As we reach the end of the academic year, we’re going to be looking back at some of our experiences of teaching and living through the pandemic, bringing you the reflections of a few of our colleagues.  In this post, Jenni Rose (Senior Lecturer in Accounting and one of the University’s Teachers of the Year 2020) reflects on her journey through this time, including the best advice she received and how she tried to bring this into her practice. 

The very best advice I was given at the beginning of the pandemic was ‘always choose connection’, and ‘cook wonderful food’.  Connection has always been very important to me – in fact being able to connect to academics, university staff and students was one of the driving reasons for my move from freelance teaching into academia. As for cooking wonderful food, this was a driver for my time spent travelling and bringing all the delicious flavours back home. 

 It was hard at times to choose connection, with an overflowing inbox, children demanding my attention for homeschooling, and trying to reassure anxious students, some stuck thousands of miles from home. Cooking wonderful food wasn’t all that easy either with the shops running out of flour and yeast! 

As we moved into online teaching there seemed to be so many varying (and overwhelming) opinions about how to teach well online – the length of videos, what we were and weren’t allowed to do, and what students wanted. I led a team from my department to pull together a toolkit of guides on how to do things, from screencasting to Piazza discussion boards and Zoom tips to group diaries.   

The skills to use new technology had to be acquired by all and at a rapid pace, amongst the backdrop of an increasingly frightening worldwide situation.  I had grand ideas of finally implementing the flipped classroom more, which I had used in the past and knew would benefit students (Bates, Teaching in a Digital Age 2015), I had a raft of guest speakers who would record videos, and I was eager to engage students on my courses using Voicethreads, Mentimeter polls, Piazza discussion boards and chat boxes. I also recorded graduation videos, and a video acceptance of my Distinguished Achievement Teacher of the Year award in 2020. 

In time the connections became easier. My department had frequent and well-attended online coffee mornings, Whatsapp groups with colleagues and Skype groups with students sprung up and became very active, and I started to plan online teaching for September 2021. I got better at changing ingredients for cooking (learning that yoghurt can work really well as a yeast substitute in dough), and I started to teach the children to prepare food for themselves. The best lockdown learning from my point of view is that they can now make a cup of tea with homemade biscuits… 

Then in September so many students arrived! It was difficult to grasp the higher numbers as I didn’t have the drama of walking around a large lecture theatre, engaging students with Curly Wurlys and those short corridor conversations with students and colleagues which turned out to be so vital to me for connection. I started to miss the connection to students as I made videos to my blank living room walls and talked to blank black squares on Zoom. The time taken to cook wonderful food was diminishing and exhaustion started to set in. 

I worked hard to create engagement for students, and to structure my courses to help students manage their time. I enabled students to connect to each other using peer to peer assessment, an informal book club and group presentation projects. I talked to students about ideas on how to connect and shared stories of alumni mental health challenges and a current student’s journey to Manchester from being a Syrian Refugee. I also managed to crack the routine and booking of online grocery shopping to make sure I had the right food in at the right time. 

Now reflecting on 16 months of lockdown I’m amazed by what has changed and also what hasn’t. I’m so proud of my own and others’ achievements in this time, even if it was just to keep going. Finally, I’d like to pass on the best advice I’ve heard, not just for the pandemic but for life: always choose connection…. and cook wonderful food! 

To find out more about the blended tools Jenni has been using in her teaching and how her students have responded to these, read her post on ‘Top tips on saving time and helping students get work done!’ 

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Fruitcake cake danish oat cake powder jujubes caramels chupa chups jelly beans. Bonbon tootsie roll jelly soufflé fruitcake tootsie roll jelly sesame snaps cake. Gingerbread cotton candy oat cake jelly-o candy apple pie powder. Marshmallow powder chocolate bar sugar plum chocolate bar wafer marshmallow sugar plum bear claw. Marzipan macaroon bonbon sweet powder chocolate cake donut toffee carrot cake. Ice cream apple pie pastry. Wafer biscuit brownie bonbon. Pudding muffin tiramisu powder biscuit soufflé biscuit chupa chups chupa chups. Powder lemon drops pastry apple pie lemon drops cotton candy. Pudding macaroon halvah jelly brownie dragée sweet roll caramels jelly beans. Cookie biscuit lollipop. Donut jelly beans wafer marzipan powder oat cake gummies icing chocolate bar. Dessert fruitcake donut cupcake. Jelly macaroon brownie gingerbread cupcake donut fruitcake.

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