{"id":131736,"date":"2020-03-27T09:34:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T13:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=131736"},"modified":"2020-05-01T11:21:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T15:21:32","slug":"coming-attractions-brighten-bates-move-to-distance-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/03\/27\/coming-attractions-brighten-bates-move-to-distance-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates professors&#8217; humorous movie-trailer videos brighten the move to remote learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a thought for our times: \u201cThe best part of migrating a course online is making the trailer.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>The source of that statement is Andrew Kennedy, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. He made the comment on Twitter on March 20, as he posted a trailer \u2014 the cinematic variety, not the kind you tow \u2014 for his course \u201cMechanisms of Memory.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>Like many of his Bates colleagues and peers at other schools, Kennedy has been scrambling to move his courses and his interactions with students online as the COVID-19 outbreak has sent students home.<\/p>\r\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\r\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The best part of migrating a course online is making the trailer <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AcademicTwitter?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#AcademicTwitter<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/HONk8q14wa\">pic.twitter.com\/HONk8q14wa<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p>\u2014 Andrew J Kennedy (@Prof_AJKennedy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Prof_AJKennedy\/status\/1241071316599439365?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 20, 2020<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never really made a video for class, and I\u2019ve certainly never exclusively administered a course remotely,\u201d\u00a0 says Kennedy.<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s one thing to design a class to be a certain way, giving deep thought into how the students might enjoy being engaged with the material and with one another. But it\u2019s another thing entirely to abruptly shift that, and everyone participating in it, into this new virtual space.<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cI think I made it to demonstrate to the students and to myself that we can&#8217;t just keep doing what we did before.\u201d It&#8217;s a make-the-best-of-this attitude that reflects Bates\u2019 upbeat determination to keep the pedagogical momentum going.<\/p>\r\n<p>Kennedy\u2019s trailer, named for the course, racks up the laughs as the professor makes fun of his inexperience and discomfort with remote teaching. Inspired by Kennedy to make her own trailer, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene took the humor a step further.<\/p>\r\n<p>Titled <em>The Classroom Is Not Enough<\/em>, her promo for the course \u201cNeuroethics\u201d takes on the cinematic James Bond aesthetic (albeit substituting coffee for the British spy\u2019s martinis).<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cDon&#8217;t we need a chuckle right now?\u201d says Greene. &#8220;In all seriousness, I strongly believe in humor to rebuild the community in my class and to put students in a positive mindset moving forward.\u201d A researcher who studies how the brain makes sense of what we see, Greene is the principal investigator of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/08\/16\/bates-announces-3-97-million-national-science-foundation-grant-for-visual-database-project\/\">major project to create a vast Visual Experience Database<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #009779;\"><em>Video by Michelle Greene.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\r\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/REoCADGZXy0 \u00a0<\/p>\r\n<p>Kennedy agrees. \u201cI didn\u2019t even get a chance to say goodbye to my students,\u201d he says. \u201cThe rest of the semester is going to be hard on everyone, and therefore compassion, community, and continued intellectual engagement have to be at the center of whatever we do going forward.<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cBut with all that is wrong and omnipresent in our lives right now, I also desperately wanted to laugh and make fun of myself, and I thought the students might need that, too.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>Kennedy&#8217;s research includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2016\/12\/14\/bates-chemist-andrew-kennedy-pursues-therapies-for-rare-disorder\/\">important achievements in potential therapies<\/a> for the autism-spectrum disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome and the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/04\/invented-by-bates-students-molecule-bobcat339-has-pharmaceutical-promise\/\">synthesis of a new molecule, Bobcat339<\/a>, that has the potential to govern the function of genes related to memory loss and genes that aid and abet the spread of cancer.<\/p>\r\n<p>Along with Kennedy and Greene, a third Bates person has turned to the trailer format to advance her online teaching. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/03\/16\/in-one-goal-a-soccer-team-and-its-somali-players-bring-a-community-together\/\">Amy Bass \u201992<\/a>, author and professor of sports studies at Manhattanville College, did something similar, she says, to get her students \u201cpsyched for our migration to distance learning amidst the chaos that is COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\r\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I made a little something for my <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/sport?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#sport<\/a> studies students <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Mville_College?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Mville_College<\/a> &#8212; we go online tomorrow, and we are ready for this adventure. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/6vuDNnmJjr\">pic.twitter.com\/6vuDNnmJjr<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p>\u2014 Amy Bass (@bassab1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bassab1\/status\/1239297714766184452?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 15, 2020<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\r\n<p>Both Bates professors used basic technology that was close at hand to film the pieces \u2014 a laptop for Kennedy, who shot the piece entirely in his Dana Chemistry Hall office, and a smartphone for Greene, who combined new footage with sourced clips from her course. Both used iMovie to assemble the trailers.<\/p>\r\n<p>Making the trailer \u201cwas a blast. It was the first time I laughed in a week,\u201d Kennedy says, adding that after he posted it \u201ca bunch of former students reached out to make sure I wasn&#8217;t losing my mind.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cMy students have enjoyed it,\u201d says Greene. \u201cThey&#8217;ve especially latched on to my cat Tesla being the new class TA. On our Slack discussion channel, they have even created an emoji of him.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" class=\"wp-image-131755\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/Tesla-CROP-900x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/Tesla-CROP-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/Tesla-CROP-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/Tesla-CROP-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/Tesla-CROP.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/>\r\n<figcaption>Tesla is a new TA in the neuro program? (Courtesy of Michelle Greene)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Bates faculty pivot to online teaching, making &#8220;trailers&#8221; offers fun and catharsis. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":131807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,234,11009],"tags":[1682,12135,193],"class_list":["post-131736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-teaching-education","category-the-college","tag-biochemistry","tag-covid-19","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131736"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132804,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131736\/revisions\/132804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}