EPIC Newsletter:
June 2020
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It has been a year like no other. As I write, I am struck by the how much things have changed since early in the winter quarter when we were busy planning our roster of soon-to-be cancelled workshops and events to finish out the year. As faculty and TAs transition to remote teaching and the University responds to the educational, health, and fiscal realities brought on by the Covid-19 crisis, we all have had to work at break-neck speeds to adapt to the sudden changes of this new educational landscape.
Yet, there are things that have not changed. The events of the past three weeks have shown us once again how much work we have yet to do as individuals and as a collective towards racial equality. Like me, many of you have undoubtedly seen the violence against Black people play out online and on our television screens and have watched—perhaps even participated—in the protests that are still going strong in every single state in our country and in cities across the world. We are in solidarity with those fighting for justice and remain committed to inclusivity and equity in and out of the classroom.
This edition of our newsletter is focused, in part, on mental health care during these challenging times. The Resources Round-up below also includes resources for further learning, engagement, and self-care. We hope you find this content useful in your work and beyond.
As we have done in the past, the publication of the newsletter will be paused for the summer and will resume on our regular schedule come the fall 2020 quarter. In the meantime, should you have ideas for faculty or TA features and other teaching innovation spotlights, please feel free to reach out.
Finally, I want express the biggest thank you to our GSR of two years, Alejandra Campoy, doctoral student from the Comparative Literature Department. Alejandra has been such a vital part of our team and we are grateful for her incredible work ethic and taking ownership and great care of the work that we do in service of students. We wish her the very best in all her future endeavors and look forward to seeing the great things we are sure she will accomplish.
Thank you for joining us this month and we’ll see you again in September.
Lisa Felipe
EPIC Program Director
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While the actions of the UCLA community have been exemplary during these unsettled times, students, staff and faculty may all understandably struggle to cope with the drastic changes. It is important for people to take care of their physical and emotional health during periods of stress; self care can play an important role. Fortunately, UCLA has provided resources to support the community at this time. From food and emergency funds, to mindfulness and movement, to ideas on how to stay connected on Zoom and be inspired by UCLA speakers, please check out the links below.
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TA Perspectives on Remote Teaching
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EPIC reached out to our network of graduate students to conduct an informal survey on TA experiences teaching remotely. Here is a selection of the responses we received, shared with permission from each TA.
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According to your observations, how has the shift to remote learning and teaching impacted student engagement (i.e. attendance, participation, class discussion, online forums, office hours, submitting assignments, etc.)?
"1) Class attendance was impacted a bit, I think mostly due to students feeling overwhelmed. I've had some students joining Zoom but staying muted / with their screen off (I have encouraged this in some cases - several students wrote to me that they are struggling and they are having a hard time concentrating or keeping up, so I gave them the option to drop in the class and listen with one ear without participating, if they feel like that's all they can do for the day).
2) I have also noticed that office hours attendance has gone down - students used to attend it a lot, now I guess it feels like an extra Zoom-format burden.
3) Students engage in class, they are punctual, and I haven't noticed any particular worsening of their participation (except for technical issues like the fact that it's generally harder to speak or give collective / choral answers).
4) Students have had a much harder time keeping homework deadlines (I may have encouraged that in that I told them I will accept late assignments any time this quarter, but I think even if I hadn't said that, students would have kept submitting homework late - language classes have a very fast-paced schedule with homework due every single day)."
-Anna B., German Department
"Well, I am giving my material resources for free to UCLA: wifi and laptop, when UCLA should be paying for those. Less people are attending class and almost nobody turns their camera on. People become friends in my classes, there is a lot of chatting and bonding, which is so necessary for a second language, and all of that is gone."
-Anonymous
"I'm fortunate to be teaching a cluster capstone seminar this quarter, to it's a small group and a fun class that the students actually want to take. So my attendance and participation have been pretty good. But students that I know from earlier quarters (another advantage of this teaching assignment this year) are submitting less-thoughtful work and struggling with deadlines. I think the stress of everything and lack of structure that (appears) to accompany online classes is hard for them. I've definitely had way less office hour engagement than I'm used to."
-Bethany Schiffman, French and Francophone Studies, teaching for UEI Cluster program this year
"Students are more prone to distractions, especially during lecture-type Zoom meetings, where the instructor has slides going. I imagine some might have multiple tabs or windows open, some may be scrolling their social media on their phones, and others might only be marginally tuned in to the audio portion. However, in my own discussions, I ensure maximum participation and engagement in multiple modes (for example, if not everyone shared oral responses in our live discussions, I would still offer them the chance to respond via the online forum so that they could demonstrate understanding & engagement with course material). My students and I had a unique challenge, in that I was physically located in Los Angeles while they are in Nanjing - therefore, I found that this was the best way to negotiate the 15-hour time difference and 6,500+ miles of geographical distance between us."
-Jeannie Chen, UCLA Global Classroom Program (International Institute)
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Please share an example of a modification you have had to make to an assignment for remote teaching.
"I teach German, and we have several in-class language exercises. I have reduced the number of class activities that require students to work in silence on their own and exercises that require students to compose longer sentences in class. Instead I do more collective practice time and I use more structured exercises, like fill the gap / change the conjugation of a certain verb / put together sentence elements, so I can have students do each sentence one by one as I call on each of them and the rest of the class listens. I've gotten good feedback for this. Letting students work on their own in longer / unstructured exercises has proven hard because I can't walk around, check on them, and they can't informally talk to classmates or to me as easily."
-Anna B., German Department
"I teach Spanish as a second language and I use a lot of games and movement in the class. All of that is gone. We usually do a lot of very quick, short activities, but with how time consuming is dividing students into groups and then I cannot check what they're all doing..."
-Anonymous
"I've had to totally rethink group discussions (which are key to my cluster capstone seminar this quarter). I've mostly had them discuss in breakout rooms and assign a group member to take synchronous notes in a class-wide shared Google doc while discussing, rather then having students talk in small group then taking notes on a white board or something."
-Bethany Schiffman, French and Francophone Studies, teaching for UEI Cluster program this year
"I would take discussion questions and modify them for online forums. I used Zoom breakout rooms during live synchronous teaching sessions to emulate the small discussion groups I used to coordinate in the classroom. I would jump from one breakout room to another just as I would circling the physical classroom from group-to-group."
-Jeannie Chen, UCLA Global Classroom Program (International Institute)
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Are there any strategies for remote teaching that work particularly well for you and your class, and which you would recommend to other TAs? Feel free to illustrate with an example from your current class.
"1) I found that using a main Google Doc for everything has worked very well for me. I put all of my materials, pictures, exercises, tables, screenshots, etc, on this Google Doc shared with the class. I show it in share screen mode during class and I use it as a combination of the blackboard + class handouts + book exercises. It contains all the exercises we do together, any notes or comments or extras I end up talking about in class. That way students can access the materials, exercises, and comments of any day of the quarter in the same document (I date every day as if it was a new page but it's the same doc).
2) As it's a language class, chatting in the language is useful for us, but it's harder to do that on Zoom compared to normal class format. I've found that using the first 10/15 mins of the Zoom call to greet each student individually and ask them each a simple question like "what did you do yesterday" / "have you had breakfast" / "did you watch some nice TV show" in German puts them in a nice mood and gets them to practice. I got good feedback for that."
-Anna B., German Department
"The discussion method I discussed above (posting questions in a shared, class-wide Google Doc and sending students to breakout rooms to discuss and they pick amongst themselves a note-take to take notes as they discuss in the Google Doc and a presenter to share their ideas with the group when we come back) is working well for seminar discussions. I also use the Google Doc to encourage asynchronous discussion as well. Mandating one-on-one zoom sessions with everyone at least once this quarter to discuss the final project is also helpful. My students also set up two GroupMe accounts: one with only students and the other with me. The students-only group has (apparently) helped create a class rapport and allowed them to be in touch and brainstorm things like their final projects together. Then, the group with me in it has been a space for pressing-but-minor-questions or issues (I forgot to open the discussion forum for that week, or what reading is due, etc.) that apply to the whole group, or to share links relevant to our discussions, etc. Beyond this, students have use private messages on GroupMe as a way to ask me questions that they felt were too small or difficult for email; almost like a virtual office hour that has worked really well. GroupMe has definitely helped us stay in contact and develop a class rapport."
-Bethany Schiffman, French and Francophone Studies, teaching for UEI Cluster program this year
"I recommend looking at what digitally born learning objects, assignments, handouts, and prepared material you have and consider converting them to similar classes that have been moved online. The better you know your material, the easier it is to transition them to an online teaching environment. Keep as detailed records as you can. I was at an advantage because I had taught most of the students in Fall 2019 (when I worked in Nanjing with the UCLA Global Classroom Program) and now teach them completely online in Spring 2020 (after I became stranded in Los Angeles over winter vacation). I had an existing rapport with the students whereas this is very difficult to build from scratch if they are a completely new or foreign class to you as a TA."
-Jeannie Chen, UCLA Global Classroom Program (International Institute)
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If you have any additional comments or concerns about your experiences teaching remotely that you would like to share, please let us know here.
"I would like to know how exactly to go about being more lenient with grades but in a way that is fair and shared among all language TAs (or all TAs of the same language). I understand the situation of our students calls for a special type of care this quarter, and yet I can't just change their grades.
We've all received recommendations to use our best judgement, and I take that to mean, for example, don't be too strict in assignments where the grade depends on my decision, and be lenient with deadlines (which I think are great ideas). But when it comes to things like CCLE quizzes / exams, which make up a big portion of the grade, I can't mark an answer as correct when it's obviously wrong - it's a very clear cut situation, and yet I see that it's more complicated than that. The average of grades is lower compared to last quarter and I can see that some students just didn't have the time, headspace, or focus to study. I have students in bad household situations, a student who has to share a laptop with their sister, one who has to work with their father every other day, one who has to take care of a child without childcare, one who works as an essential worker despite the danger of the situation, and several who just generally suffer from the psychological pressure of this quarter. So I don't know how exactly to be fair about this situation."
-Anna B., German Department
"When I was preparing for this quarter over Spring Break, I obsessively consumed Twitter threads, articles, and resources (both UCLA and non) in order to brainstorm what I could do. One of these resources ended by encouraging educators to think not only about what is lost or needs to change in moving online, but also about what new opportunities it presents and what it offers. I have tried to stay in this mindset this quarter, embracing tools like Zoom's poll feature, our Google Docs conversations, Zoom recordings (by me and by students), GroupMe and more in order to create an ongoing, multimodal discussion that moves beyond the classroom (which fits nicely with my class's emphasis on the importance of medium and how that effects narrative and human interaction). I think that has really worked; our conversations don't end when we log off on Tuesday afternoon and overall my students are excited and engaged and bonded with each other in a way I have rarely seen. I miss seeing them in person, and hearing them laugh at my jokes rather than seeing a silent smile on a screen. But at the same time, this shift has presented unique opportunities to engage in ways we never have before; to enter each other's homes and vulnerable spaces and share our humanity as well as our intellect or our curiosity. It turns out these three things together create a potent learning environment. And that is an opportunity that I was not looking for but for which I am grateful."
-Bethany Schiffman, French and Francophone Studies, teaching for UEI Cluster program this year
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Featured Video:
Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Gyanam Mahajan on Remote Language Instruction
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The transition to remote learning has created a unique set of challenges for language instructors. How can students participate in communicative activities? How do I teach scripts? What special tools are available to language instructors? For the answers to these questions and more, please check out the video recording of our AMA session with Dr. Gyanam Mahajan of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Also, stay tuned for more relevant resources forthcoming on our Remote Language Instruction webpage.
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Ask Me Anything: Remote Language Instruction with Dr. Gyanam Mahajan
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On Teaching and Learning: Resources Round Up
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There are a TON of resources, scholarship, and advice for instructors out there. Here’s just some of what we have been reading and exploring this month.
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Anti-Racist Pedagogy
UCLA EDI Office’s Resources for Racial Trauma
USC Library’s Anti-Racist Pedagogy Guide
Black Minds Matter: Previously recorded public course with the goal of raising awareness on issues facing Black boys and men in educational institutions led by Dr. Jonathan Woods (San Diego University). Description of the course and syllabus can be found here. Video recordings of each session can be found here.
Black Lives Matter Syllabus offers teaching guides and resources developed by Frank Roberts (NYU)
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Self Care
“Reclaiming Our Time”: Women of Color Faculty and Radical Self-Care in the Academy (Donna J. Nicol and Jennifer A. Yee)
Radical Self Care: 25 Tips for Black People
UCLA CAPS COVID-19 Resources
Black Self/Community Care Resource List. This collaborative resource was created by UCLA Anthropology graduate student Akua Agyen.
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