FALL
SPEED
AHEAD
Introducing new courses, embracing technology, and challenging traditional approaches to classroom pedagogy, Oxy faculty reimagine the remote learning experience BY DICK ANDERSON | ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIAN FORROW Photo by Sabrina Stierwalt
We all have those recurring dreams about college—the ones where you didn’t show up for class all semester, or didn’t study for the test that your grade depends on. Or that it’s the start of the fall semester in the middle of a pandemic and you’re logging into your classroom—wait, come to think of it, you’re wide awake. This is no dream. “We just had our first day of classes,” reports Sabrina Stierwalt, assistant professor of physics, “and I was nervous about little things—will the webcam work this time? Will I accidentally click ‘End Meeting for All’ in our Zoom classroom—my new recurring nightmare? “But as soon as we got into the rhythm of class, I could tell these Oxy students had shown up ready to take all of this on together,” she continues. “Everything has been turned upside down for them—for all of us— but they all showed up ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. I’m so impressed by their resilience.” Resilience has been a byword of the fall semester—likewise, adaptability and creativity. Well before the College announced July 10 that all instruction would be remote for the fall semester—and that, with limited exceptions, Oxy would not be bringing students
Students in Sabrina Stierwalt’s Astronomy course (Physics 162) were mailed Google cardboard virtual reality headsets prior to the semester. Stierwalt worked with Oxy’s Center for Digital Liberal Arts to develop new VR-oriented lessons.
back to campus—faculty and administrators were making plans for a remote learning curriculum. Stierwalt, along with many of her peers, took advantage of the workshops offered by Oxy’s Center for Teaching Excellence throughout the summer. “We did a lot of brainstorming and planning not just how we can use technology to re-create the parts of in-person class we want to keep,” she says, “but also how to inspire creativity in this remote environment.” Before coming to Oxy last fall, Stierwalt worked on producing virtual reality content for NASA. Last year, her classes borrowed VR headsets from the library and went on
physical field trips to “the fantastic piece of Los Angeles history that is Griffith Observatory.” With neither of those options available this fall, she worked with Oxy’s Center for Digital Liberal Arts (CDLA) to develop new lessons that incorporated VR experiences. Then she mailed each student in her Astronomy course (a physics class for non-physics majors) their own Google cardboard virtual reality headset prior to the start of the semester. Once they download an app and pop their smartphone inside, she says, “The universe is theirs to explore.” The sudden switch to remote learning last March created a mad dash for faculty to quickly pivot their coursework to the virtual space. To be asynchronous (prerecorded, that is) or synchronous (live and interactive)? That was the question for many. In Stierwalt’s case, remote learning “has made me think more about how we spend our precious class time together. I’ve moved most of my lecturing to prerecorded videos that students can watch before they come to class. This frees up class time for discussions and small-group work where we can go into the material more in depth. This way I’m even taking advantage of the remote aspect rather than trying to push through in spite of it.” SUMMER/FALL 2020 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE
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