I have news about online teaching and reading workload, friends.

I have experimented with REDUCING the number of readings I assign for a class. This is hard in overview courses because you always feel like they should have "the lay of the land" and master all that there is.

HOWEVER...

My students have performed BETTER with reduced reading workloads.

Undergrads focus on ONE reading per week, while having 3 more available "if they so happen to have the time to read them" (they often do try to read these extra readings).

Masters' level students have appreciated taking a "let's just take things more slowly" approach.

Doctoral level students felt somewhat weirded out that I wasn't assigning three books a week. Though they appreciated it.

What I have drawn from my experiences:
- Workshops work.

Having a section of the class that is "hands-on, let's get writing/analyzing/thinking/reading" as a workshop fulfills two goals, for me:

1) Cements my students' understanding of the method.

2) Helps them have actual time to think and read and write rather than rush through.

Depth and breadth are issues we need to compromise on.

- Do I want them to read more broadly or more deeply?
- Do I want them to become more expert in a few things or become more generalist-type people?

These choices are malleable, as is our context.

What is NOT malleable:

A thread: Dear virtual teachers, I am also a virtual teacher, teaching Gr12 from home while also supporting my child in his Gr2 distance learning class. I have some things to share, from the perspective of an overwhelmed parent. 1/14

We believe in public education and do not want to join the Minister of Education in undermining our public education system. But honestly, and I hear this from a lot of parents, we could easily homeschool our kid for 2 hrs each day and actually be able to do our own jobs. 2/14

So you need to make it as easy as possible for us to hang in there. Or we won’t. And parents will pull their kids from school and your system will be devastated. Here are some requests based on our current experience. 3/14

1. Connection is more important than curriculum right now. Please do whatever you can to provide our kids with connection to other kids. If they don’t get to interact with others, they’d might as well just do homeschooling. Connection is the #1 thing you have to offer us. 4/14

2. Please smile. Be kind. Let go a little bit. If kids ask for show and tell, leader of the day, theme days etc, please go along with it. They are desperate for these fun things. We aren’t seeing them in our class, even when kids ask. 5/14