Teaching a Pandemic Course During a Pandemic

“For my first Zoom class, on a Tuesday, I sat at my desk and wore a blazer. By Thursday, I was on my couch and it was just more like having a conversation. My cat even visited — my students asked to meet her,” says Sherryl Broverman.

The Duke associate professor of biology and global health is talking about the first time she taught her pandemic class online a few weeks ago. The course, Biology 154 - Aids and Other Emerging Diseases, is one of the largest electives at Duke and she’s been teaching it every Spring for 20 years. It draws all levels of students, from freshmen to seniors, and is especially popular with global health, policy, international studies and biology majors.

“I’ve always used a humanitarian issue as a focal point for teaching science. And AIDS has been that focal point in this class, partly because it is an ongoing pandemic,” says Broverman, who specializes in what she describes as “teaching science literacy for democracy.”

But when the coronavirus pandemic hit and almost the entire university community headed home to help “flatten the curve,” Broverman said it only made sense to shift the focus from AIDS to COVID-19, the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2. Teaching a pandemic course during a global pandemic as it unfolds has been career-altering. It's a devastating time for the world, but Broverman relishes the opportunity to help her students makes sense of it all and approach it rationally.

Her usual lecture venue is an auditorium that holds more than 300 students, but now it’s her sunny living room, her couch, her furry pets and her laptop. When classes from home began, she could tell that her students were hungry for information about the novel pathogen. It turns out that their families and housemates were too. During her first week of virtual lectures, there were more than just Duke undergraduates sitting in on Zoom sessions.

“There were definitely people with their parents there. There were some seniors living in apartments, two or three were all sitting on a bed watching together with housemates,” she says.

Attendees were so engaged during the first class with questions and concerns about COVID-19 that it ran far beyond the normal 75-minute timeframe.

Refocusing lectures

Broverman said she’s rearranged her syllabus, moved some things up and deleted a lot of items to make it more suitable for the times. With COVID-19, she’s been teaching about the biology of the virus, how the immune system responds, how it spreads in communities, and mechanisms that might interfere with it.

“And then for policy, I talk about what it takes getting those treatments and vaccines to market,” she says.

Historically, Broverman has also explored women’s issues related to pandemics and medical racism, including the Tuskegee Study and how the AIDS epidemic has been labeled a gay person’s disease. She’s doing the same with the new coronavirus, delving into how prejudice has led to the labels “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese virus.”

“I try to give every possible tie-in to the AIDS epidemic,” she says.

Sophia Cetina, one of Broverman’s students this semester, a freshman who is now back home in Westchester, N.Y., says, “It’s interesting that we’re reflecting on something while we’re in the midst of it. We’re engaging with the material as it’s happening and I feel it adds an urgency to the content itself. We’re talking about things like identify early and contain fast during a time of quarantine.”

Before her first virtual class, Broverman said she was anxious about the technology part of it, but that that’s nothing new for her.

“Even in the in-person classes, I always have that. I’ve been teaching in the same room for 20 years and still have audio visual stress there every year,” she laughs.

Making mistakes humanizes you, though, she says. “I don’t want to be the untouchable professor. The fact that they can laugh and I can laugh — we’re in this together,” she says.

As far as Zoom goes, on one level she feels that it’s emotionally intimate because you’re right there looking at peoples’ faces, and you’re in everyone’s homes.

“They asked me, show us your cats and give us a tour of your house and what’s that piece of art in the corner?” And Broverman welcomes their curiosity.

Similar to her in-person lectures, she encourages them to participate at any time. “I don’t want them sleeping in the back of the class. In the first lecture I asked them what they wanted to talk about and they wanted to know how did it happen, how does it spread, why is it more dangerous than flu,” she says, noting that she’s proud of how the students have been engaged, especially the non-science majors.

The one question that stopped her in her tracks, though, was: “What does the future hold?”

Broverman, a mother of two now-grown kids, says, “It was like being asked by a 4-year-old at night, ‘Is it going to be okay?’ And I feel very much a sense of responsibility to give them appropriate information. I don’t want to scare them. I want them to have a clear scientific explanation for what is going on to help them navigate this time.”

Cetina, an English major, says she likes “looking at the epidemic through the lens of epidemiology.”

“That’s critical for making sense of what happened and what will happen. Having Dr. B explain things to a different level, I think it’s been helpful. It promotes information and she’s kind of put a calm take on it,” says Cetina, whose dad is a police officer and is living away from her family during the pandemic as a precaution.

Beyond students' Zoom lenses

Teaching virtually requires an additional sensitivity, an understanding that her students are not all learning on an equal playing field anymore — on Duke’s campus. She noted that not all of her students were logging in for live classes. When she surveyed them, she found out that it was due to a variety of reasons. They were all over the globe in different time zones. Some were in their parents’ comfortable homes while others were on campus, far from home and alone. One student went back to a family farm and has to work during the day so can only watch the recorded version of the class. Another was home caring for two parents with cancer. And another student was on a military base helping to babysit kids who are now out of school. Additionally, some don’t have good internet access.

“A lot of students are in really tough conditions. I’m trying really hard to make this as low stress as possible,” Broverman says.

While it adds a level of intimacy to be beaming into peoples’ rooms, Broverman’s student, Cetina, says she misses things about the big lecture. “You can’t see everyone’s faces. Gesturing can only go so far. You’re really limited by the 2-D surface. It’s only one voice at a time and you have to be conscious about taking turns to speak,” she says, noting that across all of her classes, especially the larger ones, fewer students have been attending and that’s lead to less engagement.

To enhance connectedness, Broverman has added an extra credit element to her pandemic course. Students can submit a creative project about the class.

“Some are submitting essays and reflections about their experiences. One has been writing a pandemic diary. Others are making TikToks to explain some of the science. The goal is to give them an outlet to deal with what they are going through or a way to blow off steam by being silly,” says Broverman.

This week, class came to a close and it was bittersweet for her.

“I just gave my last lecture and it was hard to say goodbye. Usually at the end of the semester there are lots of hugs and handshakes. One student stayed on after class ended to introduce her sister who had joined her for every lecture,” she says.