Remote teaching: Why a front-loaded and fast-paced class fared well in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Onur Yuce Gun
Tags: Design, Creativity, Education, Technology, Innovation

Every teacher and professor had their share of strain brought by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Through listening, adaptation, and planning, we made it to the finish line with quite a bit of energy with my students this semester.

There was one key decision that helped me have a very smooth remote teaching experience: preparing a front-loaded syllabus.

I made that choice consciously, but of course without a prediction about the implications of the then developing pandemic. I aimed to empower students with a broad spectrum of tools early in the semester and use the rest of the time for individual project development.

This strategy ended up working well for remote teaching.

Shaping a classroom through Agency, Adaptation, and Tooling

Over the years, I observed that front-loaded classes and workshops fared much better in many terms. Combined with a longer exploration process, in the end, they turned into a teaching formula for achieving high-yield, high-quality results.

I prepared the syllabus for the 2020 spring semester for the class I taught at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning with three things in mind:

1- Agency

When you prepare a front-loaded class or a workshop, you shock the students at their freshest state. This enables them to see a lot of material in a short period, but more importantly to pick and chose whatever makes more sense to them.

Yes, no student learns everything we try to teach and it is better if we empower them with the material they are interested in. This kind of agency helps students to become a more integral part of the teaching process.

If the teaching material is comprehensive and the teaching style is generous enough, students can and will have a say in what they learn. If the material is not malleable, they will either have a hard time adapting, or won’t align with the classroom dynamics at all.

2- Adaptation

Teaching is about bi-directional adaptation.

As the students adapt to the class and teaching material, the instructor needs to adapt to the overall drive of the class. Instructors are inclined to expect the students to adapt. But not all of them think about the fact that for a symbiosis to happen, both parties would need to act.

A front-loaded class helps both parties to adjust and make choices early in the semester.

I revealed the goals and mechanics of the subject in the very first class and dived right into the material. With a fast follow-up in the second week, I developed a quick sensation about the choices I made for the amount and delivery of the teaching material. In the meantime, the students came with questions to figure out if the class was the right one for them.

One other benefit of a fast-paced start was to determine the no-adaptation types move out quickly. At MIT the students ‘shop’ for the classes the first week or two. If you show the intensity of the class early in the semester that helps refine the crowd.

In short, if you are open to change things on the course — which in my mind is a must — a front-loaded class helps you plan earlier in the semester.

3- Fluency

If you are teaching a class that includes skill-building components, there are fundamentally two tracks you can follow.

1 — You can plan to move incrementally and distribute skill-building sessions throughout the semester. This would help students to learn and digest skills over longer periods. A slower pace can also help them add skills more easily. This is a low-stress and low-risk choice, but it takes from the time that could be invested in the employment and refinement of skills.

2 — Alternatively, you can front-load the syllabus with skill-building sessions and then observe the tendencies of students in picking things up. This is a riskier move as not all the students would be able to follow the pace of the class. Students may need more support when you want to add on top of something that you have already taught in class. This would put more work-hours on the instructor.

Just looking at the overall picture, the first option appears to be more logical, as the safe bet. Yet the second option, although comes with some risks, increases the chances of break-through achievements — if they are ever to happen in the class.

Moving within a fast-paced setting, students hit a steeper learning curve, but at the same time become accustomed to the tools of the class earlier. This helps them become fluent in the tools they are using quicker.

Especially for an application and making-oriented class, the second option works miraculously better.

How so?

I learned how to teach over 15 years of piecemeal teaching

I have a quite mixed past in teaching and I have nowhere near the experience of a full-time academician. Yet, jumping back and forth between academia and professional practice, or spending time in both simultaneously helped me translate the strategies of teaching across these two domains.

What did I do?

I co-taught design studios. I developed design, geometry, and scripting classes. I happened to initiate and lead an undergraduate design program, somehow early in my career.

Last but not the least, I conducted many workshops in different schools, cultures, and countries. Especially these workshops that ran anywhere from three hours to two weeks taught me a lot about developing syllabuses, even more so than semester-long classes.

The diversity of student’s backgrounds, ages, and interests taught me a lot as well. While in professional practice, I happened to teach people whose age was (more than) double of mine. Later, I found chances to teach fresh out-of-the-high school kids.

Over and over again, I discovered front-loaded scenarios fared better. Starting vertical (and going deep) and then going horizontal (and expanding).

I applied this strategy to my latest teaching adventure.

I asked the students to develop a “design” that had to be re-thought, letting go of its preconceived “parts.” My motivation stemmed from my ever-unfolding inquiry about part-whole relationships that I explained in my latest story:

I deployed the teaching material through 4 tracks: Presence, Function, Quality, and The Whole.