(Spring 2020, Re-envisioned for future hybrid offering)

Enrollment: 37 students  (should have been more like 15)

Under normal circumstances, this course meets three times a week for a mixture of lecture, some group-work, and weekly presentations by students.  When enrollment is high, students present in small groups with each group presenting just once in the quarter.  With smaller enrollments, students have presented individually or more than once.

In Spring 2020 we went completely online and, since this course had students in South Korea, San Diego, and many places in between, completely asynchronous.  Given the number of students, I switched from weekly homework assignments to weekly reflective journal entries, a successful change that I intend to keep regardless of the size or format of the course in the future.  One thing I would do differently, though, would be to add a synchronous component consisting of the student presentations and possibly a class-wide Q&A.

Enrollment: 32 students

Usually would meet 4 times a week (3 lecture/mini-lab classes and a full lab each week); there are usually 2 lab sections of approx. 15 students each.

Under normal circumstances, the most valuable interpersonal interactions are during the lab/mini-lab times, when students work side-by-side, asking questions and comparing approaches, and I circulate, checking in with students and answering questions.  Clustering around laptop screens is the norm.  Since this is the antithesis of social distancing, our most significant interactions will move to software-based screen sharing.

For the fall, there are 32 students enrolled. I plan to break them up into 4 sections of 8 students each, since that is a reasonable “covid-cap” for the lab/classroom space. I will probably also break each section into 2 smaller “support groups” of 4 students each.  My plan for Week 1 (and possibly Week 2) is to meet with each section twice in person, once during a usual class time and once during the lab.  The focus will be on introductions, community-building, and answering questions.  Content engagement (reading, short videos, mini-labs) will be asynchronous, on their own.