About Me

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I am the founder of University Training Partners, a company that designs and delivers online Lean Six Sigma and statistics training. In this blog, I hope to share my thoughts on statistics, quality assurance, and training, drawing from my 15 years of work experience in the field, eight years as a tenured professor teaching graduate statistics classes and ten years as a full-time training developer.
Showing posts with label working mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label working mothers. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

 



The Misadventures of an Online Instructor

Teaching online? That takes knowledge, dedication and organizational skills. Teaching online at the dining room table with kids underfoot? Now, that takes a true professional!

Ancient history

I’ve been teaching online statistics classes since 2003—ancient times, technology-wise. Back then, we augmented our pre-recorded voice-over PowerPoint presentations with live lectures that we typed out via text chat. Yes, text chat.

I am a horrible typist. I consistently type the word “the” as “teh.” Imagine me typing in multisyllabic words like “heterogeneity.” A nightmare.

A few years later, around 2006, our university’s learning platform got the ability to do live voice lectures. I resisted switching over to the new technology, though. I had always been an early adopter, so my department chair asked me what reason I had for not embracing the live voice sessions.

I told him I had four reasons.

Meet my four reasons

He smiled because he understood. My four reasons? Three girls and a boy, all under the age of 10.

Being able to teach online classes instead of in-person was a blessing for me. The college I worked for was more than an hour away from my home, and the program’s classes were held in the evenings. My husband travelled for work a lot, so I often struggled with finding childcare when I had to teach my classes in person. Online teaching allowed me to teach from home while sitting at the dining room table.

Can I have a snack?

I think most mothers will agree when I say that we moms are never more interesting to our children than when we are on a phone call or in the bathroom. Kids have a Spidey-sense that mom needs a little alone time, and they are right there making sure you don’t get it.

Teaching online graduate statistics classes was the same way. When I pulled out my laptop, it acted like a kid magnet. Telling my kids that mommy had to teach a class did no good. This was pre-Zoom. There were no students to see.

I might add that if you ever need an ego check, have children. My kids couldn’t have cared less that I had a PhD in industrial engineering and was teaching the intricacies of central composite designs to 20 students hanging on my every (poorly typed) word. No, they were not impressed. I was still Mom.

As I typed my chat lectures, I’d inevitably have a little person sitting at my feet playing with her dolls and another combing the back of my hair and styling it with Hello Kitty barrettes. Also, can I have a snack?

A perfect storm

One evening when my husband was out of town, I was typing my chat lecture with my youngest son on my lap, and one daughter standing at my elbow asking me to help her dress her Barbie. My oldest daughter was doing her math homework at the other end of the table and would ask me for help whenever she got stuck on a geometry problem. My typical Tuesday evening, pretty much.

My youngest daughter then came running into the dining room, wide-eyed and yelling that the downstairs toilet was stopped up and was now overflowing all over the bathroom floor.

You can do this, momma

I drew a deep breath and then, to buy myself time, I typed a complicated question for my class to answer.  I lifted my son off my lap, ran to the bathroom, grabbed the plunger and unclogged the toilet, got the mop and bucket from the utility room, cleaned the bathroom floor, threw on the fan to help it dry, and then coaxed Barbie’s legs into a pair of impossibly skinny jeans. As I sat down, sweat trickling down my brow, the first response from my students popped up on the chat screen. Success! They were none the wiser.

Well, that stung

A few months later, I related that story to my colleagues in a department meeting. One of the older male professors remarked that what I had done was very unprofessional. I have to admit, that comment really took the wind out of my sails. And, to this day, I have to vehemently disagree.

If I could watch four children, calculate the area of an isosceles triangle, unclog a toilet, mop the floor, and dress Barbie, all at the same time I was teaching a graduate class in experimental design without missing a beat, I regard myself as an uber-professional. I mean, teaching a grad class while sitting in a quiet office with your prepared notes and no distractions, or overflowing toilets? Honestly, how hard is that?

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