Macmillan Presents on Students’ Perspectives on Pandemic Teaching

By Zainab Cheema 

Macmillan recently streamed a hi-flex talk featuring two professors from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Department of Rhetoric and Writing. On August 25^th, 2021, Rebecca Glazier and Heidi Harris presented on “Returning to Normal? What We Should Keep from Pandemic Teaching: A Student Perspective.” A slew of talks on what online teaching means have helped us (some of us?) navigate the return to live classrooms. Of these, the most useful ones are student centered ones that focus on concrete student experiences.  Glazier and Harris integrated their own polls with recent large scale studies on the post-COVID situation of students, offering a focused look into changing student expectations for their teachers.

The Pandemic’s Impact On Low Income Students’ Enrollment 

As we know, certainty is on short supply in the educational sector at the moment. Glazier spotlighted data that showed how devastating the pandemic has been for vulnerable and underserved student populations. The struggles of dealing with the digital divide, access to resources and changing classroom modalities has especially impacted students confronting structural disadvantages like poverty and food insecurity. As Glazier observed, many students from high poverty high schools have decided to take a break from college. According to a recent study from the US Department of Education, college undergraduate attrition rates in the first year of the pandemic (2019-2020) rose to 560,000. This represents a decline of 3.6% from pre-pandemic levels.  

Digging deeper in the Department of Education study, Glazier pointed out a troubling pattern. Most of the students leaving college during the pandemic are from high poverty areas. The decline in college attendance from students coming from high poverty high schools in 2020 was 11.4% in 2020, as compared to the 1.6% decline seen in 2019. What this has meant is that a considerable number of students from marginalized and high poverty areas have decided to take a break from college—or to leave Higher Ed altogether.

The pandemic’s hit on the promises and pathways of higher education is rippling through the news lately. After WWII and the G.I. Bill, college has traditionally opened the pathway for upward mobility for Americans. Neoliberalism globalized the American university in the late 80s and 90s, but it also drove up costs of college education for middle- and low-income families in the United States. I still remember the tuition hikes at the University of California system in 2008 and 2009, which drove a 300% jump in the cost of college attendance for undergraduates. At the time, I was a graduate student at UC Irvine who found herself in solidarity with the protests spotlighting the struggles of students from migrant and low-income families who found themselves priced out of an affordable education from the University of California system. If the pandemic has had a multiplier effect on trends in the education industry, one of the most troubling ones is that low-income-and marginalized students are increasingly unable to access college as a pathway of upward mobility.

After COVID-19, many of us have experienced the downsides of work in remote modalities. We have all experienced Zoom fatigue, increased anxiety, increased distractibility, and burnout. Harris and Glazier believe that the structural factors contributing to stress in pandemic learning is out of the control of teachers. In their view, teachers should focus on the space of the classroom, transforming it into one that is supportive, and reinforces learning for students facing a range of disadvantages.

Student Expectations from their Educators

Harris and Glazier offered insights from a study that they conducted at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Polling students in March 2020 and later in May 2020, their study offers a snapshot of what students said they needed from their teachers to learn more effectively in the pandemic.

• No surprise that professors’ flexibility in assignments and deadlines remained high on the list. Forty two percent of polled students stressed greater flexibility from their educators in March as compared to 38% in May 2020. Harris and Glazier stressed that flexibility was especially valued by low-income students who face conditions that prevent them from accessing resources, study times, and appropriate study conditions. If students have to wait for certain times of the day when they can access the computer or get to a space where they can effectively study, they simply are not able to submit assignments within reliable or clearly marked time frames. Assessment is where educators have considerable control, and it becomes an important focus for compassionate classroom design.

• The takeaway? Harris and Glazier’s study revealed that students valued their educators’ responsiveness and availability for them higher than the interest factor of the course content. Thirty percent of the polled students in March and 39% of the polled students in May wanted their professors to be available to them, to actively answer their questions and respond to their emails. This contrasted with 15% of students in March and 12% of students in May who demanded interesting lectures and course content. Reliability, concern and care win out over entertainment value. This shows the impact that educators have had during the pandemic to provide direction, guidance, and an anchoring presence for their students.

On the whole, I wished there was more of an interactive component to the talk, as I had questions about the sample size and demographic of the poll conducted by Harris and Glazier. Nevertheless, Harris’ and Glazier’s insights offered some valuable trends for pandemic and post-pandemic teaching.

Resources for Educators

• Educators can track other virtual events offered through Macmillan’s Engage Students to Achieve More virtual talks—click here for more information on and register for upcoming professionalization lectures from this series. Registration is free and a recording of each talk is emailed out afterwards.
• Educators can visit Rebecca Glazier’s website to read her bio and access her publications. Rebecca’s upcoming new book, Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport between Teaches and Students, can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.
• Heidi Harris’ faculty bio can be accessed here.
• Read the complete US Department of Education study on the impact of COVID 19 on American students.