Midterm Reviews Reveal Challenging Times for Students, Instructors

Midterm results are generally the way that students, staff and the university review the progress of the school year so far. This year is no different, but the reviews being done are in some cases atypical compared to previous years. The common grade and progress reports are being conducted. However, recently completed and not yet fully published as a finalized report is a study by the Scenario Planning Work Group. Some items from the survey were discussed in a public announcement by the university ahead of the report’s release. 

This study is the follow-up to a late June survey and report by the Scenario Planning Work Group on planning for the fall semester related to the challenges COVID-19 places on educational institutions. As the novelty of the circumstances demand, this midterm survey will help decide how the rest of the semester and the next will be handled.

Preliminary results released on October 20, discussed at a meeting on the October 16 noted a particularly low response rate among students (10%) and a focus on online education being the biggest stressor students are facing. The same questions were posed to educators as well, and online classes and their challenges were a large focal point of their responses. Results from this survey follow the presumptions from the June survey that online classes will create greater stress to participants and the university than classes in person.

“From the instructor side, I work seven days a week,” said Joette Rockow, an educator in UWM’s Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies department, about her new workload. “Saturday morning I got up at seven o’clock, and by eight I was grading papers, answering emails, and responding to students needing help.”

In March of the 2019-2020 school year, UWM moved classes online as the scope of the pandemic was being evaluated. Come October of the 2020-2021 school year, the majority of classes are still being held online with limited hybrid and face-to-face options. According to UWM’s COVID-19 resources page, 59% of the roughly 6,000 classes are being taught online in 2020’s fall semester.

“Other than wearing a mask, it’s not much different,” Kendra Bisping, a senior, said over text.  She notes that her in-person class that meets every other week is not a significant issue to her this semester. As the study done by Scenario Planning Work Group noted in the preliminary results, workload in online classes was  the primary focus of stress in responses. Hence, the adjustments the university will attempt to make will address that specific response.

“I don’t really like the online format,” said Elizabeth Charney, a junior. “It makes me feel like each week is the same as the last.” The online format doesn’t seem to be enthusing educators either by the aforementioned summary of released results. Class participation is a metric that educators can use to evaluate their courses and student engagement. 

“It’s really hard lecturing to a bunch of circles, you can’t see student’s faces,” Rockow said. By circles, she’s talking about her video lectures where students may not be participating with a video feed of their end. Online classes don’t just require being able to participate in video calls with instructors in students. They also result in more self-guided learning. 

“Classes have been harder,” said Braxton Roubal, a senior at UWM. “Most of them don’t have time responsibilities like they used to so it holds you accountable for more,” Roubal said, talking about his struggles with procrastination and communication challenges that are affecting him this semester.

 “A lot of students I’ve had in other classes who were really motivated and doing well before we locked down, are doing pretty well now,” Rockow said, but also noted that anecdotally across the board grades and performance are down compared to previous semesters. The Scenario Planning Work Group is aware of this as well, as evidenced by the June report. 

The Scenario Planning Work Group wrote in their June report: “While UWM instructors rose most admirably to the enormous challenge of moving all Spring 2020 courses to a remote format in two weeks, teaching/learning remotely is not always equivalent to excellence in online teaching and learning. To sustain our record of exceptional quality teaching and pedagogical innovation, an all online Fall requires us to create a better, more engaging learning experience for Fall 2020 and beyond.” It is to these ends that their survey is hoping to help UWM achieve. 

Charney is one of the students that contracted COVID-19 during the semester. She notes that her mental health has this semester been at an “all time low.” That was prior to getting sick. At the end of the September while she was in Door County with her family, she found herself self-isolating due to a positive COVID test and symptoms. “I still turned in assignments, but I stopped doing the readings and going to online lectures,” Charney said. She also admitted to not disclosing her situation to any of her teachers, but looking back “I would have told them honestly about how I was dealing with everything,” Charney said. 

Rockow advises that approach as well in order to keep the quality of education higher. “Talk to your instructors if you’re having trouble keeping up,” Rockow said, as advice she wished more students were participating with.

Even without contracting COVID-19 the challenge of “excellence in online teaching and learning” can be difficult to acheive. Bisping says she’s doing better than the first three weeks, which to her were an “abrupt adjustment back into school and realizing how much extra work and time I was going to have to spend.” An abrupt change now, but according to the determination by the Social Planning Work Group study, the same educational model is being adopted in the coming semester. 

Any changes being made to the coming spring 2021 semester will be determined by the finalized results of the October study, as well as joint decisions by the UW System Chancellors and Provost retreat coming October 30. In a report released September 29, more and more hybrid classes were found to be moving to completely online classes. These findings will also be taken into account for the spring 2021 semester. In the meantime, UWM town halls are being regularly scheduled around the topic of education and COVID-19 measures, including one on October 27^th slated to specifically discuss the future of UWM’s changes regarding education.