President's Message

In the novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “There is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.” In his context, Tolstoy was describing his General’s philosophy of avoiding needless battles. Those of us currently teaching at the university or K12 level have certainly faced multiple battles over the past six months as the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic has circled the globe, shuttered economies, and caused education to rethink the way we mentor our engineers and computer scientists in training. And, a great deal of uncertainty remains as institutions in the southern hemisphere continue to deliver content in the middle of their academic year while northern hemisphere schools write contingency plans for both traditional and remote-learning scenarios when they return to class in August or September. Each of us has a unique and important story about how this current educational environment has affected and changed us. I am interested in hearing about your experiences and how you reacted to your new responsibilities as teachers.

My biggest battles have been frustration, discouragement, self-doubt, demotivation, and exhaustion. I know many of you have likely felt the same. My classes this term were residential . I have developed successful mentorship strategies in this type of class that rely on classroom engagement where I can react to student emotions, provide hands-on laboratory guidance, or sit together at a whiteboard talking about a problem. Learning technologies can replicate some of that experience but distance certainly erects barriers that made my engagement with students this term more difficult. Students in residential settings have chosen that learning modality. Their comfort is with face-to-face interaction and their discomfort with asynchronous self-paced learning – or even synchronized remote learning – naturally downshifts them from engaged learners to learners questioning their decision to be in college at the moment. And, I teach first-year students – many that are first-generation college students. My cohort of first-year students this term did not choose courses delivered through the internet, they have lost their residential college experience, many of them are now back at home facing environments that make it difficult to concentrate and study, and overall they have lost some sense of their newly found adult autonomy as they leave their dormitories and return to be safer-at-home with their nuclear families. Recognizing that their lives have been turned upside down, I tried to remember each week that patience and time will do it all. I chose to stay in synchronous classes delivered remotely at the regularly scheduled time. I began each week re-scaffolding what I had planned to do in the face-to-face setting into a new set of lesson plans that recognized remoteness as a factor in student success. I rewrote lectures, create note sets to complement short video presentations, thought carefully about homework assignments, and made myself extremely available by holding many office hours each week. Gently, I worked to engage each of my students with questions during our synchronous classes so that they felt part of the community of learners, and I occasionally canceled meeting times to give them a break from the glow of a computer screen. I tried my best to keep a fast turn-around in my grading. I know that I’ve made mistakes – after all, this rapid move to remote instruction from a residential course did not occur with the normal months of planning time that a MOOC or a regularly-scheduled online course would have been afforded. With patience – and with time – my students and I have found a happy place where our virtual classroom seems almost normal.

As President of the IEEE Education Society, I think the world’s institutions of higher learning have done a remarkable job responding to the crisis, with traditional residential institutions rapidly pivoting the mode of instruction from face-2-face to remote, and normally online programs continuing to steadfastly deliver content in that mode while offering mentorship to members of our community when asked. Through it all, educators have attempted to provide a sense of continuity for our students in a dynamic and strange time.

As the world continues to navigate the pandemic, researchers in engineering and computer science education will explore many topics. Some include how social disparities are allowing participation by students during the pandemic, how these disparities are impacting the quality of learning, the impact of technology on learning effectiveness, how pandemic anxiety and stress impact physical and mental health and then student success, and how curriculums can best be scaffolded to respond to second or third wave shutdowns of educational institutions. Remember that the IEEE Education Society journals and conference proceedings are a place to find research and practice recommendations and they are also a place for you to publish new results. We offer many opportunities to actively engage in our global educator community through our flagship conferences, webinars, distinguished lecture program, and local Chapter events. We want to be your trusted source of information and we thank you for being part of our community. We value your membership, your knowledge, and your insights. Thank you for your dedication to engineering and computer science education. Together, we are a group of skilled professionals working toward the goal of helping our engineers and scientists-in-training build bright futures for themselves.

Sincerely,
Russ Meier, Ph.D., FIEEE, Professor
IEEE Education Society President
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Milwaukee School of Engineering