{"id":2885,"date":"2020-05-28T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/history\/?p=2885"},"modified":"2024-11-07T14:31:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T14:31:56","slug":"historians-in-lockdown-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/2020\/05\/28\/historians-in-lockdown-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Historians in Lockdown (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/em><\/strong>his is the second of two posts by our academic staff who share their experiences of working from home and adapting to the \u2018new normal\u2019 since the start of the lockdown. This post sees contributions from early modernist Erin Peters, Course Leader and historian of the United States Christian O’Connell, and Vicky Randall, specialist in British and intellectual history.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vicky Randall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok,\nso this pandemic has re-confirmed two things I have always known about myself:\nI am a hypochondriac, and I am a control freak. The coronavirus crisis feeds directly\ninto the darkest parts of my psyche. Most of my day then involves the\nfollowing: trying not to check the news; washing my hands; checking the news;\ntrying to breathe slowly; washing my hands; experiencing feelings of\nexistential dread; trying not to check the news; checking the news ….Etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\nother main (interconnected) problems are that I do not drive and I spend too\nmuch time online. The end result of this is a period\nof time during the day (between about 10am and 1pm) when my home becomes a warehouse\ndistribution centre. All kinds of thing arrive. Food. Shovels. Booze. A toastie\nmaker, last week (my new prize possession). The food also arrives in no\nparticular order so we have had some very odd meals. Yesterday\u2019s consisted\nentirely of carbohydrates – sausage rolls with jacket potatoes!! Yum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vicky’s workstation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I only share my home with one other person, but that other person is also a full-time academic (which produces endless pingings of email alerts which I think will scar me). My husband has the downstairs of our house to work in, and I have taken the upstairs, which mostly works but can be quite funny. I was recently on a Teams meeting with the Vice Chancellor when gangster rap was playing audibly from downstairs, and I also got shouted at to \u2018come and listen to this ska version of \u201cSon of a Preacher Man\u201d\u2019 \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am\ntrying my best to work out the new technology, and I am quite confident with\nTeams now. The Big Blue Button continues to confound and defy me, however. In\naddition to my undergraduate teaching, I am supervising a group of six MRes and\nPhD students, so their research and writing keeps me really engaged and\ninterested. I am also the Vice-Chair of the Union so i am heavily involved in\nthe discussions about the impact of COVID-19 on our University life. Health and\nSafety meetings used to be about the provision of correct office equipment.\nThat has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lockdown is undoubtedly challenging, but there are many positives. The staff and students in History have really pulled together to support one another and that is heartening. I am reading a lot (mostly books about the structural inequalities of class, gender, and race – which means I am angry a lot!) I have also discovered Yoga, which i do daily, and go on an epic walk with my husband each evening (see pics below), which now takes us about two hours, but is beautiful. We are lucky to have so much green space around us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christian O\u2019Connell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The days before we all went into lockdown, we all knew that at\nsome point in the near future we would be \u2018going online.\u2019 Some institutions had\ngone early, while many others seemed to be holding on as long as possible,\nespecially as it was so close to the Easter break. When the day the decision came\nit was not a shock. However, no one was quite prepared. There seemed to be an\nassumption from the world outside higher education (and some within!) that\ngoing online would be as simple as flicking a switch. However, as academics and\nstudents across the country have been experiencing for months now, this is far\nfrom the case. Even with the best tools, teaching online is a very different\nbeast to the traditional – and some may say \u2018very much missed\u2019 face-to-face \u2013\nclassroom. It is not just about learning to use the technology, as many in\neducation are beginning to realize. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As David mentioned in the previous post, our teaching at\nGloucestershire is centred on the interaction in seminars. Our small classes\nallow us to engage with students in a way that is not possible in other\nscenarios. They allow to us to do what we do best, which benefits our students\nin lots of ways. This made our transition to teaching online even more challenging.\nNonetheless, I\u2019ve also been pleasantly surprised by what can be achieved\nonline. After some initial teething problems, I have really enjoyed many of the\n\u2018webinars\u2019 and virtual discussions I\u2019ve had with students. It may be that the\nloss of face-to-face contact, combined with the wider social and psychological\neffects of the lockdown, gave these sessions additional significance and they\nwere not longer just routine classes, but instances where people got together,\nand were social (virtually) in an era of social distancing. It has also been\ngreat to see the levels of commitment, engagement and enthusiasm many students\nhave shown in recent weeks. While everyone looks forward to the day we can\nreturn to the classroom, I do believe that there will be more rather than less\nuse of online teaching. That may not all be bad, especially because the skills\nrequired to interact virtually in a professional setting will be essential in\nthe world beyond the university. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christian teaching a webinar on the Vietnam war. Please note, adjectives used by students on the chat referred to the conflict, not the webinar. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On a more personal note, the lockdown presented me with a\ndifferent challenge, which many others working from home will be more than\nfamiliar with. Before, I was used to doing all my work on campus in an almost\nreligious separation of work and home life. The closure of the campus meant\nthat in a very ironic twist of fate I was forced to amalgamate the two, and\nchange my way of working completely. I now work in shorter slots, meaning I have\nhad to make use of more evenings and weekends than I would like, especially\nwhen it comes to preparing online teaching. On the flipside, the benefit is\nthat I\u2019ve really enjoyed spending more time with my family, especially when my\nson Dylan (who many students will be familiar with by now) is at such as great\nage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christian’s pet Luna, who always sits on his lap while he’s teaching. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One major setback for me was the postponement of my research\ntrip to Italy in June, which was funded by the International History Review. I\nwas really looking forward to seeing the ways in which the African American\nsoldiers of WWII \u2013 the \u2018Buffalo\u2019 soldiers of the 92nd<\/sup> Division, one\nof the few all black combat units of the conflict \u2013 have been remembered and memorialized\nin Italy, where they helped defeat the German army. Fortunately, I can still\ntake the trip next year. The additional time is probably welcome in the long\nrun, as it allows me to prepare my journey properly, and pushes back the\ndeadline by which I\u2019m expected to submit an article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erin Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has certainly been a peculiar semester! As many of you\nknow, I took up a visiting professorship in the United States this semester,\nworking at both the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State\nUniversity. In the 8 weeks of \u2018normal\u2019 semester, I learned a lot about the\nNorth American higher education sector, how the universities and teaching are\nstructured over there, and what the students and university culture is like (I\ndid my undergraduate degree in a Canadian university, but it\u2019s a very different\nthing experiencing it from the point of view of the lecturer!). There was quite\na learning curve and a lot of work to do, but I was thoroughly enjoying the\nexperience. Then March hit. In the middle of March, American university\nstudents have Spring Break. Coincidentally, this was also when many of the\nuniversities there switched to online only, and the world went into lockdown.\nFor my family and I, this meant that we needed to decide whether to stay in the\nStates or to leave. Not knowing how long the lockdown would last, and with\nconcerns about our visas expiring and the difficulties involved in getting a\nflight back to the UK, we made a swift exit from the United States to Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Erin’s workstation in Toronto (not showing off at all).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So, for the past twelve weeks, my lockdown work experience\nhas been based in Toronto. Although this has involved working across three\nuniversities and across three different time zones, it has also been an\nunexpectedly valuable experience. One of the things I\u2019ve enjoyed the most is\nthe opportunity to be able to support students through this crisis and to see\nhow they stuck with their modules, even through the last several weeks of\nuncertainty and strain (the US system affords different options and choices to\nlecturers about how to organise their modules). While online teaching is\ncertainly not the same as face-to-face, I\u2019ve also enjoyed learning more about\nthis process and thinking of creative and considerate ways to deliver content\nonline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of new research projects, this will have to wait\nuntil the semester ends and we return to the UK. For now, when I\u2019m not busy\nhome-schooling and hanging out with my children (their resilience,\nadaptability, and positivity through all this has been inspirational. To them,\nits all been one big adventure!), I\u2019ve been working on the finishing touches\nfor the edited collection of essays I am producing. The final draft is due back\nto the press this summer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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