Adapting to Online Learning

Mohawk professor Shaun Iles ’04 inspired by his students’ perseverance 

By: Sean Coffey 

Iles ’04 wasn’t sure how his second-year General Arts and Science students would take to having their courses suddenly moved online. 

A professor of Sociology and Environmental Sustainability and Education Technology Facilitator with the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Iles is no stranger to using technology in the classroom. He has taught many online classes, but all were planned in advance. When faced with having to move all of his classes online, and do it in a week, his confidence evaporated. Iles was concerned about how the students would be affected by the sudden and unexpected shift. He was surprised by the result. 

Iles’s students were working on assignments that required significant collaboration when the move to online happened in March. The final assignment was a research project that required a significant amount of one-on-one consultation and a lot of group work. To help, Iles turned to a tool called Discord, which is commonly used by the online gaming community as a forum to discuss strategy. 

The students adapted to it very quickly, and Iles was surprised at how quickly he could adapt a course that had only ever been delivered face-to-face to be delivered fully online. 

“The resilience of my students shocked me. I moved our face-to-face class, which was in the middle of conducting research and learning how to show bivariate relationships through cross-tabulation, to a Discord server for communication and Google Sheets for shared visuals,” said Iles. “This was terrifying, to say the least, but my students were amazing. I had a virtual classroom of 75 students that was fully functional. 

Students were communicating and supporting one another through their final assignment of the year, and were having great synchronous learning experiences. “These students deserve a huge shout out for their willingness to adapt and persevere, given the uncharted new way of life in isolation.” 

Jaclyn Sims was one of Iles’s students. “I have never taken a research class before and I was concerned about the upcoming assignments. I was worried that not being able to speak face to face with Iles might have an impact on my final grade,” she said. “I found a decent balance that worked for me and the user-friendly technology Iles implemented allowed us to still feel like we were in class.” Jaclyn was not alone in her experience, says Iles. 

“Overall, the students that I have had the pleasure of interacting with through this experience have said that they feel that educators are using all the skills that they have available to them so that students will be successful, and they appreciate the extra effort that the Mohawk College staff and faculty are making to ensure a successful semester for all students.” 

“However, they are still frightened because most of them have never had to work like this.” 

This story was originally published in Spring 2020 of the Mohawk Alumni In Touch magazine.