Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22
By Mimi Huckins ’21
Features Editor
Across departments, professors have expressed that they have been feeling stress, anxiety and confusion, but also immense sympathy, for their students this module. Cramming what should have been a semester’s worth of information and growth into seven weeks is a challenge on both sides of the teaching and learning experience.
Over the summer, Mount Holyoke College professors took in-depth training and participated in workshops in order to create their courses for the new module system. Three Mount Holyoke professors in the mathematics, English and politics departments spoke with Mount Holyoke News to shed light on their experiences and perspectives during the beginning of this new version of Mount Holyoke classes.
Professor Alanna Hoyer-Leitzel, Mathematics
Mount Holyoke professors received the news that the College would be fully remote in the fall semester at the same time students did this summer. This left only a short period of time for professors who planned on teaching hybrid classes to transition to a fully remote method instead. Luckily, Professor Hoyer-Leitzel, who is teaching Multivariable Calculus in Module 1, had been planning on keeping her class fully remote all along.
“I had already been planning on teaching my class entirely online, just knowing how many students I had in my classes who weren't going to be on campus,” she said. Despite having planned for this, Hoyer-Leitzel commented that she was “definitely surprised” when the College announced its new plan for the fall semester.
“We knew how many of our students weren't going to be on campus, and how do you do a class that follows best teaching practices, which include things like group work, when half of your students aren't even there?” she asked.
For her Multivariable Calculus course this Module, Hoyer-Leitzel meets with her class every day, Monday through Friday. Still, students aren’t able to maintain the same learning experience as before. “When people are learning math, sometimes the ideas have been filling in your head for a little bit before your brain gets comfortable with it,” she said. “And there's no time to do that, because we're there the next day and we're covering new material.”
Not only is the new schedule tiring for her students, but Hoyer-Leitzel feels the effects as well. She reflected back on a different time, pre-pandemic, when she could spend days off making lesson plans and finishing grading. Now, it’s a constant sprint to the finish line.
With accelerated classes, it is still not possible for many professors to assign the same amount of work as in a normal semester. Hoyer-Leitzel played with the idea of having two homework assignments a week instead of one, but ultimately decided that grading double the work would be unachievable. She has attempted to remedy this problem by additionally assigning daily homework problems.
“The class is still rigorous,” Hoyer-Leitzel said. “I'm going to try to cover all of the things. I hope we'll get through it.” She believes that, despite everything, it is important to be kind and understanding regarding personal limitations and those of students.
“Everybody's approaching this differently. All of my students have their own lives and personal circumstances,” she said. “I'm gonna be really nice to my students, and I hope they'll be really nice to me, because I know at some point, I'm going to mess something up.”
Professor Chris Benfey, English
Professor of English Chris Benfey described the summer as “a time of constant adjustments.” In addition to campus-wide discussions about how to handle the pandemic, there have also been departmental debates about how the courses will be taught. The English department had its own regular meeting to share ideas for teaching a remote class. “It was interesting how quickly all of us sort of came up with a somewhat similar shape for the week,” Benfey said.
This Module, Benfey is teaching American Literature I. He has tried to space out Zoom sessions and supplement them with other activities for the other days. On Fridays, Benfey tries to introduce something different to keep his students engaged. “[For] the Friday class I try to do something different,” he said. “I try to break the sort of traditional rhythm of an English class.” He has planned Fridays to include activities such as virtual field trips to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum or reading modern poetry to contrast the 17th century poetry that is usually read in his class. Even with the accelerated lesson plan, it is impossible to fit the same amount of reading that would occur in a normal semester into a module. Still, Benfey has worked to maintain the same complexity of readings while diminishing the length.
“I've taught at Mount Holyoke for more than 30 years,” Benfey said. “I've never seen anxiety among the faculty at the level that I've seen it now.” Although he has witnessed firsthand the intense anxiety of the faculty, he acknowledges the stress students are enduring as well. “All of us are experiencing various levels of stress and trauma in our own lives and in our own communities,” he said.
“We're in it together,” he added. “We're in it together with the damn Wi-Fi connections, we're in it together with the damn Zooms, and we're just — you know — we're trying to figure it out.”
Still, he maintains an optimistic view. “Zoom and Moodle and these other technologies — they're kind of miraculous,” he said.”
“It's incredibly exciting to have a student in Vietnam, a student in Portland, Oregon, a student in Chicago. I mean not only are these places really far apart,” Professor Benfey reflected, “but also they're different.” At a time when there is a worldwide pandemic, an upcoming presidential election and historic protests, he feels that having students attend class from all over the world is “almost like getting reports from the warzone.”
“If you told me 30 years ago, ‘You're going to be teaching by seeing your students on a computer screen and they'll be able to talk to you from wherever they are,’ I [would have] thought, whoa, it sounds like, you know, we're all gonna have spaceships and stuff. But here we are.”
Professor Adam Hilton, Politics
Professor of politics Adam Hilton is teaching a first-year seminar titled “The Politics of Disruption” this module. Hilton said he has encountered struggles in trying to fit a first-year seminar into seven and a half weeks,
“There's a novel that I like to use in this particular class, and I can't really teach the class without it. I can't assign a part of it, right. You’ve got to read the whole thing because it's one complete story,” Hilton said. “Last fall, we read it over two weeks. And now I gave the students four days to read it. That was tough.”
With first-year students, a very specific challenge arises. Students who have not experienced college have no “normal” semester to compare this to, and that can create uneasiness when it comes to the workload and the fast-paced environment of a module system. “I had to preface [the book] with, ‘Look, this is out of the ordinary. Don't worry. If it was hard to get through this much reading, don't worry, you're not an imposter. You're supposed to be in college,’” Hilton said.
That being said, the experience of reaching students from across the globe has also been exciting for him. “I love that they're from all over the world,” Hilton said. “I've got students in East Africa, students in Vietnam and China and the West Coast of the United States. It’s amazing to think about the classroom spanning the world. It's remarkable.”
Normally, Hilton likes to use the first-year seminar as a chance to introduce the new students to campus. Instead of forgoing that goal completely, he has begun to experiment with alternative methods. He is currently planning a virtual tour of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in an effort to familiarize students with campus.
Despite the challenges of this semester, Hilton said he is enjoying the experience of teaching first-year students during this time because they seem to have a brighter attitude than the other disappointed and MoHome-sick class years.
“This is an occasion that we kind of have to rise to,” Hilton said. “And frankly, I'm very pleased with how people are rising.”