Teaching During a Pandemic
As COVID ramped up last spring, in-person classes came to an abrupt halt. Many of us had just a few days to transition into online teaching, and very little (if any) formal training. In fact, most of us had never even taken an online course ourselves. We lacked any model for constructing our courses in the online environment, and we did the best that we could to just teach our students something… anything!
We know that many of you have been in limbo, and trying to prepare for this year without knowing whether you will be in a virtual, hybrid, or in-person environment. Here in the math department at the University of Minnesota, we’ve been preparing for online teaching since June, and some of us have been teaching in an online/hybrid environment for years. We’d like to use the MathCEP platform to share our experiences and resources with you. This blog post is just the beginning.
In this post, two postdocs at the University of Minnesota, Alexis Johnson and Kris Hollingsworth, will be sharing their online teaching successes, failures, and future plans in hopes of sparking ideas for you to implement in your own classes. This semester, Alexis will be teaching a math course for non-math majors. This summer, Kris taught an accelerated, 5-week long Calculus II course consisting primarily of engineering majors. Both classes will be/were held as synchronous classes via Zoom.
Challenge 0 (Expectations):
we can expect from students. Likewise, students don’t know what to expect from their instructors and a course in the online format. Luckily, we as instructors can control the latter-- by making students aware of expectations, and by communicating our standards to students clearly, early, and often, we can mitigate many of the following common issues that we address below. We can even put a positive spin on the situation-- this new challenge creates an opportunity to establish new classroom norms with students which can be carried into the classroom when we eventually return to traditional settings!
Challenge 1a (Lack of Traditional Visual Cues):
You’ve probably been in an online classroom and found yourself speaking to a screen of black thumbnails! It feels like you’re talking to a brick wall! Are the students even there? Are they following along? The lack of feedback from students adds many challenges to our everyday teaching, and quite honestly, takes away a lot of the joy associated with teaching.
While we cannot reasonably require students to turn their cameras on during class (some students may not have cameras, others may not feel comfortable sharing images of their home life, and some may not feel “camera-ready”), here we discuss ways to encourage students to keep their video on!
A few hours before class starts, send an email to students requesting that they turn their video on in class that day. Keep this email personal-- let them know that you understand that it may not be easy and they may not feel comfortable, but if they can keep their camera on, it will help to build community, help you control the pace of class, and you would really appreciate being able to get to know them as humans, with a face, rather than just a name on a screen :-D. This fall, I will tell my students to think of this as “getting dressed up and ready to come to class, but as an added bonus you can keep your pajama pants on!” Be sure to give students adequate time to get ready, and give them some flexibility in determining what is “presentable” (just like in-person classes!). Students may even find an added benefit in “getting ready” in that it adds structure and distinguishes class time from their homelife-- this can be very difficult in these times.
From the start of class, pretend that everyone has their video turned on! Ask students to respond to you with visual cues like “give me a thumbs up if you agree”, “look up at the screen when you are finished working on this example”, etc. Explain to students that you will use these cues to monitor the pace of class. This will help set the tone for the entire semester.
Zoom and some other platforms have a virtual background feature that allows users to display an image as their background. To avoid too much distraction and keep things appropriate, I would not suggest letting students choose their own background, but you may consider giving them a “bank” of backgrounds to choose from. If students can choose from fun backgrounds and express themselves, they may even want to turn their camera on.
Challenge 1b (Lack of Traditional Visual Cues):
During the first semester online, we quickly realized how much we rely on visual cues from our students to regulate the speed in which we cover material. We hope that the above strategies will encourage students to keep their cameras on, but it is still incredibly difficult to read body language in the online setting, and it is nearly inevitable that some students will keep their video turned off. What can we do to get a feel for students’ understanding, and how can we ensure that students behind a blank thumbnail are still following along?
Make students aware of the various ways to give feedback early on in the semester. Will you allow students to unmute themselves and answer questions? Will you tell them if/when this is acceptable? Do you want them to use the chat? Will the chat be public or private? (Some students may not feel comfortable posting in the chat if they think that everyone can read their questions). Should they use things like the thumbs up/thumbs down/raise hand features in Zoom? We recommend a blend of these methods so students can use the method which is most comfortable for them.
We like to use something called a chat blast. This is where you ask students to type a message into the chat, but wait to hit enter. You wait enough time for everyone to think of an answer, and then instruct everyone to hit enter at the same time. Again, you may want to set your chat options to private-- we have found that students are more likely to participate if you remove the chance that they accidentally post their response to the entire class.
During the last 3 minutes of class, have students fill out minute questions on a Google form. You may ask them things like “what is the most interesting thing that you took away from today’s class?” and “What is something that we talked about today that you are still confused about?”. After class, you can quickly skim through these comments to get a better feel for students’ understanding.
Challenge 2 (Participation during Lecture):
Maintaining student engagement and focus is often challenging in the classroom, but a constant digital filter between student and teacher, and the entire internet at the students fingertips throughout every class session, adds another layer of difficulty.. Add to that how draining it can be sitting in front of Zoom for many hours each day, and you have a recipe for disaster. Here are some strategies that may help keep students focused and engaged during remote instruction lectures:
Take a short break. It’s amazing what just standing up and stretching can do!
Ask frequent questions and pause long enough for students to answer. This can be difficult and might take some practice, as it may sometimes feel like ‘wasting’ class time, but if you continue to remind students of different feedback methods, and use the techniques above for encouraging student participation, you may be surprised by how much engagement you can get online!
Vary the method of presentation. Kris has sent links to short youtube videos and followed up with a group discussion. We have paused instruction to give students five minutes to work through an example on their own. We have used chat blast and moved students into breakout rooms for group work (discussed further in Challenge 4).
Challenge 3 (Establishing a Personal Connection and Comfortable Environment):
Last semester, we had the opportunity to establish personal connections with students before going online, but this semester is going to be very different. We are now getting a new cohort of students that will only know us as a face on a screen. With this setup, how can we maintain our roles as educators that extend beyond sharing content?
Take some time at the start of classes to do a few icebreakers. Kris used ice breaker activities this summer-- admittedly (especially in a short semester) it feels daunting and like you are wasting valuable class time, but he found that the benefits far outweighed the time cost!
Find opportunities to use small writing assignments (i.e., 1-minute questions, reflective essays) to obtain insight into student thinking and their individual situations. These reflections can extend beyond course content, and you can allow your students to share how they are feeling as human beings (not just students). This summer, Kris tried to give some short, personal responses to some reflections each week, and found that this helped to establish individual connections.
In larger courses, or during busy times, it might be impossible to respond to every student depending on how many classes you have, but you can bring up (non-personal) things during lecture, "many students mentioned they enjoyed _____” or “many of you said that you’re nervous about_____” --- this will let them know you read and considered their essays without needing to respond to all of them.
Challenge 4 (Course Community, and Group work)
During class, you’ve probably used a teaching strategy like “think, pair, share,” told your students to “turn to your neighbor and discuss X,” or simply had students complete a worksheet together. In a traditional classroom format, it takes just seconds to initiate conversations or collaboration between students. We cannot replicate this in the online format, but can we find an alternative? Or maybe even something better?! By now, most of us are familiar with breakout rooms, so we will share some challenges that we’ve encountered, and mistakes that we’ve made with using breakout rooms. We will also share some alternative methods of getting students to work together.
In an in-person setting, we’ve gotten pretty good at supervising multiple group conversations at once. We can detect when one group member is dominating a conversation or if a group gets stuck. But, when we assign students to breakout rooms online, we suddenly lose all connection with them and can only be with one group at a time. How can we monitor their progress?! You may find it helpful to set up a Google document for each group to contribute to as they discuss. This way, you pull up each Google doc in a separate window and follow along with each group in real-time.
One of the biggest mistakes we have made is putting students into breakout rooms too early. After posing a question, we often immediately send students into groups to discuss. But, oftentimes, some students take longer to process the question than others, and one student ends up dominating the group discussion while others are just trying to keep up. Instead, before sending students into groups, give everyone adequate time to think about the question, and send their preliminary thoughts to you in a private chat. Then, send them into breakout rooms, and when they return, ask them to message their final thoughts to you, again in a private chat. You can later download your chat and read through these responses to monitor individual progress and understanding.
If breakout rooms are not an option for you, how can you get students to work together? There are many online resources to promote collaboration, but Alexis has taken a liking to Perusall.com. On this site, students are grouped together and can annotate on a posted PDF, worksheet, or section of a textbook. Perusall monitors each student’s active reading time and discussion contribution. As an instructor, you can read each group’s discussion threads. You may also assign group projects that require students to meet via an online video platform outside of class time. While you cannot monitor these meetings, you may ask them to record and report their meeting times, along with their and other student’s roles in completing the project.
Challenge(s) 5-infinity (The Unexpected)
The very nature of this challenge means we can not tell you what it will look like, only that it will occur. During Kris’ summer course, a student missed 2 days while seeking COVID testing after a possible exposure, and after a tropical storm hit, 40-50% of his class lost power for several days right before a scheduled midterm! In addition to the inherent struggles of working from home (where students may have to share a family computer with 5 other siblings, have to babysit while attending class, etc.), you will encounter many unexpected challenges that could affect any number of your students. Here, we outline a few strategies to reduce stress and anxiety for everyone involved when these challenges arise.
Communication is a two-way street. Encourage students to make you aware of any potential issues as soon as possible. Be open to creative solutions to solve them, and ask the student what they would do in your shoes! Oftentimes, students will come up with better adjustments than we would, and better yet, they will feel ownership over and are more likely to feel comfortable with their solution.
Have regular check-ins with students. Kris likes to use Stop, Start, Keep, which prompts students to complete prompts in relation to the course format. Sometimes the responses may surprise you-- In Kris’ summer course a surprising but common response was “keep, but reduce group work to allow for more lecture time”.
Have any questions about the ideas above? Want to share your own experience or planned strategies? Have a problem you would like to brainstorm a solution for? Let us know down in the comments below!
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