“People resist new ideas until external shocks force them to change.”1
The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly presented a shock to higher education. It shocked students, who in the spring of 2020 were suddenly sent home to take class remotely. For many students, that was not an easy transition,2 due to fears of illness or death, isolation, financial concerns, difficult working-from-home situations, among other challenges.3 And of course the pandemic impacted professors as well.
My family largely escaped illness and other serious problems. For me, the biggest shock was moving from in-person teaching to online teaching. Notre Dame announced on March 11, 2020, that students, then on spring break, should not return to campus and would finish the semester online.4 Online classes would commence March 23, to give professors time to adjust to online teaching. Thus began Emergency Remote Teaching.5
Cengage Learning, Inc. kindly gave all students free online access to the textbook. In the space of ten days, fearing I would become ill myself, I recorded six weeks of Business Law lectures on Zoom, to be accessed by students asynchronously. The university recommended asynchronous delivery to accommodate students now spread across the globe, operating in different time zones. The back-and-forth of Socratic method became me, pausing, and then answering my own questions. I jettisoned an in-class group exercise on sales contracts, not knowing how to conduct it remotely under the circumstances. Toward fostering some student interaction, I created a chat room on Sakai and invited questions and discussion, but not a single student posted there. I held virtual office hours and live review sessions via Zoom. Students continued to submit homework on Sakai, as they had done previously. Exams were administered on Sakai. Because students would not be taking the exam simultaneously, as a security measure, questions were randomized and the exam was linear,6 which many students found frustrating.
All in all, the disrupted spring 2020 semester went well. Students were kind in course evaluations. They mentioned particularly my frequent emails, setting clear expectations, offering help, inviting questions, and expressing concern for their well-being. I was surprised to hear how much students appreciated campus photos I sent with some emails. My most popular attachment was a video of a herd of deer grazing on the main quad next to our Main Building. “They made me feel less homesick,” said one student, and others conveyed similar sentiments.
The ensuing 2020–2021 academic year was in many ways more difficult than the disrupted spring 2020 semester. Notre Dame students returned to campus. Most students attended class in-person, distanced and masked, but those in quarantine or isolation or with health problems or who could not obtain a visa to travel to campus attended via Zoom.7 We called it “dual mode.”8 Inevitably, several students in each section att
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