Regardless of the disruptions and chaos it introduced with it, Todd Duncan made use of the pandemic as an option to fundamentally adjust the way he teaches.
“Suddenly we had to pivot really immediately and actually considerably and fairly stressfully,” claimed Duncan, a physics professor at Pacific College. “It was complicated, and it felt to me as if by becoming compelled to make modifications, it also gave us authorization to make modifications that normally would have just been also big.”
Similar to other universities, the start out of the pandemic propelled students and instructors at Pacific into remote mastering. For professors like Duncan: “It was an opportunity to shake matters up.”

Todd Duncan, a physics professor at Pacific, employed the pandemic as a chance to adjust the way he teaches his classes. He says students have develop into extra engaged as a final result.
Courtesy of Todd Duncan
The increased reliance on engineering brought problems and rewards with it. Professors and directors worried about students possessing a lot more possibility and temptation to cheat — but it also opened the door to query how they’d been working their courses.
“I needed some way to let them do the examinations from where ever they had been but also protect in opposition to dishonest,” he claimed. “I could not do the typical, ‘Calculate this’ … not that we really do not belief the students, but you know, there’s just that force, right? I suggest, you could simply just glimpse it up.”
Learners at Pacific acknowledge that dishonest was technically less difficult than it had ever been when the pandemic started, when most assignments were open reserve and there was significantly less supervision from professors even though taking lessons at house.
So Duncan moved absent from huge tests, one thing he experienced been considering about executing for a even though but was forced to do under the situation of the pandemic and the swap to distant finding out.
Now, he prompts pupils to obtain a difficulty or question they’ve arrive throughout in the earth, and figure out how to fix it utilizing physics.
College students established physics complications primarily based on the athletics they participate in, these as measuring the motion powering spiking a volleyball. They’ve also penned up hypotheticals about their animals, these types of as calculating the vitality of a pet dog trotting on a treadmill to electrical power house appliances.
“I attempted to get them to consider something that they care about exterior of physics and then understand that, ‘Oh, physics applies to that,’” he mentioned.
Duncan said he commenced to see his students starting to be much more engaged, even the kinds taking his introductory physics lessons as conditions for their majors.
“If what I really want is for learners to know how to utilize the physics to their daily lifestyle, somewhat than possessing all these difficult assignments that do unique things, let us just implement the physics to their daily lifetime,” he explained.
Duncan said considering the fact that he’s finished away with in-class tests and targeted on jobs that are much more personalized to college students, his lessons have been more partaking. And when learners are far more energized about what they are learning, he claims there’s considerably less fascination in cheating in the to start with put. Pupils concur.
New technology spurs issues all over dishonest
Lane Johnson is a junior at Pacific and controlling editor of the university’s scholar newspaper — the Pacific Index. He a short while ago wrote a piece about ChatGPT — the synthetic intelligence method that some be concerned could motivate pupils to plagiarize.
Applications like ChatGPT never have the features to believe critically.
In Johnson’s eyes, that technologies is only problematic if professors aren’t giving college students assignments that have to have these important considering abilities. Johnson claimed professors should not be supplying these assignments in any case.
“If it’s not necessitating you to synthesize details in any way, you are not really expected to critically join what you’ve learned … if it is not executing that, there’s no stage to it at all,” Johnson claimed. “So, then, yeah. Of study course they’re heading to cheat, simply because why would they want to devote two hours when they could invest fifty percent an hour?”
Johnson said for now, he’s heard much more about ChatGPT and other AI systems from faculty administrators than he has from students.
Al Weiss, founding director of Pacific’s Middle for Education Technological know-how and Curricular Innovation, verified to OPB individuals discussions are starting off to float all-around.
Together with supporting some of Pacific’s technologies, like Zoom and its finding out administration procedure Moodle, Weiss’ middle also hosts college workshops and other learning alternatives about new systems and approaches in instructing and discovering. Physics professor Duncan recently gave a presentation as a result of the center to other college on his go absent from in-course tests.
Weiss stated the brief pivot toward know-how in 2020 did enable some professors, like Duncan, rethink their classrooms.
But, new technologies like ChatGPT are necessitating professors to proceed changing. Weiss stated just one of the options he’s heard educators talk about is bringing again in-course, timed essays, alternatively of allowing learners do crafting assignments at house, in buy to quell any prospective cheating.
“We have observed a couple of professors say like, ‘OK, I really don’t want you utilizing ChatGPT or other methods, so we’re heading to ask you to generate this essay appropriate in this article. Allow me see what you do,’” he reported. “It might be one particular of the implications of the AI transform that is coming.”
Some college students hope which is not the scenario.

Lane Johnson (remaining) and Emily Rutkowski (ideal) are college student journalists at Pacific University. They hope professors will keep overall flexibility and grace when it comes to how pupils study, as an alternative of just likely back to how things were pre-pandemic.
Meerah Powell / OPB
Emily Rutkowski is effective with Johnson at the Pacific Index as the paper’s editor-in-chief. She’s a senior at Pacific.
Rutkowski mentioned she was made use of to having timed, pen-and-paper tests and essays prior to the pandemic. Now, not so significantly.
“I experienced a professor when I was a freshman and I took a lot of pencil and paper exams, and I didn’t have a challenge until eventually last semester, when I was supplied the correct exact same examination, paper and pencil, and I did not even complete on time. I experienced a few much more thoughts and the class was completed,” she said. “I think it is due to the fact with COVID you experienced so substantially much more time to get your views alongside one another, and now that I noticed a clock sitting down in front of me, I just felt quickly rushed and just making an attempt to publish down whatever I thought made sense. The excellent was bad.”
Rutkowski’s practical experience is a reminder that the very last a few many years beneath the pandemic’s influence hasn’t just launched technological know-how and altered how professors and institutions function. Students’ behaviors and preferences have shifted, far too. Rutkowski and Johnson advise additional versatility and grace when it will come to how learners understand, in its place of just going back again to how things have been in advance of the pandemic.
Flipping the classroom on its head
Weiss, with Pacific’s Heart for Instruction Know-how and Curricular Innovation, said the start off of the pandemic “was a enormous, forced, experienced growth chance.”
Graduate psychology professor Jennifer Antick claimed the change to remote studying at the begin of the pandemic was tough — for equally her and her students.
“It’s a rather depressing practical experience to sit in Zoom and listen to a lecture,” Antick reported.
At the time, Antick had just hit two decades of teaching, most of that in a really standard way — what she phone calls getting a “sage on the stage”: lecturing in entrance of her class, sending students residence with assignments and measuring their success generally with examinations.
Antick’s classroom does not appear like that anymore.
On a Wednesday afternoon at Pacific’s Hillsboro campus in just one of Antick’s wellness psychology classes, the classroom is abuzz with dialogue. Learners are bouncing strategies off of every single other and employing course time for discussion and critical wondering exercises. Antick walks involving the tables to chat with students as they get the job done.

Jennifer Antick (standing) chats with graduate learners in 1 of her psychology courses using a “flipped classroom” model on Wednesday, March 1, 2023, in Hillsboro, Ore.
Meerah Powell / OPB
Antick explained she does not lecture from the front of the class anymore. Instead, she documents her lectures and college students watch them at residence, on their own time. They use their class time alongside one another for extra active exercises.
That model of training is known as a “flipped classroom,” anything she originally realized about by a presentation from the Centre for Instructional Technology and Curricular Innovation.
Another transform Antick claimed she’s functioning on is transferring towards non-graded quizzes.
“I received rid of some of the pretty common strategies for evaluating vital thinking so that I could err on the side of analyzing critical pondering dwell in the instant,” she said.
Antick claimed there ended up periods during the initially component of the pandemic where by she felt like she might want to toss in the towel, but this new strategy has “reinvigorated” her training and students love it additional, too.
“It was like, ‘Do I continue to have one thing of price to present below?’” She mentioned, “If I’m facilitating their learning — not, crack open the head, pour the facts in and shake — if I’m facilitating their procedure, then it’s really worth continuing a little bit for a longer time.”
She explained she’s moved on from currently being a “sage on the stage” to currently being a “guide on the facet,” and she does not have any plans to go back again.
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