Long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced Caltech to shift to a model of remote learning, Adam Blank, teaching assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences, focused their research on new technologies and techniques with the potential to improve student comprehension and the quality of education. Nevertheless, even Blank was not fully prepared for the whirlwind experience of moving their courses entirely online last March.

"In the spring, I was just trying to survive," they said. "I didn't put much thought into how to do a great job. It was more like ‘I need to get through this,' because at that time, of course, we didn't realize it was going to be this long."

When fall term arrived, Blank concentrated on making classes work remotely and helping students overcome the issues inherent in being away from campus. "They are doing a fantastic job connecting and supporting students through their online courses," says Cassandra Horii, director of the Caltech Center for Teaching, Learning & Outreach (CTLO). The secret of Blank's success, Horii says, starts with meeting students where they are and not being afraid to fail. Said one of Blank's students last fall: "This class lives up to its reputation in terms of difficulty, but Adam is hands down the best instructor I've had at Caltech. They put in a monstrous amount of time to make sure students in this course were well supported (not the least of which was offering a ton of personal meeting times throughout the week), and their concern about students' success was clearly demonstrated in the way they ran this course."

For winter term 2021, Blank is teaching CS 2, Introduction to Programming Methods, a popular course for majors and non-majors. "It's less about learning to program in a particular language and more about learning how to think as a computer scientist might think," they said. Blank gives each CS 2 lecture over Zoom twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon (Pacific time), to accommodate students who are dispersed across time zones. Blank records only one of the two, having found that not recording a session makes it feel more informal and encourages more students to speak up and interact.

Blank's next challenge was to find ways to recreate the informal parts of teaching, such as small-group conversations and office-hours consultations. Blank tried to use the work collaboration platform Slack in the fall but found much greater success when they incorporated Discord, the communication platform the students already used and loved.