Michelle’s online learning musings…

(I’ve been teaching online since 1997: big classes, required classes, hard classes, and the students generally think I’m pretty good despite that. My dissertation and the first 10 years of my research agenda were about online teaching & online learning community. Here are some idiosyncratic but based-in-research-and-praxis tips from me, personally, if you’re trying to ramp up quickly and/or unexpectedly.)

Ground rules for doing this in a hurry:

  1. If someone has offered to help you, take them up on it.
  2. Don’t fret about the details now; get going and punch problems later.
  3. You are the expert in your content, that’s why it’s your class: do what’s best for you and your students to get through the content, the objectives, and the semester/term!

Ramping up an LMS site quickly:

Triage (first tier):

  1. Post the syllabus & make the syllabus the “home” or “landing” page for the course.
  2. Set up a discussion thread/board called “faculty office” or similar; “subscribe” to it.
  3. Post an announcement that you are here and, if using synchronous delivery, include the link to the site (Zoom room, Collaborate room, etc.) you’ll be using for the synchronous class sessions.
  4. Make sure you find the “send a message to all students” option (in Canvas, this is in the Canvas Inbox).
  5. Make sure the site is available to students (in Canvas, this is “publishing” it).

Now you can start the second-tier stuff:

  1. Setting up the gradebook with assignment deadlines & grade values.
  2. Adding other focused discussion boards (Q&A for assignments, café for informal conversation, topical discussions).

And tertiary items come next:

  1. Adding your own profile picture.
  2. Adding in rubrics for graded items.
  3. …and so forth, as needs arise.

Synchronous sessions:

  1. Make everything as lightweight and low-bandwidth as you can: people will be attending by phone. No images in the slides unless mission-critical!
  2. Don’t use video unless absolutely necessary and dictated by the learning objectives/outputs; if video is necessary, consider a way to move it asynchronously into your LMS by posting recordings there.
  3. Set ground rules: Everybody mute your mic unless you are talking! No video unless you have to! If you want the mic, raise your hands! It’s okay to participate in the chat during lecture, but only if it’s relevant (questions, links/citations to sources of fact, real-life examples).
  4. Make sure you CAN and DO watch the chat while you are talking so you can incorporate that into what you are saying. This takes practice but has a huge payoff in making the classroom a warm and inclusive space.
  5. Breaks! an online class is not like a f2f class — it’s harder to pay attention and breaks are good.
  6. Lots of pauses for questions and feedback: ask all students to enter a “!” or hit the Thumbs Up icon or some other cheerful acknowledgement of presence and understanding. It’s vital that this is an affirmative option “Give me a Bang ! if you are good for me to move on” rather than a negative option “Any questions? No? Well, seeing none, I’ll move on.” If you see a lot, you’re good to continue (tell those few who are not feeling confident that they can ask on the discussion board in the LMS or email you, don’t leave them hanging, but don’t hold up the whole class if everyone else has indicated they are good to go) ; if you only see a few, you need to re-explain!
  7. Use virtual field trips where students go off by themselves to to a guided activity someplace else online (for example, students go off to explore how disambiguation works in Wikipedia, or how name control works in IMDB), then come back and discuss what they found/encountered.
  8. If you’re using Zoom: ignore Zoom’s little lack-of-attention clocks — they go off even if the student is just in another application taking notes on your lecture/class
  9. Allow alternatives such as asynchronous discussions in the LMS…

Asynchronous discussions:

  1. This is an opportunity to have richly collaborative learning without the onus of group outputs and shared grades!
  2. Groups are great for this, as long as no one person’s mark depends on anyone else’s performance. Bigger groups can work very well (I’ve gone as big as 17 with success).
  3. Do not use “discussion prompts” where every student is responding to the same questions(s) and are then expected to “discuss.” Instead, consider alternative such as…
  • Giving them a wicked problem and asking them to share techniques for solving it
  • Having them contribute and discuss things related to a larger output they are working on (share and discuss sources for a paper, creating a shared bibliography; share thesis statements and constructively improve their clarity and purpose)

Community building:

  1. In that first class, unless you have a HUGE number of students, let everyone “introduce themselves” by video/audio/text (just this once, and depending on their bandwidth — and yes, this is contradictory to advice I gave above to “never use video” — which is another key point: maintain a VERY high tolerance for ambiguity!) — I like name, pronouns, and where they’re joining from (I explicitly tell them to share location only if they are comfortable doing so). Even if your students already know each other, this gives them a chance also to test the software/system :-).
  2. Stress is high. Allow a little bit of chit-chat and then enforce a bit of structure as that will likely add comfort.
  3. Group work in class would be good, if your class is structured that way. Zoom, for example, supports breakout rooms — not well, but it does. The chance to talk in smaller groups oriented around a specific task will help form community also.
  4. Add an asynchronous component via Canvas discussions, if that works for your class; that way people who struggle with the pace and/or technology of the synchronous class can still be a part of the team, but they can’t be lone voices there either, so if you add asynchronous options, make sure they have someone to respond whether it’s you or other students.
  5. After the first class, use structured icebreakers for community building — at the beginning or in the middle of class — but be sure they are accessible/equitable (e.g., “what is something you recently read/watched/listened to?” instead of “what book are you reading right now?”; “what is a great place you have been or a place you’d really like to go?” instead of “where did you go on your last vacation?”)

Other resources:

Vanessa Dennen: “What to expect as colleges and universities move classes online amid coronavirus fears: 4 questions answered” https://theconversation.com/what-to-expect-as-colleges-and-universities-move-classes-online-amid-coronavirus-fears-4-questions-answered-133334

Rebecca Barrett-Fox: “Please do a bad job of putting your courses online” https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/