CS Network Provides Ideas for Shift to Online Teaching
When the COVID-19 pandemic required a sudden shift to teaching online, Cottrell Scholar 2017 Jamie Neilson was ready.
Earlier this semester, Neilson prepared a totally online approach to teach a new graduate course to students from a wide array of backgrounds (materials science, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and physics.) He prerecorded lectures with online pre-class quizzes, and then used the entire class period for supervised, group problem-solving of research-style problems. He also developed a Python worksheet for the class to use addressing reviewer comments in a recent manuscript revision.
He credits the Cottrell Scholar community for inspiring him to make the shift, getting him ahead of this curve.
“I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to take this on without the exposure and integration with the Cottrell Scholars program.”
He said he was largely inspired by CS 2017 Shane Ardo’s short pitch at the 2017 Cottrell Scholars conference, where he shared his innovations in teaching a graduate electrochemistry course at University of California Irvine. Seeing how CS 2015 Eric Toberer implemented “physics in a nutshell” videos for his introduction to solid-state physics course at Colorado School of Mines gave Neilson more ideas about how to go about it.
Neilson was aware of the pitfalls of “flipping” a course, which he had done once before. He had learned a few lessons about what to do better this time.
“The students have been really engaged in and enjoying the course,” he says. “And, none of us were really concerned about Colorado State University taking all courses online for the duration of the semester to combat the pandemic, as the synchronous teaching components of our course easily translate to video conferencing with shared screens.”
