Case Study 1: Adapting to Remote Learning with Virtual Activities and Self-Care

In Case Study 1, Dorroll incorporated self-care and virtual, asynchronous activities into her introductory course. This course teaches students how to use the ethnographic method—participant observation, interviews, writing vignettes, and applying to ethical review boards such as the Institutional Review Board—and how to read ethnographic accounts focused on MENA communities. The course satisfies several general education, major/minor, and program requirements across the humanities and social sciences. A wide range of students from across campus, including students from all four levels—first year to senior—took the course. Dorroll had planned to incorporate a discussion in the course about the importance of self-care for ethnographers doing fieldwork before the pandemic.Footnote ⁵ However, because of the added stress and anxiety caused by COVID-19 (e.g., students abruptly required to move off campus and classes switching to remote learning), Dorroll included well-being activities for students while also teaching skills they could apply in the field as ethnographers. Therefore, the self-care pedagogy shifted from the theoretical to the practical and immediate, focusing on how students cope with the challenges of remote learning and create self-care routines.

For students who were now living at home, Dorroll adapted the preexisting virtual ethnography activity based on the documentary film, Divorce Iranian Style (Mir-Hosseini and Longinotto Reference Mir-Hosseini and Longinotto1998), by making it asynchronous and online. The chaotic situation made asynchronous work vital—students had extra time to do the assignments and did not have to log on at the same time because internet access and time zones varied for those now living off campus. To prepare for this activity, students first read assigned introductory articles on ethnography and specific texts about ethnographic fieldwork in the MENA region followed by several class lectures on the methodology of ethnography (before classes went online).

Students asynchronously watched the documentary film about divorce in Iran. By using the documentary to create a virtual ethnographic experience, Dorroll was able to transport the students, predominantly from the American South, to Tehran, Iran. As they watched the film, students were to imagine that they were in the courtroom doing participant observation. They watched a 10-minute segment of the documentary three times. In the first viewing, students focused on the visual cues and describing the scene. This also was an opportunity for them to listen to Persian without trying to read the translations. During the second viewing, Dorroll asked the students to read the English subtitles and focus their notes on describing the storylines. In the third viewing, students watched to add more to their notes and to be prepared to write a summary. At the end of the three viewings, they wrote a summary of their field notes for the Moodle blog, which all students could see to cultivate collective understanding and mimic a classroom discussion.

The next assignment involved reflections on the documentary, ethnography, and self-care during fieldwork. The students then wrote a reflection on the virtual ethnography assignment. This was a short 5-minute task that allowed students to say what they liked and did not like and what they learned from the assignment; their statements were uploaded to the Moodle blog, again available for the class to read.

A follow-up assignment asked students to read how ethnographers use self-care in the field (Tremblay Reference Tremblay2014) as well as readings on self-care and self-compassion during the pandemic. In addition, students had a “self-care day” in which they were instructed to do an activity that helped them to relax. Dorroll also offered students the opportunity to do an optional self-care activity to count toward one of their required blog posts. They could choose a well-being activity from the online Resilience Project Well-Being Exercises toolkit, which has several methodically guided well-being activities including meditations, breathing exercises, and gratitude letters (Wofford College 2018).

After the self-care day, students were asked to reflect on the Moodle blog: How do you as ethnography students sustain yourself in this class and within this semester as a whole? How important is self-care in this moment? The Moodle blog allowed students to create an online community and a space to vent. Their reflections illustrated both the difficulties they were experiencing by leaving campus mid-semester and the value of self-care in the classroom. Many students discussed how they were struggling with remote learning. For example, one student wrote:

Another student stated that:

Other students wrote about how being away from campus resulted in them being in an environment that was not supportive for learning. “I am in an environment that is not motivating for me, which only stresses me out. It is hard for me to get motivated to complete assignments and even hard for me to get motivated for self-care” (Student C). Many of the issues that students experienced in the pandemic are similar to the turmoil and uncertainty that an ethnographer experiences during fieldwork.

The effects of the pandemic on students’ stress levels and mental well-being varied depending on their circumstances. This student’s reflection highlights the challenges that some were facing in their personal life:

Multiple students acknowledged the benefits of the self-care day for their well-being. “Our self-care day was an amazing reminder of how important taking time for ourselves is. It gave me so much energy and happiness and made me decide to give myself more time like this in my life” (Student E). Another stated, “Being able to take a walk during the middle of the day helped to reduce the stress from both assignments and the uncertainty of the future. It is something I have placed in my self-care routine since returning home…and it has been something that has kept me centered and focused throughout this time” (Student F). Other students commented that they wished other classes focused on self-care because of its value in reducing their stress. The combination of virtual ethnography and self-care was a crucial adaptation during the spring of 2020.

Case Study 2: Self-Care and Reflective-Essay Activity

Due to the pandemic, Case Study 2 in Vanderhill’s “Revolution and Regime Change” course occurred under the combined conditions of online and in-person teaching. In contrast to Case Study 1, this course was an upper-level international affairs major course with students who were primarily juniors and seniors satisfying either international affairs or government major/minor requirements. The course covers a range of topics, including how authoritarian regimes use repression, torture, and executions to maintain power. In addition to scholarly readings on the topic, students watched one episode of the documentary series, The Dictator’s Playbook (Stevenson Reference Stevenson2019), which is a vivid and detailed account of the atrocities committed by twentieth-century dictators (e.g., Francisco Franco). They also read a current Human Rights Watch report about torture in Turkey. To explore how students manage the emotional and psychological elements of studying this topic and to investigate how self-care exercises may help them, there was a multipart assignment and discussion. After watching the documentary episode on their own, they also read an excerpt from Zartner’s (Reference Zartner2019) article that introduced them to the concepts of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization. After completing both tasks, students did one self-care exercise from the Resilience Project Well-Being Exercises toolkit (Wofford College 2018).

Based on their reflective essays, class discussion, and an in-class anonymous survey (conducted via a Zoom poll), most students expressed some experience with compassion fatigue and burnout. In response to the survey question, “Have you ever experienced burnout or compassion fatigue from reading/listening/watching the news or studying course material,” 90% responded yes. Multiple students in their reflective essay discussed how difficult and emotional it was for them to study about human rights atrocities. For example, one student wrote:

Another student reflected on how the pandemic restrictions (i.e., the campus was on lockdown during this assignment) made it more difficult to also be studying depressing topics:

Students also expressed how they valued learning about the concepts of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization because they realized they were not alone in their emotional reactions. Knowing about these concepts provided a theoretical framework to help in understanding their reactions (Cunningham Reference Cunningham2004, 308).

Although there is a growing awareness of the importance of self-care, it nevertheless is unusual to assign a self-care exercise as homework. Therefore, we asked students to reflect on their experiences with self-care in both their reflective essay and anonymously in the survey. In response to one survey question, slightly less than 50% of students said they practiced some form of self-care (e.g., meditation, yoga, or mindfulness). About 30% of the class discussed how doing the self-care exercise made them feel less stressed, more relaxed, and calmer. One student’s comment that “While meditating, I felt a sense of warmth and calmness within myself which helped me sleep better that evening!” is representative of what many expressed in their reflective essay. Only three out of 20 students found no benefit from doing the self-care exercise or struggled to complete it. During the in-class discussion, students overwhelmingly expressed support for having more conversations about the emotional toll of studying difficult topics and the value of self-care exercises.