Skip to main content

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment:
[NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality]

  • If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lecture: Continue to deliver your lecture synchronously (at your regular class time) via screen sharing in Zoom*. You can then use the Zoom polling feature to ask the clicker questions, or use an online survey (google form, Polleverywhere, etc.) and paste the survey link into the chat box for students to access (less useful if you want to track individual responses). You can also have students respond to the questions in Blackboard / Canvas. These same tools work for other formative assessments (like minute papers) as well.
    Note: It is good practice to have a space in your LMS for each session, where you can gather together all readings, slides, notes, links to associated discussion boards / surveys / quizzes. Provide students with the direct link at the beginning of the Zoom session (via the chat box) so they have it open during the class. 
  • If you use whiteboards to write out a lot of things during class (e.g., drawing graphs, working through equations): Use Zoom's whiteboard and annotation features. What's particularly cool is that you can have students do the writing too (and I actually find it somewhat easier to get students to annotate a screen in Zoom than to get them to come up to a physical whiteboard in a classroom). 
  • If you have students work in small groups during class: Try Zoom's breakout rooms function. You can either assign students randomly (just tell Zoom how many rooms to create and it will automatically place participants in rooms) or group them individually (tell Zoom who to put in which room). You can make 'announcements' that show up in each room (for example to tell students you will be bringing them back together in 30 seconds) and you can pop into any room you want. If I were teaching a TBL class this semester, this is definitely how I would handle the team time. 
  • If you have full-class discussions: You can try to use breakout rooms for this as well, to at least encourage students to have real discussion, just in smaller groups, but I suspect that might be frustrating if you are used to truly full-class discussions. So this might be best converted to online discussion boards instead: pose your discussion question, assign a subset of students to respond by a certain time, then a different subset of students must comment. Just be sure that you have a clear rubric for how those posts will be graded (you may be able to make some simple adjustments to the rubric you use for your in-class discussions which I'm sure you must already have, right?).
  • If you have students do class presentations: Students can still do their presentations synchronously online, using Zoom. But you should also consider your learning goals - why are you asking students to do presentations in the first place? Unless you teach a communications class where the point is for students to develop oral presentation skills, many presentations could probably be replaced by some other asynchronous format (e.g., a paper, a video, a mixed media project) that achieves similar learning goals. If part of the point of doing presentations is to ensure other students in the class hear the content, then any alternative format could be similarly shared through the LMS. 
What am I missing?

* Again, do not assume your students have computers and sufficiently stable internet access at home. Find out what accommodations your campus has for those students who typically use campus computer labs.

Comments

  1. Thank you, Jennifer - these tips are super useful!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. More tips about how to accommodate students without computer or stable Wifi access would be helpful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu...

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...

What was your high school economics experience like?

As I mentioned in my last post , I am asking my Econ for Teachers students to reflect on their reading by responding to discussion prompts. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to share my thoughts on those issues here and see if anyone wants to chime in. For this week, the students were asked to read the California and national content standards , an article by Mark Schug and others about why social science teachers dread teaching economics and how to overcome the dread, an article by William Walstad on the importance of economics for understanding the world around us and making better personal decisions (with some evidence on the dismal state of economic literacy in this country), and another article by Walstad on the status of economic education in high schools (full citations below). The reflection prompt asks the students to then answer the following questions: What was your high school econ experience like? What do you remember most from that class? How do...