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'Like I was calling into the void': Virginia Tech classes in the age of coronavirus

By Henri Gendreau henri.gendreau@roanoke.com 540-381-1679 10 hrs ago

BLACKSBURG — Ozzie Abaye bustles about her micro kitchen, arranging packets of lentils together and pouring chickpeas in a glass measuring cup. On her countertop, beside the lemon and bottle of tahini, sit a blender, a laptop and a small video camera affixed to a tripod.

“Thank you for connecting with me, Hokies and friends, and also some relatives, too,” she tells the computer. “This is a way to stay connected while we’re staying apart.”

Abaye, a professor in Virginia Tech’s department of crop and soil environmental sciences, won’t let the new coronavirus interfere with hands-on teaching. So on Monday she adopted her course’s food lab — where students cook foods from crops studied in class — for the age of social distancing. Students, as well as former students and family members, cooked at home, watching Abaye make hummus and samosas over Zoom, the videoconferencing program, and Facebook Live.

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‘Like I was calling into the void’

Since Tech resumed classes after an extended spring break a few weeks ago, the university has moved roughly 4,500 courses — including labs and music classes — exclusively online. With that extra week of spring break to prepare, faculty have found creative ways to keep students engaged remotely — from cooking over Zoom to TikTok video assignments, from cello lessons to virtual construction site tours.

At the same time, faculty and students find themselves working through kinks of the new online teaching world: from the more innocuous cameos of pajama-clad undergraduates and an appearance by a cat named Misha, to more serious concerns about students’ lack of motivation and existing inequalities that have been exacerbated by spotty home internet and challenging home lives.

“I think more than ever this is bringing to everyone’s attention that circumstances are not equal,” said Elizabeth McLain, an instructor of musicology. “Not everyone has a fair shake when it comes to education.”

For many professors, a major learning curve has been wrapping one’s head around Zoom — the now ubiquitous video tool that comes with its own set of pitfalls. One of those includes the risk of Zoombombing, when outsiders gain access to virtual meetings and troll them.

“I was Zoombombed, and it seemed almost quaint, the penis joke that the guy asked me,” said Alan Weinstein, an associate professor of cello, bass and chamber music. “I was kind of like, that’s all you got? You go to the trouble to figure out how to do this and you can’t be clever or personal or racist? Come on.”

(A Tech spokesman said only two reports of Zoombombing have been reported to the university’s IT department, which has provided information to faculty to prevent intrusions).

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