Teaching in College: An Overview of Different Sources

Teaching in college, even before the pandemic, was posing unprecedented challenges for professors. The changes in the curriculum, the increasingly diverse student body, the financial struggles of both educational institutions and students alike, and the need to prepare students for a tough job market are all examples of the issues educators were facing at the institutional level. However, as can be seen in multiple sources, the challenges have only grown during the pandemic.

For the online publication Inside Higher Ed, Greene (2022) describes how college professors like herself were under increased pressure to teach hybrid online and brick-and-mortar classes in college. Students and parents felt that student should get their moneys worth, if they were living on campus, once the risks of the pandemic had subsided. But for students at higher risk, or who could not attend classes, instructors had to do double duty, creating classes that could function both in-person and virtually. Even many students on campus were not attending classes because it was simply easier to learn from the comfort of their dorm rooms.

Greene (2022) also notes that in her large lecture classes, most students were choosing to opt-out of in-person classes after the first few weeks, preferring to learn at home with a textbook and class Blackboard. In fact, many of her colleagues even said they had to create two tracks: one for students who wished to attend classes in person and another who preferred to use online resources. What was so extraordinary to Greene (2022) was even students who wished to attend college as residents seemed uninterested in the in-person component of learning; this was a different model of undergraduate learning for most residential colleges of the past.

Previously, even residential schools who offered online classes or online graduate degrees still based the majority of the undergraduate program around students attending classes. Although the article was specifically about large lecture classes, in the past the classes Greene (2022) were teaching pre-pandemic had often been divided into smaller sections to allow for more face-to-face interactions, when there were no remote, online options. From a teaching perspective, at present, Greene (2022) wrote she is essentially teaching two classes, one remote and one in person, and getting paid for teaching one.

There is evidence that this frustration with online learning might be a product of the assumptions of the American college educational system, given that a PloS study of medical professors at a medical school...

…without tenure, they found themselves even more frustrated, given their already-low pay and the low commitment by their institutions for supporting their careers. Also, many faculty members chose the teaching profession because of the face-to-face personal contact of teaching, which they lacked during the pandemic.

Jesuss many roles included the role of a teacher. His teaching and support were both through his ministry on Earth, but also remotely through his teaching through his apostles such as Paul. Paul himself said: For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit.As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesuson the one who has been doing this (1 Corinthians 5:3). This suggests that even though there may be a value in physical presence, teaching through presence of the spirit is also possible.

Learning when people cannot convene together is necessary, and it is still possible to pass on learning and pass judgement even in the absence of physical presence. On the other hand, it is also important for institutions to listen to teachers who are experiencing stress and burnout due to their additional duties, and to lessen the load (for example, not having teachers…