorities versus a first-year student? First-year students are new to the university experience, they may or may not be working or involved with university projects because they're new to the university, whereas second, third-year students more advanced in their studies may have other competing priorities because they're a little bit older and have immersed themselves in the university culture, maybe even working at the university. Do you think that because this is an advanced seminar course that the profile of the students may have been different and therefore found it to be a better, more convenient and engaging experience?

Shelley Reuter: I think it's entirely possible. I know most of them have part time jobs and some even work full time and that's a huge one for most, if not all of my students. At the 400-level seminar I get to know the students in a way that I don't in other courses. I don't teach at the 200 level anymore. Sometimes I teach at the 300 level, and I'll get to know a handful of students which in the past has been capped at 65. I don't know a lot about what their other priorities are, but I know that so many of them are working. The odd one will be on one of the sports teams, not very many though. But work is a big one.

John Bentley: And you talked about the fact that you're very good at building peer to peer relationships in the sense of collegiality in the classroom and or within the classroom experience. Was the quality of that sense of connection between the students better with the remote teaching experience using Zoom? Did the students connect and bond more? Were you able to achieve that more easily?

Shelley Reuter: It was easier because you could put the students in breakout rooms. It’s much easier than in person, because in person everybody's trying to talk over each other, and you have to get people to physically move. I am able to do it in class in person too but Zoom facilitated it for sure, it was instant.

John Bentley: Did you get a sense from any students that they wanted to come back to campus because remote was not for them? Was there a sense that this remote experience was a better experience for all the students? Or were there any that you felt were not liking the experience of remote learning?

Shelley Reuter: There I can think of one student who was really struggling with lock down in general and she was having a hard time. She did say to me that she needs to be back on campus but if she can't be, this course was great because it was making up for the struggle. There was a feeling that if we have to be on Zoom at least it's this course.

John Bentley: So something was happening in the group dynamics and the way the students work together that provided affordances that made it doable for her as an experience.

Shelley Reuter: Yes. And she then came back and took another Zoom course with me the following term. 

John Bentley: Although the course was run on Zoom and was all remote teaching, they really enjoyed the experience. You had invested a lot of your time in planning the course, were attentive and really present. The students probably felt like they were really getting the full learning experience.

Shelley Reuter: And it started before the course started because I actually emailed them before the course started and introduced myself and gave them a little questionnaire to fill out. I just wanted to get a sense of who I was dealing with and what their obstacles were. I asked questions about the tech and their time zone, and if they had other responsibilities, stuff I felt I needed to know, given the situation with the pandemic. I think that set the stage for them to think, “that's pretty great that she's asking these questions,” so I think they were predisposed to making a good connection when the class started. I think that that helped. And you know, at the end of the course, people were emotional and cried because it was ending. And that's usually a good sign. That never happened to me before. It was really this journey that we all went on together. It was really awesome. And so, this year, to go from that to this frankly really excruciating term has been such a huge let down. I don't know when I'm going to teach this course again. I have no desire to do it, no desire to teach either of these courses anytime soon. To come down from that high, this term was just brutal.

John Bentley: You went down from 18 students who were fully invested in the remote teaching course on Zoom to just four students in person. Let's understand the student profile for the course. Where did the 18 students come from? Were they mainly from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and were they mostly third year?

Shelley Reuter: Mostly sociology and 300 and 400 level.

John Bentley: When you returned to in person, they weren't the same profile, they were different?

Shelley Reuter: There were so few of them, and they weren't from sociology. We cross-listed the course because enrollment numbers were so bad that we opened it up to Women Studies and Geography students. We opened it up to these other departments and the enrollment was still very low and students barely met the minimum requirements.

John Bentley: What made that experience so disappointing compared to the previous experience teaching the course?

Shelley Reuter: Well, I didn't have critical mass for discussions. A grad tutorial, five students is a dream. But this wasn't that. I didn't have critical mass to discuss the material. I had to teach in a way that I couldn't take anything for granted. But mostly I think the most disappointing part was not having critical mass. I almost always had at most three people in the classroom, so it's not just it was under enrolled, they didn't show up either more than one week. I had a couple of keen students who came every week. That was it.

John Bentley: What was the enrollment to begin with? What should it have been? What did it start off with?

Shelley Reuter: It was supposed to be 25. That's the cap. And then it was just eight enrolled. On Zoom it was 18 registered and it's safe to say that nearly all, if not all of them, showed up all the time.

John Bentley: You had like almost 100% attendance online and then when you ended up on campus, you had something in the area of 25% show. If it's only two out of eight you're looking at, you know 25 to 30% showing up. So that's a big drop.

Shelley Reuter: When the first Omicron wave started, I was teaching my 300-level class so that class started on Zoom. I had close to 100% attendance and then as soon as we went in person, if I had five people out of 65 in the room, that was a good day. Nobody came to class in the winter of 2020.

John Bentley: What was it about the Zoom experience for the students that kept them engaged? Was there anything in the assignments, Moodle setup, other tools or anything else that you did differently versus in person or did you keep things same?

Shelley Reuter: A lot of things changed. My focus changed. My distractions were back in play, not the least of which was my concerns about getting COVID and having to teach with a mask on. On Zoom we took a lot of breaks which you can't do in the classroom in the same way. I was very deliberate about getting their eyes off the screen regularly. But it doesn't make sense to do that in person. I couldn't send them into breakout groups because there were so few of them. And it was awkward for them to discuss things in a group with me. They are hearing everything, they had no time away from me, just time in the classroom, and I think that was huge. I think the breakout rooms were really important, not just for discussing whatever I asked them to discuss in that moment, but it gave them a chance to blow off some steam. I would float from room to room. And I would hear them, and they knew. I told him I was going to pop in and out and I would, you know, hear them talking about other stuff, which was normal. They were doing what I was asking them to do, but they also needed to blow off steam.

John Bentley: Did you use Moodle in the same way or did you use Moodle less?

Shelley Reuter: I kept some things that I started during the pandemic. I've continued to use Moodle for everything like submitting assignments and posting things and that kind of thing. But during the pandemic, Moodle was a kind of a lifeline. It was the repository for everything. They knew that they could find whatever they needed, but now it seems, even though I'm putting just as much stuff, it doesn't seem to be that way. It doesn't seem to play as much of a role for them. I think because they know they'll see me, and they can talk to me. I'm not sure what it is, the Moodle itself hasn't really changed. I'm using it to the same extent, but it doesn't seem to be so central anymore, I'm not sure why.

John Bentley: Do you know why that might be like? Do you think it's because the students see you?

Shelley Reuter: I think maybe that's part of it, but you know, it's really hard to know because there's so few of them.

John Bentley: You mean like they just don't show up? They're ambivalent?

Shelley Reuter: They don't do the reading, they're late with everything. They're just not present and engaged. The students are having problems. I mean the pandemic has broken something. I think it's broken their spirit and I think it's messed up their capacity to manage their time and their schoolwork. And I think they're having a lot of mental health issues that weren't necessarily there or weren't as present before.

John Bentley: And do you think that will resolve or do you think it's hard to say? Over time it could be that the students’ expectations have also changed, and those expectations get passed on to the next cohort of students because each cohort of student learns from previous cohorts in terms of what the new norm is. Has the level of the bar changed or a new normal changed things?

Shelley Reuter: I think it's a perfect storm. There are no resources. They're not able to get psychiatric support. I’m answering you as a medical sociologist, I think the healthcare support for them is just not there and there's so much going on. They're under so much pressure, this economy is not being good to this generation. Everything they're saying in the news about a mental healthcare crisis, a youth mental health crisis is true. They are struggling.

John Bentley: Do you think you would have a similar experience if you were given the opportunity to teach it again online and on Zoom the way you did in the past?

Shelley Reuter: I think I'd probably get students who really want to be there because they have to go out of their way now to go on Zoom because it's not normal anymore, so I suspect that if they sign up for a Zoom course it’s because they want that. But it’s hard to answer because you know, they've swung the pendulum so far in the other direction. It's a bit of a tough sell now. I'm in the process of planning my honours seminar and I have every intention of having some of the classes on Zoom. Some of the classes I've got planned make sense to do on Zoom. I'm going to do it because I think it's going to be pedagogically useful. The honours seminar is run kind of like a writing workshop the whole year. I have classes scheduled where all we're doing is feedback. It makes sense for me to meet students on Zoom one by one privately, for example.

What about using blended learning?

John Bentley: And what about the idea that students are wanting to be physically together because they’ve been isolated and want to be together for connections physically on campus, to be immersed in a campus-based experience. What reasoning would you put forward to say that that doesn't necessarily apply in your case, given the nature of your course?

Shelley Reuter: I wouldn't say that it doesn't apply. I mean to be clear, being back in the classroom has not been a negative experience. Like it's been great for me to see students in person. I must admit I like it, it would be a bit hard for me to go back on Zoom full time now that I've been back in the classroom. I like seeing them. But I hate the commute so much, it wastes so much of my time – time that I could be doing my research. It's distracting, it's exhausting, it's so stressful that it's worth it for me to be back on Zoom just to avoid all of that because it makes my life easier and if my life is easier, I'm a better teacher. Listening to you ask that question, I started to think about something that had never occurred to me, which is well maybe blended for me could just mean one week on, one week off for no other reason than being in their physical presence. Though there's still no pedagogical case for me to do a blended learning model exactly like that. My courses are not building up of skills, it's improving skills they're supposed to already have. I'm not teaching them something and then sending them off to apply it. It's not like that. It's not an experiential course, so unless there's something I'm missing about blended learning, I can't see the case for it exactly in the way that all those other examples exist. Clearly it was a good fit for some courses, but having said that your question just made me realize that maybe I could do it just for the sake of bringing us together in the room to mix it up, I could see if that's allowed, I'm open to that. If I could for that reason, I'm open to that.

John Bentley:  I think more and more we're seeing people coming from probably further and further out. So the effort and time involved, time wasted, will continue to create more and more frustration and become stressors for students and faculty. There has to be merit or significant value to make that travel effort and time worthwhile. If you're traveling all the way into the city just to attend a lecture that could be recorded or delivered via Zoom that could be very frustrating for students. And I think they've voiced that sentiment so the quality, the nature of the campus experience has to be qualitatively different.

Shelley Reuter: There's another element to that which is that while teaching on Zoom I learned how to be much more efficient and, because you couldn't run a 3-hour class on Zoom otherwise they'd be dropping with fatigue, there’s no way to keep them on Zoom for that long. So, I learned how to be much more efficient. This year while in person I had a lot of trouble filling the time. In great measure, it's because I didn't have critical mass and we weren't having great discussions. My classes are much tighter now and more efficient having created the model of completing a topic a week while on Zoom. To clarify, I've always done a topic a week. That's what I'm comfortable with. But now that I am teaching more efficiently as a result of having taught on Zoom, there is no way I'm going to start doing a new topic once we've exhausted the scheduled topic just to fill the extra time that has become available. So that sense of making them come in for a class that doesn't last the full time, that weighed heavily on me this year. I felt badly because the classes were ending a good hour early pretty much every week because I could not fill the time which was not the case while teaching on Zoom because the class had critical mass for discussions, and I frequently had to cut off discussion to bring the class to an end at the normal time. And yet this year I found that I kept apologizing to the students and checking in with them about not going the full class. I’d say, “I don't want to keep you here for nothing, but I’ve got nothing left and I cannot fill 3-hours with only three of you here.” Ironically, I was spending more time going to and from my classes on the commute than actually teaching them, and again, that's time I could be doing my research. The University demands so much of us with really no consideration for the challenges that some faculty members deal with more than others. And for me, as a single mother, time is really in short supply. I would much rather not waste time in my car, on a bridge when I could be doing something productive.

John Bentley: I want to identify whether the nature of your course, the design of it, the characteristics, the learning objectives of your course lend themselves a little bit more easily to synchronous meetings on Zoom like it was during the emergency remote teaching. It's really about helping the students wrestle with ideas that they already have. They do have the knowledge; they've built up some expert knowledge and you're really having them practice discourse. Can you say a bit more about this course in terms of polemics, discourse, discussion, dialogue? What are your thoughts on the way that you've structured your course around those activities and processes?

Shelley Reuter: If you know what you're doing on Zoom as a teacher for my classes, you don't have to be in person. You absolutely do not, because it's all about discussion. It's about learning the key concepts and then discussing them. None of that requires being in person. If the person facilitating the meeting on Zoom is reasonably good at it. It's not for everybody. It's certainly possible that certain people teaching these types of courses do feel that they need to be in person, but I don't. I'm very comfortable teaching these courses on Zoom. Would I be comfortable teaching any course on Zoom? That's hard for me to say because I tend to run my courses with a lot of discussion, even my lower-level courses. The few weeks that I had to teach 321 on Zoom with 65 students it was fine, and they all showed up. They stopped coming as soon as we were in person. 

John Bentley: Given the nature of your course, is there something that they're losing out on by being on Zoom?

Shelley Reuter: They got more from me on Zoom to be honest. I'm more present. I'm more focused. I'm more available. I can hang around longer after class because I am not rushing to get my car out of parking and over the bridge before rush hour. I make more time for them because I have more time. And I posted things that I wouldn't normally ever post. I posted my lecture slides; I've never done that before because I wanted them to show up to class and take notes. So no, there was no diminished experience – quite the opposite. They got more than their money's worth out of me on Zoom.

John Bentley: And the quality or the dialogue and discourse between the students, for them, do you think it's better?

Shelley Reuter: Yes, because I put them in breakout rooms when we were trying to have big class discussions from the start. I think a lot of them would be too shy at first. I would have to put them in rooms and let them talk to each other a little bit. Depends on the course but I often didn't have to put them in rooms because this class was so cohesive and they were so into each other that talking altogether became very easy, very fast. They really liked each other. It depends on the group, and it depends on how well you've cultivated the relationships between them and with me. I could tell when it was safe to just run a whole group discussion.

John Bentley: Did you do anything special with the group that was cohesive from the beginning, or do you think it's just that they were more advanced students and they just naturally gravitated towards that kind of dynamic more easily?

Shelley Reuter: I was very present, and I've had people tell me before the pandemic that in my seminars they feel really comfortable right away, that there's something that I do and I can't tell you what it is, I have a way of making it feel like a nice community. A good place to be. So, I was able to translate that to Zoom.

John Bentley: What do you think could be generalizable from your experience to other faculty who could benefit from this way of teaching considering the affordances of the course, from being allowed to do the teaching in this fashion? Could it be generalized to other seminar courses for example?

Shelley Reuter: For sure. You know, I think a big part of it is feeling comfortable with the technology and wanting to use it. I can see how somebody who doesn't want to teach on Zoom is not necessarily going to be successful, but if you're into it and you want to teach this way and it's working for you then I think there's a great benefit to letting people live the way they want to live. I think that this is a missed opportunity, forcing everybody to go back when for some it works. It just occurred to me one thing I didn't mention that maybe is part of what makes it work. Part of this sense of community that I've managed to cultivate is that I get to know them. In every course I spend time getting to know them at the beginning of the course and helping them get to know each other and it’s just nice for them. I learn their names, even in my 300-level 65 student course. I think there's a lot to be said for just doing those kinds of basic things and I think some professors don't. They don't know their students’ names. By the end of the class, they haven't bothered to do all that stuff, but I think it goes a long way and I know that students appreciate it. I think sending out those questionnaires and the email before the course started, I think that made a huge difference. I'm about to send an email to my honours seminar for the fall and it’s only June. I’m going to email them today because there are some workshops this summer that I think they should go to. They may or may not appreciate it, but I'm going to start getting to know them now and I think it makes a big difference.

John Bentley: It sounds like the quality of your relationship with your students is also better when you are teaching it on Zoom because, as you’ve mentioned, you are more present. Because you're more present you can be there for them, the students have you 100%. It's a more comfortable experience. One of the concerns is that faculty could just resort to recording and posting video lectures but you're not even recording videos?

Shelley Reuter:  We had the same kind of seminar experiences but on Zoom. No, on Zoom I didn't record. The main concession I made was to post my slides the night before class because I didn’t want them on Zoom longer than they needed to be if I was dictating lecture notes to them. If I post videos, they aren't going to come to class, they just can't be bothered.

John Bentley: So how did they get by? How do they do it? They just get by based on the approach that, “I'll just submit my paper based on the information in the course outline. Do my best and that's it.” 

Shelley Reuter: It’s fair to say they don't do well.

John Bentley: You are teaching back on campus again following the pandemic and in-person teaching. Can you tell me more about that experience? With the benefit of hindsight, how would you compare the in-person teaching with the synchronous remote teaching using Zoom.

Shelley Reuter: I am teaching SOCI 402 again this term [Fall 2023], fully in person. The course is going well due in large measure to having critical mass. I have about 20 students this term, so discussions are effortless. I am also finding the students to be much more engaged than my students were last term, when enrolment was so low in both of my classes. If I had to compare the two, in-person versus Zoom, I would say that both iterations are equally good, that remote is just as good as in person and vice versa. I would add, however, that from the perspective of equity, teaching remotely is much better. The time that I do not spend commuting and all that that entails means that I can focus much better on my class and my students. Similarly, for the students for whom the commute is also a challenge or who have work and/or family responsibilities, having the remote option means that they can also devote more time and energy to the course. I firmly believe that there are instances when Zoom can actually facilitate teaching and learning and for me it really does.

Addendum: It's February 2024 so what's changed since being back in classroom today?

Since conducting this interview on June 1, 2023 Professor Shelley Reuter began teaching in-person beginning September 5, 2023. The following interview conducted on February 6, 2024 was intended as an addendum to the first interview providing Dr. Reuter’s recent impressions concerning the use of Zoom for teaching based on the occasional use due to temporary illness.

John Bentley: Shelley, since we did the interview and you've been back in the classroom, back on campus, you've had to do some teaching on Zoom. But there are some slight differences between what you described previously with teaching a course fully on Zoom as a synchronous class versus a different approach where you are kind of having to go on Zoom as a Plan B. Can you tell me more about that?

Shelley Reuter: Sure, so yeah, last term I had to teach on Zoom one day in November and right now I've been teaching on Zoom the last week and half because I'm sick. And what I realized doing these sort of one-off classes on Zoom is that I haven't particularly enjoyed it, and certainly not in the way that I described enjoying it in our [first] interview. And I thought about it and realized that I haven't been enjoying it because it hasn't been the plan from the start. I've been in emergency mode, teaching this way so that I don't have to cancel classes. But that's really different from going in from the beginning with a fully thought out plan and a set of strategies to use, which I did do when I was teaching on Zoom during the pandemic, with intentionality. 

And so I just wanted to make that clarification. That teaching on Zoom needs to be handled with as much forethought and planning and intention as teaching in person does. And that when it's a Plan B kind of situation, a temporary situation, it's really not the same thing. And you know all of the reasons to use Zoom, you know all the pedagogical reasons [for which] Zoom can be a positive approach or option rather. They don't really play out when it's kind of a one-off class on Zoom because you're sick or whatever?

John Bentley: Can you tell me what it was about and the kind of Plan B use of Zoom that was not as pleasant? Why was that? Why do you think that happened?

Shelley Reuter: Well, it was awkward and it happened too early in the course, like we're only February 6th and I've been doing this. I've now just taught my second theory seminar in a row on Zoom, and I've already had to teach two of my other honour seminars on Zoom and, the Honours seminar. It was okay because I've had [my students] all year so I already have a relationship with them, but it was too soon for my theory course. I've only met them in person twice, and then already we had to go on Zoom, so it was just kind of awkward and the class is really small. It's not as small as the ones we talked about, but I only have seven or eight students in my theory class so, uh, it wasn't as challenging is it might have been if there would have been fewer. But you know seven or eight is not critical mass. Well, it's borderline critical mass. It's okay.
But anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it was just [that] I didn't have my rapport with them yet, and establishing a rapport on Zoom is not the same as establishing a rapport in the classroom. And so I was kind of in between. I was in nowhere land, yeah, so I'm looking forward to getting back in the classroom. I would prefer to continue in the classroom with them because that was what I had planned. If I had started with them [on Zoom] from the beginning, then we would have started differently.

John Bentley: And now that you've been in the classroom, do you still feel that you're still of the mind, that teaching synchronously online in Zoom is, let's say, a full class that is still a valuable, that is a value that is something desirable that you would you would still do? Now you're back on campus, has your opinion changed like it from what we from the interview, in terms of or do you still live?

Shelley Reuter: Yes, I would it look, it's hard for me to not see it through the last couple weeks of some discomfort teaching on Zoom. But you know when I remind myself how much I planned and how much I prepared and all of the thinking ahead that I did to teach on Zoom and how that benefited me, you know, providing I do all that in the same way then yeah, I think that there is a value to teaching on Zoom from the beginning of a course. I think it meets a need. I think it's as I've already said, I think it's an equity issue. I think it can be very helpful to students who have other things going on and for whom it's difficult to get to campus and it can be beneficial to the professor depending on their circumstances. Certainly, as a single mother at it was beneficial to me. So, yes, I still would, but I would want to do it as, as I said, with intentionality from the beginning not because I have to pivot.

John Bentley: Thanks very much Shelley for taking the time to speak with me again. It's interesting to learn more about your experience being back in the classroom again compared to Zoom, what works and what you would change to improve the quality of the experience for your students.

Shelley Reuter: Thanks very much.