March 13, 2020

Should you teach a stressful topic during a stressful time? While there are risks about focusing about what is on every student’s mind right now, there are good reasons to try. And yes, this is all works for your new online teaching.

First, virtually everyone is hungry for information about this quickly changing situation and the urgency and our natural curiosity are leading most people to click on anything coronavirus. Why not redirect this curiosity to a more productive purpose? Second, teaching is about motivation: only the person who does the work does the learning. Students are highly motivated to learn about this right now. Third, it is a complex interdisciplinary problem that involves ethics and judgement, precisely the sort of skill that employers say they want and we say we teach. Finally, it might even be a public service. With all of the misinformation available, helping students practice understanding sources and credibility could save lives and also demonstrate the value of this life skill.

I’d start with support and empathy—this is a great moment to demonstrate you care and build some community: both essential for good teaching and especially important as students are anxious and probably isolated. Then a pause to make sure students are ok diving into this topic, with acknowledgement some may have hesitations or other issues. I’d perhaps also say that staying healthy requires good information and the ability to find and analyze conflicting advice and sources.

There are connections with virtually every subject we offer on campus. There is certainly math, modeling, science, epidemiology and networking in abundance. Why would a small change in the mortality rate or the infectiousness matter? Why are airplane cabins safer than your gym right now? If some are finding it hard to understand the severity of precautions, that is an entry into the psychology of our bias against the future or how politics bias how we view evidence. Culture, history and sociology? Why do we shake hands anyway? Would we be healthier with different cultural greetings? Will people really self-quarantine? 

Music and art might seem less promising, but as Ted Gioia points out in his new book, Music: A Subversive History, people who survive a crisis, stop taking things for granted, and look at the familiar with fresh eyes. He argues that the Renaissance, Shakespeare and jazz all emerged in places and times that made them “sources of virality from both an artistic and epidemiological standpoint.” Discuss.

This is a particularly good moment for philosophy and ethics. With young people at relatively low risk for the most serious consequences, why were schools among the first to close? What are the obligations of individuals to society? How should people and governments (political science anyone?) make decisions to restrict the movements and lives of low-risk people for the benefit of high-risk people? 

With the stock market crash, empty shelves and questions about what stimulus might work in a situation where money isn’t the problem, business and economics classes should be equally interesting right now.

Teaching begins with engagement and there could hardly be a more engaging subject right now.  

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), 87-105 Visit http://communitiesofinquiry.com/model for more