One way we can better understand the pedagogical differences between remote, online, and face-to-face courses is by hearing from peers who have done all three. Dr. Mary Hudachek-Buswell teaches undergraduate courses in the College of Computing, and in the Spring was the only faculty member teaching teaching the College's Data Structures and Algorithm course, one that typically enrolls 700+ students in both face-to-face and online versions. Mary talks to Rebecca and Carol about how she developed the online version of her course and how that preparation translated to fully remote teaching in the Spring.
One way we can better understand the pedagogical differences between remote, online, and face-to-face courses is by hearing from peers who have done all three. Dr. Mary Hudachek-Buswell teaches undergraduate courses in the College of Computing, and in the Spring was the only faculty member teaching teaching the College's Data Structures and Algorithm course, one that typically enrolls 700+ students in both face-to-face and online versions. Mary talks to Rebecca and Carol about how she developed the online version of her course and how that preparation translated to fully remote teaching in the Spring.
Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): Welcome to this episode of the Teaching and Learning Buzz, a monthly podcast for the center for teaching and learning at Georgia tech. Where are your hosts, Rebecca and Carol. Just a reminder that a transcript and show notes will be available after this episode at ctl.gatech.edu/teaching-and-learning-buzz-podcast. Today, we're joined by Dr. Mary Hudacheck-Buswell, a lecturer in the Division of Computing Instruction in the College of Computing. Mary is a winner of the 2020 Undergraduate Educator Award and the 2019 Educational Partnership Award. Thank you for joining us Mary.
Mary Hudacheck-Buswell (MHB): Thank you. I am pleased to join you all.
Carol Subino Sullivan (CSS): Well, Mary I've had the privilege of getting a chance to know you a little bit over the past couple of years, and every time we talk, I just am so inspired by your passion for teaching and your willingness to share your experiences and really turn that into super-practical teaching ideas. I always am learning something new from you. And actually recently, we were both in one of the Georgia Tech Remote Teaching Academy sessions, and I heard you sharing some of these ideas for the faculty there, and I just thought we need to invite Mary to come on the podcast so that more people get a chance to learn from you. Thanks again. I totally echo Rebecca's welcome. So to get started, I'm wondering if you could tell us about the classes that you teach at Georgia Tech and as part of that, tell us what it was like to transition to remote teaching this spring.
MHB: Thank you, Carol. I teach basically undergraduate courses, 1-, 2-, and 3000 level courses, a variety of courses. This past semester in the spring, I've taught Data Structures and Algorithms. I was the only faculty member of that course. I taught both an in-person campus version as well as an online version of the same course. We generally have around 700 students registered in all sections, all types of that course. The transition from the in-person campus to a distance-learning course was somewhat facilitated by the fact that I already had an online version of the course and I had already had prerecorded videos by GTPE (Georgia Tech Professional Education) that I could provide to the campus version of the course.
RPR: So Mary, you have taught one of these courses online for a while now, right? A year or so. So can you tell us a little bit about the differences between getting that particular course ready for going online versus kind of the remote teaching, emergency teaching that we've done in the spring? So what was the difference in kind of prep there?
MHB: So in preparing for the online course where I was given time to create these videos, it took me about, uh, I would say any, any faculty member, it will take you anywhere from nine to 18 months, 18 months being preferable, uh, nine months, uh, being very stressful, intense preparation to do this, but we approached the preparation for the online course differently in that I didn't just use slides that I had already prepared in for my lectures for a regular in-person course. We looked at how we did things, my course, uh, Data Structures and Algorithms is uniquely, uh, designed for diagramming so that students understand the interactive nature of a computing system, how things move within it, how the data changes. And I do a lot of diagramming so that they understand the movement of data. Typing code doesn't let them see or fully understand what's happening to it in the computer.
So what we did was we looked at what I did in lecture, and we approached it differently and we developed a brand new slides. We did not use what we had already prepared that we could display for the students or have for the students for the in-person lecture because I do a lot of diagramming. We created, we recreated all of the diagrams. We made all of the diagrams interactive, livable, so that as I spoke, we could remove and we, we could move through the data on the slides and show what was happening. And that took a great deal of time. I had two wonderful TAs who were very invested and committed to the project who worked with me and we developed this, uh, the entire course. Big picture, we have 117 videos that go anywhere from one minute to nine minutes, nine minutes being the longest in that we were going through graph algorithms and a single example takes a great deal of time to walk through. And I was adamant that we not break it up into shorter pieces.
CSS: Thanks, Mary. Yeah. You know, designing a course that was truly meant to be online from the beginning just takes that, that type of work. Um, it's not a simple conversion putting the sides up as you're explaining, it's really a re-imagining of what that experience is going to be like for students. And I wonder if you can tell us, in addition to, uh, the way that you imagined the slides, how did you use canvas to re-imagine the way that the course organization, uh, was, was presented to students?
MHB: That's a very good question. So initially GTPE wanted to set up this designed for the course with, um, the Modules and they wanted a lot of control over what was going on in the Canvas, um, because they had done the course before they had done other courses before. I had found, um, with me… So I was basically learning by watching what they had put in with the Modules. I had not tried Modules up to that point. Um, I was still relying on, uh, referring the students to File section. I saw the benefit of Modules, but I also saw, uh, I've, I've even changed how I do things this summer with remote online teaching, using Modules. I see the benefit, and I see what I had to change. So currently I have found it useful to have a course information module that houses everything, where the students can see it and it's always at the very top. I also set, um, make the settings of that particular module, where the students must look at everything. So they have to look at everything. So they understand how the course operates. A lot of information is in there. Then I have content modules that fall below it, but above and hidden, modules that are above the course information and the content modules I hide until it's time to release it. My homework module where they'll find all the homework and the exam modules for the online exams, these modules stay hidden until I publish and release the information. I then hide them again, once it's complete. Um, so the exam, like exam one will be published. They'll see it, they can, uh, do the assignment. Then it is unpublished. The module is unpublished, where they cannot get access to it because all of my quizzes, my electronic Canvas quizzes, are set to where they can only see them if they have the link. And I think that's important, um, that you only make it available if they can see the link. Um, at this point in time, it works. I haven't had to change things around very much.
CSS: Yeah. I really like that practical suggestion, because like you're saying, Canvas has other ways to share information like files, but that ability of control that moving it into the modules actually gave you in terms of putting the things together that needs to be in one place, as well as controlling when students see things in the case of assessments, um, you know, just make it a much more efficient for the class.
RPR: Right. And I think it mirrors kind of the structure of a regular class in a way, right. Because you would, you would have a quiz in class and then, you know, you would take that up. So it wouldn't be there for students to look at later until you hand it back or something like that. So the modules kind of, I would think, make sense to the students as chunks or units in the content of the course. So it mirrors that structure a little bit for them.
So Mary, you were talking to us a little bit about the course policies that you have and how those are maybe different in the online course than they might have been for the face-to-face. So could you tell us a little bit about the course policies and then maybe how some of those translated to the more remote emergency teaching?
MHB: Yes, yes, absolutely, Rebecca. So we learned a lot the first time we ran the online course, we learned a lot about what we wanted them to do and not do and what we had to have them do. Um, I do use proctoring systems. I have used Proctor Track, which is a site license through GTPE and since the online course was produced by GTPE, I'm allowed to use Proctor Track. In the distance learning shift from the in-person campus course, I am going to be using, uh, the proctoring system Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor. In my policies I state in the syllabus, I have to state very clearly that the students have to have particular computer operating system types in order to take the exam. I want to be very clear when they read the policies, what will work, what will not work. I tell them about the system, and so they can be educated. Um, I also include in the syllabus all of the requirements for taking the exam, the, basically the exam instructions. And normally I wouldn't do that in the on-campus class because they would read them in the paper. They, they would have time to see that, but with the online exam, I needed them to understand there were certain things that could and could not do. Um, additionally with the proctoring systems that I'm using this year, the students don't clearly understand how they are to do room scans, that we're certain aspects that we no matter what, what we wrote, they did not get it. So what we have done is we had TAs make of short video about what they're supposed to have and what they're not supposed to have. Um, very cute comical video that I make mandatory, that all students have to view. They have to view it before they can take exam one, it's in the exam one module, so that they understand that this is how they have to do it. And if it is flagged, I dock their exam five points. So if they don't do it correctly, there's a five point penalty. If they've not prepared their room correctly, which is why I have all of the the exam instructions included in my syllabus, makes a little bit long but they can go into it with their eyes wide open. I do provide it in the exam as well. Um, one of the things that a lot of people, if you're using a proctoring system, uh, sunglasses are prohibited because, uh, the webcams have to their eyes, regular glasses are okay. I also tell them no Google glasses. I'll be able to tell if they're using and believe it or not, students do have Google glasses where they can communicate. They also cannot wear smartwatches. So when they do their knuckles scan, I can see whether or not they're wearing a smartwatch for communication. They have to have it removed. Um, the students, since these are freshmen, sophomore, and the Data Structures course, uh, they sometimes forget that this isn't just some electronic, uh, AI system, artificial intelligence system viewing the videos. I actually view that. So I have to put a statement in reminding the students that they have to be dressed accordingly and that they have to be in a private environment in order to take the exam. So I incorporate all of those things in my, in my syllabus, I tell them. With that said, I also have a homework assignment that is on Canvas, it's a quiz, that tells, um, that test the students over all the policies in my syllabus, and then they have to type their name at the end, stating that they understand that this is a contract and that they have agreed to the contract of my syllabus.
RPR: Thanks, Mary, for that.
CSS: It's super helpful to hear all the different ways that you're thought through, including the policies upfront, repeating them, how do you get compliance and hold the students accountable and remind them for everything, um, that they do. There's, there's just so many details. Um, and sometimes until you've tried it once or twice, especially using the proctoring software, which is new for our on-campus classes, um, it's helpful to know what are the policies that are important to include.
RPR: Certainly things that you wouldn't have thought about, like asking them to dress appropriately and those kinds of things.
CSS: So many faculty are worried about, uh, making their assessments as effective in the remote learning environment as they are in the face-to-face environment. I wonder if you could share a little bit more about your approach to the assessments themselves in your courses.
MHB: So I had, I had the benefit of having a student explain to me sometimes what they can and cannot do. Um, uh, an […] student, uh, what their limitations were that helped about two years ago for me to rethink how I was asking questions. Since I do a lot of diagramming and students have to understand the motion and movement within a data structures, that I had a lot of diagramming on paper, pencil exams, and students were able to easily draw for me on the paper showing me what, what they could do. Uh, as we moved to doing electronic exams, I had to think out of the box. And at first I was stumped. I was like, okay, how can I ask that question differently? And I really relied on my TAs, um, as students about how they could look at it differently. And yet I could still ask the same information and there was a lot of give and take, okay, if we ask it this way, how can it be done, so that they could just enter in the information in the confines of Canvas. I will tell you, we have fully utilized HTML coding within Canvas. We, um, we circumvent the feature where, um, I guess the rich text format where we have gone into HTML coding to have it provide the diagrams that we want. Um, it actually, since we are all computer scientists, we've actually embraced that and kind of enjoyed getting back to that, the basics in designing our exams. And we've been able to create these great diagrams, um, within the exam within a question, but also create how the students would enter that. Um, so we, we fully embraced how we could do this. There is a 16,000 plus character cap of HTML code that you can enter into a single question that canvas has enforced. And we, we reached that on multiple occasions, which made us rethink what we could do with Canvas. Um, but it's been very cool. Uh, we've been able to do some really nice diagrams and have things for the students to enter.
RPR: I love that sense of play that, um, that you and your colleagues are using, really kind of diving in to see what's possible in different ways and leveraging your own expertise to make sure that students are getting the experience that you want them to have online. I mean, since you are in competing sciences, it models for them different ways to think about structural problems and, and see that you can play and experiment with these kinds of things, maybe in ways that you didn't expect to have been able to.
So, Mary, I'm curious as you're talking about these experiences, um, how do you make the materials inclusive and assessable for students? Um, you know, we talk about accommodations and also that, you know, that students are in different situations with their technology. They may have, um, accommodations that they didn't necessarily need in a face-to-face environment. So how are you working to make those, those assessments and assignments inclusive and accessible to students?
MHB: That's a very good question, Rebecca. So we have been doing, um, an elusive Vivity, uh, I'm not pronouncing that correctly. I apologize. Uh, language features fail me sometimes, uh, computer science, no language. Yes. Um, so we started off when we were designing the online course, the first thing we did was I, I had TAs that were colorblind. So the color scheme that we used, um, sometimes they could see it. Sometimes they couldn't, we had to alter what colors we used in the physical slide. So what the color scheme was going to be so that, uh, students could see it. So in the design of the slide itself, uh, certain colors were chosen for that disability. I have, uh, several things that I have provided. So we have the, the static slides that content that I had used previously to an online course that are available to all students that they can go through and they can read, um, it provides the pseudo code. It provides examples. So we have those static slides that can refer to. The video sides, not only have the audio, um, um, but they also have the closed caption included in them. We have, uh, provided the script for that as well. That is separate from the video. So if someone is having trouble with the video, they can go to the script and they can read the script to see, um, how, how we were discussing things. If they were kind of confused about that. So we have that available. We also have the static slides of the, the videos available. Now, mind you, there's no audio, there's no script in the video, but they have the actual images that were used. So if the students wanted to print out those images, they could, what I have tried to do is my original LaTEX slides with examples, those are different than the examples that I provided in the video slides. I wanted to give them as many examples as possible. So we weren't repeat. I mean, it, it's no good if they see the same example over and over again. Um, additionally, besides that we have created, uh, the little reality check quizzes that are built into the modules. So the students can test, uh, they're learning as they move through the material. So we we've provided several things. Uh, additionally with preparing the students for exams, we have PDFs of static exams where they can practice, print 'em out, and practice paper pencil, as well as practice exams that are electronic so they can practice those. Um, whichever format is best for them.
CSS: You've just provided so many different supplementary resources and different formats for students to be able to access the material, both the same material that's recorded as well as additional, um, in order to anticipate the different sorts of needs. That's wonderful. Do you want me,
MHB: I have one more thing to that of something new we developed and released. Can I add that Carol?
CSS: Of course.
MHB: Okay. So in addition to that, we realized that what the students would see in the videos they needed to play and see the motion themselves. So two years ago, we start, I started with a different, you know, another TA group, another TA who developed an online web app for a visualization tool that builds the data structures, and they can actually visualize input data and see what happens. The students absolutely love this tool. We have put so much work into it. The TAs have worked so hard on this. It is, it's a beautiful thing for computer science students to have.
CSS: That's awesome. And I love how you are, um, incorporating the TAs and building these really important materials. You know, sometimes I think that the TAs, um, we don't talk about the role of the TAs, how, um, how much they're contributing to, uh, the, the materials and the course, um, beyond answering questions and grading papers, but actually helping you create the material itself.
RPR: Yeah. And it's such a great time to, to think about, uh, remember that your TAs are there as productive members of the teaching team, and how can they support you as well as the students in this, this new kind of, um, world that we're all teaching and learning in right now.
CSS: As we start to close the interview, Mary, I wonder if you might reflect on how having this experience of really building your online course, how has it reflected back into the face-to-face course? So we, you mentioned earlier that, you know, having all this material made it much easier to transition to remote teaching, and now is where, you know, thinking about what is our transition back to on campus teaching? How will this experience of teaching online, reflect in the teaching you do in person?
MHB: My goodness. So have to tell you, uh, I, I reached one of my career goals. I always wanted to write a textbook. And when they asked me to develop this online course and the slides, the examples, the content, everything I produced was original to me. I realized, boom, I was writing a book, not a traditional textbook. I was writing, but I was, I was writing a course, and it actually made me a better teacher because there were things that I recorded and I realized that going back into the classroom, I now, I now watch my videos before I go teach a lecture, because I want to make sure number one, I'm being consistent. I also want to make sure that I hit everything, which I, I have class notes that I go by. Um, but sometimes in the classroom, I want to do things a little bit differently. I don't want to do them just like the video. So I'm thinking to myself know, let me do a different example or a different approach and see how that goes over. So the classroom has really been wonderful, um, in, in reinforcing what I did with the videos, but also it was making me a better, uh, a better professor, a better lecturer in the classroom with my students.
RPR: That's so cool. Mary, thank you for sharing that perspective. Um, so as we wrap up, what advice would you like to leave our Buzz listeners with about maybe teaching online or thinking about the, the remote teaching and learning based on your experience in both in all three mediums really?
MHB: Hmm. Take a deep breath. It's not, if you look at the totality of what you're doing, it's awfully scary. You want to run the other way. Don't look at the totality, just look at the next step. Um, this is what I would suggest if you're doing, uh, events, if you're doing a WebEx, whatever, however you're doing it. But one step could be asking a TA to scribe your lecture, just ask them and provide those class notes of what was presented at that that's one step towards providing materials. And then the next step would be to make slides from it. You don't have to have everything at once, just take one step. And then that leads to the next step. And don't worry, don't look at the totality. I, I don't know if I would have done this, had I seen the whole picture and everything involved? Um, I'm glad I did it. I don't regret that. I did it. It was a lot of work. Um, just take one step.
CSS: Thank you so much, Mary. Um, as, as I said, when we began, you're always so generous and just sharing all of these different experiences, being really frank about the lessons you've learned along the way and the practical, um, uh, strategies that you've developed as a result. So I really appreciate you being willing to come on the podcast and share with all of us.
RPR: Absolutely. Thanks, Mary. And Mary is also going to share some of her resources and policies with us. So check out the show notes for that.
MHB: Thank you, Rebecca and Carol, for having me and I hope I was of some assistance to other colleagues.
RPR: Absolutely.
CSS: Yes, definitely.
CSS: Thank you for joining us today on the Buzz. The transcript and show notes for the episode can be found at https://www.ctl.gatech.edu/teaching-and-learning-buzz-podcast. You'll also find our other episodes on remote teaching and other topics. So be sure to bookmark the Buzz page as we add new episodes to support faculty, as we continue to teach remotely this summer and prepare for the new teaching environment in the fall.
For listening to this episode of the Teaching and Learning Buzz, the podcast of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia tech show notes, and a transcript are available at https://www.ctl.gatech.edu/teaching-and-learning-buzz-podcast. Check back regularly for new episodes, bonus clips and more resources on our topics. If you have a topic that you would like us to explore, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at ctlhelp@gatech.edu.