Zhenyu Yuan
Zhenyu Yuan Quote Heading link
Yes, teaching in a pandemic is hard. But my experience has convincingly shown me that learning in a pandemic may be even harder. As we contemplate the multiple learning goals we want to achieve in our classes, perhaps it is important to recognize our students first need us to be their compassionate professor.
| | Assistant Professor | Fall 2020 | Department of Managerial Studies
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In my research, I study workplace stressors ranging from rude work emails to traumatic events such as having to deal with deaths. Still, I have been overwhelmed by the wide range of challenges and difficulties that our students are going through. In my undergraduate courses, I offered an extra credit assignment based on the idea of expressive writing (worth 1% of their letter grade). Students were also told that they were not asked to disclose anything they were not comfortable sharing with me. Expressive writing is frequently used among people going through trauma and has been shown to be effective in facilitating stress recovery. When first offering this assignment, I thought this would be a good opportunity to help students understand why they were feeling certain ways (e.g., stressed out; lonely). After grading a handful of student submissions, I quickly realized how valuable this activity was for me to fully grasp what they were going through.
As it was not required, not every student turned in this assignment. But even the (relatively) small number of submissions allowed me to begin to understand the challenges of learning amid a pandemic: International students felt they were stuck in this country, with no clear clue when they could go home and visit family. Transfer students were concerned about the lost opportunities through which they could have connected with others. For those who had been struggling with physical and mental health issues before the pandemic, the pandemic is only worse news. Some students were under elevated levels of financial stress due to unemployment/disruptions to their work. The absence of face-to-face connections led to loneliness, with many finding it hard to keep an upbeat attitude. Several students had contracted the virus and (thankfully) made a full recovery.
Then there’s the most surprising finding—several students shared that they were feeling stressed out because of classes (e.g., lack of accommodations from their professors). It is this last stressor that made me reflect on what kind of teaching/learning goals I should have in the pandemic. Indeed, as we keep saying “amid such trying times,” this saying may have unintentionally reduced the gravity of the situation to an abstract phrase for many of us. In my own version of “this is what they should be doing in my class so they can get the most out of my class,” I quickly came to the realization that I might have left out the most important piece—what is it that my students would need the most from me as their professor?
Yes, teaching in a pandemic is hard. But my experience has convincingly shown me that learning in a pandemic may be even harder. As we contemplate the multiple learning goals we want to achieve in our classes, perhaps it is important to recognize that our students first need us to be their compassionate professor.
Summary: Through an expressive writing activity, I was able to learn about the challenges students were going through. These critical insights helped me use a compassionate lens to revisit the structure and learning goals of my classes.
Zhenyu Yuan
Assistant Professor
Department of Managerial Studies