In Teaching Under Quarantine, Connection & Tangible Work Are Key

Stamps Assistant Professor Kelly Murdoch-Kitt recently published a piece on the AIGA Design Educators Community with her longtime research partner Denielle Emans of Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. 

Titled ​“In Teaching Under Quarantine, Connection & Tangible Work Are Key,” the article offers insights from Murdoch-Kitt and Emans’s research in long-distance collaborations to help those who are teaching remotely due to COVID-19-related campus closures. 

Among their recommendations, they emphasize maintaining and cultivating interpersonal connections as a class, putting students into small groups to promote peer-to-peer learning and help people feel less isolated, and to incorporate some hands-on elements so that not all learning activities take place on the screen.

“Remember that analog activities — sketching, walking, cooking, singing, etc. — will help you and your students not only to maintain your sanity but also to feel connected to the projects and meaningfully engaged in learning,” they write.