At around 1:25 p.m. on April 7, students began streaming into the Zoom meeting for ECON 3120, Applied Econometrics – much as they used to stream into G76 Goldwin Smith Hall in person.
By the time Doug McKee, senior lecturer in economics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), began the class, 97 of the course’s 130 students had popped up onscreen – an impressive number, considering they knew the class would be recorded to watch later. And when McKee directed them into breakout rooms to solve a problem together, it worked.
“It went remarkably similar to how I’d hoped and planned it would,” McKee said. “I have a 27-inch screen, so it took a little bit of time to move everything around so I could see what I wanted to see. I have a colleague who said she felt like an airline pilot – you really do have quite the dashboard when you’re teaching these big classes.”