Teaching and learning through a pandemic

Meeting the professors from afar

Dr. Heather Galloway, Dean, Honors College

Normally the Honors College holds its Meet the Professor event in the LBJ-SC ballroom where students can browse tables and learn about the Honors courses for the upcoming semester while munching on pizza. Of course, that didn’t happen. 

“We used a platform designed for an online conference to set up zoom rooms as tables for each class with information from the faculty. We also had a room where faculty and students could show up in costume to enter the costume contest.”

“We ended up with attendance from 277 students. Students were tuning in from the dorms, from across the state, from out of state and a few out of the country,” said Dean Galloway. “I suspect it was one of the largest university events where students were actually talking to each other and to faculty rather than just listening to something.”

JaVaun Butler, Honors College Student Coordinator, chats with Dean Heather Galloway during Meet the Professors night.

Creative approach to teaching international politics

Dr. Ewa Siwak, Department of World Languages and Literatures, College of Liberal Arts

The final project in the German Civilization course simulates election campaigns in Germany and Austria. Students research a political party and use the discussion feature in Canvas to post info about five key political issues. They use Flipgrid to record a political video ad they have scripted, in which they play the role of a candidate. Students then submit questions for each party and the “candidates” a live townhall debate (Bürgerforum) held during class via Zoom/Breakout Rooms. As post-debate reflection, students select one party that in their opinion best represents the interest of German or Austrian citizens, and one with whose agenda they vehemently disagree, and critique those political agendas.

This two-week project encourages the students to take a closer look at countries with multi-party political systems, where different parties may rule through coalitions, or exercise power in the parliament as the opposition.

“I have designed the project to maximize peer-to-peer teaching and to encourage debate. Students have an opportunity to reflect on global issues as well as considering concerns unique to German-speaking Europe, and they accomplish all of this in advanced-level German,” Siwak says.

This two-week project encouraged students to take a closer look at countries with multi-party political systems, where different parties may rule through coalitions, or exercise power in the parliament as the opposition.

Sociology and the music of life

Dr. Joseph Kotarba, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts

“Ordinarily, music provides a powerful, pervasive, and enjoyable social phenomenon to apply sociological theories and research methods in the classroom, but the COVID-19 pandemic has obviously forced us to rethink and redesign our research activities with students.” 

The focus of Dr. Kotarba’s research is to explore the many ways music impacts everyday life. In his classes, students explored topics such as the role music plays in combatting loneliness among the elderly who are particularly confined to their homes (think Andrea Bocelli singing in Church in Milan, Italy on the Internet on Easter Sunday); and how music provides a soundtrack for the experience of the romantic crush that can occur across a lifetime.  

As part of his research on music and aging, Dr. Joseph Kotarba captured the heartwarming photos below of music bringing joy to residents of assisted living facilities and nursing homes. “Students get to study social experiences that provide meaning for their lives and those of, say, their grandparents,” shared Dr. Kotarba.

Spanish in the time of coronavirus

Dr. Susan Villaneuva Eguia Lis, Department of World Languages, College of Liberal Arts

After classes were moved online following spring break, Dr. Villaneuva Eguia Lis was inspired to talk to her students about how to build resilience by expressing your feelings through poetry.

The class read poetry written during the bubonic plague of 1556-1678, in which the writer described how people felt during quarantine and after the sickness ended. Students then wrote their own original poems in Spanish. Several of their poems were published in the Al Principio 2020 student magazine made by Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, Chapter Beta Epsilon at Texas State. Makaila Rhoden was one of the students whose poem was published.

“One of the advantages of teaching classes in Zoom is that we have worldwide access to live virtual events that used to be by invitation only, or that took place abroad and thus difficult to attend.” Dr. Lis took advantage of the virtual format with events that explored grief and loss and cultural expressions of the Mexican and Mexican American community during Day of the Dead, or Dia de Muertos.

Dr. Lis also partnered with senior lecturer Dr. Beth Bernstein to organize Spanish Language Mixers via Zoom in the summer and fall to help Texas State students learning Spanish meet international students from Spanish-speaking countries. Students from Spain, Panamá, Belize, and Puerto Rico attended.

The show must go on

Michelle Nance, Department of Theatre and Dance, College of Fine Arts and Communication

To promote social distancing, dance classes transitioned to a mix of remote and in-person instruction. For in-person classes, instructors equipped dance studios with projectors, wide angle cameras, and computers to facilitate half of the students in the studio and half on Zoom during any given class day. They taped off 13 by 13 “boxes" on the floor for students to maintain physical distancing. The Department of Theatre and Dance organized an extensive virtual production season including eight virtual productions using a variety of approaches. All dance concerts were fully online in 2020, including Zoom sessions for the artists to discuss their work and participate in Q&A sessions with the audience. Prop Supervisor Erin Kehr created a weekly interview series called “Props & the Professionals,” which featured ten interviews with high-profile theatre professionals of various disciplines with a focus on props.

Performances were held in new ways - outdoors, masked-up, with social distancing. “Dancers were not allowed to touch in their choreographies this year, which is a challenge,” says Michelle Nance.