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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

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