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Quizizz

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I have a Facebook group page for my oboe students where we share interesting videos, articles, and funny memes. It helps foster studio community. 

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I have a Facebook group page for my oboe students where we share interesting videos, articles, and funny memes. It helps foster studio community. 

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Give them a few minutes to write responses, right?

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Give them a few minutes to write responses, right?

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How would you suggest folks take notes while still being able to WATCH and hear Zoom

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Gay, you are expanding my horizons ! I will use each of these tools (padlet, flipgrid, GoReact) in addition to holding synchronous Zoom meetings dedicated to discussion (class as a whole, and breakout rooms) which is what I had been using (in the spring)
. I really like the idea of variation and mixing it up. As you have pointed out, each of the tools can achieve different kinds of engagement.

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I like to be online early and visit with students before we officially start class.

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I like to be online early and visit with students before we officially start class.

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Zoom breakout rooms!

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This is nice wallpaper for the geography course.

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Teaching face-to-face presents many challenges, not least of which is the task of ensuring that all students feel belonging and have equal chances to thrive regardless of their abilities, identities, or perspectives. The online teaching environment suffers from all of the same obstacles to this and more, especially when not planned or executed with care.

Online teaching can restrict the interpersonal interactions necessary for building trusting and accountable learning communities in which students can feel more belonging and care. It can limit the kind of hands-on, interactive, and problem-based learning that many student groups prefer, particularly those who are underrepresented in the academy. It also can require higher levels of self-directed learning skills, as well as technological resources and self-efficacy, that students do not share equally. This, in turn, can lead to significant engagement and performance gaps for a variety of groups of students, especially in courses that require extensive applied, experiential content or intensive instructor-student interaction (Xu and Jaggars 2014). As Brooke Ackerly, professor of political science, states, "it is hard not to take into my heart each of my student's individual challenges, some of which are heart wrenching."

In the effort to share stories from faculty experimenting with online teaching in the wake of higher education's social distancing measures, the Center for Teaching asked several faculty about their approaches to teaching inclusively in their newly online courses. Their responses reveal much about the challenges, and potential solutions to them.

Lily Claiborne, director of undergraduate studies and senior lecturer in Earth and environmental sciences, discusses her efforts to learn about her students' difficulties learning online, to flexibly offer them the personalized support they require, and to provide accessible and varied content for students with different abilities or technological resources:

"What I've quickly realized as I've worked with my students remotely over the past few weeks is that each student is being impacted by this transition and these events differently and that this changes over time. Thus, their ability to engage with their coursework is constantly changing, as both practical and emotional conditions change. For these reasons, the key mode underlying my approach to our work is communication and support. I polled students at the start of the remote transition, and I've polled them weekly since then. I find that their responses regarding what kind of class structure they can best access has changed over the weeks, as has their confidence in their ability to engage with the course in a meaningful way. This allows me to approach each week with an eye for what is manageable and appropriate for the students that week.

"While most of my students can or will strive to do whatever I ask (engage in live Zoom sessions for our full classtime, for example), there is always at least one student who cannot. It is important to me that all my students have an equal opportunity to engage with our course in these times, and so this is not okay. While full live Zoom classes are perhaps the easiest and most fulfilling approach for me personally, I am choosing not to leave that one student out. Instead, I record shorter lectures for students to watch in advance, and we have shorter (optional but encouraged) live Zoom sessions during class time for brief check ins, lecture Q&A, discussions, and homework help. Thus far, this has engaged the most students and according to the students, has been the most accessible. I'll keep asking, and keep adjusting as we all grow into these times."

Shaul Kelner, associate professor of sociology and Jewish studies, although not teaching in this, his sabbatical year, has been active in encouraging his fellow faculty to consider the emotional needs of students shifting to online courses. This is something he sees from a unique perspective as the parent of two college-age children with many experiences to share, particularly about unfairness in online assessments. He is particularly concerned with student anxiety and potential violations of academic integrity, something discussed at greater length here by Thomas Tobin, and here by William Sanderson:

"There is no technical fix. As a parent of two college students, seeing this play out in my own home, I'd say this: Empathy is crucial, and professors are structurally positioned to be ignorant about how students are actually experiencing this. Talk to your friends and family who currently have kids in college, and ask what it's like to have them home and taking classes online. Better yet, talk to your friends and family who are themselves college students at other universities - kids who call you by first name and who don't think of you by your title and who you are not in authority relationship with. Ask them how things are going. They will tell you truths that your own students would never tell you, and you will hear them with ears that will be more inclined to the empathy that professors need at this moment.

"As an example, I learned from a friend/family member student from different university, comparable to Vanderbilt, that students there were expecting cheating to be rampant on an exam in a large pre-med general science lecture. The professor had assigned an online, closed book test, with no proctor. Students had been talking openly among themselves about their plans to treat the test as if it were open note. These were pre-med students already jittery about their grades and convinced that this class was crucial for their future prospects. It was a rational cost-benefit analysis. They believed there was no chance of getting caught. Self-interest trumped ethics.

"When the student sought my advice, they were upset about the potential for wide-spread cheating to bust the curve. They felt like they were in a Catch-22. 'I'm not going to cheat, but I don't want to get a lower grade because I am the one being honest while most of the rest are using their textbooks and notes.' I suggested approaching the professor with the concerns. The student felt uncomfortable doing that. In the end, the student did not cheat. Many others did. The student remains upset at the unfairness of the situation.

"Takeaways? The responsibility to ensure a fair testing environment still rests with the faculty. Don't shift that burden onto the students. That adds to the unfairness. Be aware that the incentive to cheat is heightened by two related factors right now: 1) the ease, 2) students' anger at the disruption to their learning. They may feel justified in cheating to 'retake' the grades that they think are rightfully theirs. Don't put the honest students in the situation of having to decide whether to report, or to be stuck in the Catch-22 of 'cheat or be cheated.'"

Sarah Suiter, assistant professor of the practice of human and organizational development, is highly attentive to fairness given the radically different and unequal learning environments her students now occupy at home, and models how we can be more communicative in our course assignments and interactions to accommodate their unique needs.

"One of the most difficult tensions to navigate as a faculty member in general (even before teaching on-line) is that fairness is related to, but not the same as 'sameness.' Certainly, when some students are allowed accommodations (especially when they are informal) the differences in treatment can easily be interpreted as 'unfair.' So in the classroom, and now on-line, I've tried to be attentive to 'fairness' and how it's different from (but related to, at least in interpretation) 'sameness' and also, along what dimensions it operates...for example, if students have different living situations (which are now also their school work situations), different access to technology, different temperaments with which they respond to difficulty, different skills and resources for transitioning in the midst of extreme change, and different caregiving responsibilities (just to name a few), what does it look like to set fair classroom expectations, fair assignment expectations, and fair grading practices? Similarly, what is a fair expectation of student contribution and engagement...for each individual student?

"I know I don't have the answer to these questions, but here is how I've tried to navigate them:

I asked students what they needed from our remaining 4 weeks of class (moral support? Different course material? Same course material?) and allowed that to shape our class plan for the rest of the semester...we also continue to revisit it by asking, 'is this still serving our needs?' when we meet each week.

I reduced our 'in class' time and asked students if we could all agree - during that reduced time - to be as attentive and present to one another as possible. So, as much as possible, no emailing, chatting, folding laundry, or whatever else one might do while attending class on-line. There is, of course, no way to check on this (minus the laundry piece, perhaps, as we can see one another), but the hope is that by everyone participating in designing the qualities of this space (how long should we meet? What distractions do we need to put aside?) we are all more likely to comply.

In one class, I asked students to send me a proposal for the remaining assignments and how they wanted to handle them...they were free to propose something different if it suited their interests as a learner better - the expectation was that they still needed to demonstrate and create learning related to the practice of Community Development, but - because this particular class was built to accompany practicum placements, most of which are no longer happening - I wanted to students to do work that was meaningful to them."

"Also, this is not about fairness to students so much as it is fairness to myself, but I have found the 'lower stakes' narrative that has accompanied this particular moment has been generative for my teaching. Unlike teaching in a classroom, in which I often find the messages to be that excellence is the only acceptable standard, the messaging around the rapid switch to on-line teaching is that there will be mistakes and missteps. As someone who is absolutely my own worst critic, this shift in thinking about my teaching has been really liberating. I continue to work hard, prepare as much as I did before (possibly more), and be thoughtful about how to create a good learning environment...but I seem to be beating myself up less when that doesn't happen (as it inevitably does not, at all times, either in the classroom or on-line)."

In confronting the challenges of inclusive and equitable online teaching, each class and instructor merits its own approach, but here are a few principles from these and other stories you may find helpful:

Communicate openly and often with all students about their and your needs.

Students of less privilege will be at greater risk of disengagement and less likely to persist, so reaching out and providing support is vital.

Collaboratively define new models of teaching and learning with your students, while being faithful to the goals and approaches of your course.

Be flexible and adaptable in redesigning course assignments and learning experiences that accommodate diverse learners and their needs, particularly those who need to learn asynchronously.

See this as an opportunity to experiment with new course design elements such as creative writing or multimedia assignments, as well as innovative interaction via synchronous (e.g., virtual breakout rooms) and asynchronous (e.g., discussion boards, blogs) modes. (See CFT director Derek Bruff's recent blog post for some ideas.)

Be attentive to, and supportive of, students confronting unique challenges of connectivity, distraction, time zone, abilities, international standing, resources, etc. and how you might accommodate their equitable participation in all aspects of the course. Leverage all online resources to offer the support necessary to make online learning easier - guidance for assignments, technological support (for connectivity, navigating course management systems, virtual classroom/Zoom usage, etc), how to access existing campus resources such as the Writing Studio or library support, financial support available through the university, and others.

As in any course, ensure the goals, structures, and assignments for the course are clearly articulated, well-integrated, well-planned, and easy to access.

However dazzling the technology may be, if it is not easy to use it will be ineffective and a distraction from the goals of your course.

If you would like to talk with a Center for Teaching consultant about your approaches to inclusive and equitable teaching online, you can schedule a consultation via Zoom with members of our senior staff or graduate fellows. Just email cft@vanderbilt.edu to get started.
References

Tobin, T.J. (2020). " Student anxiety in uncertain times." Inside Higher Ed. March 25 th.

Xu, D. & S. S. Jaggars. (2014). "Performance gaps between online and face-to-face courses: Differences across types of students and academic subject areas." The Journal of Higher Education, 85(5): 633-59.

Tags: equity, Inclusive Teaching, Online Education, online teaching

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Inclusive and Equitable Teaching Online. by Joe Bandy, CFT assistant director Teaching face-to-face presents many challenges, not least of which is the task of ensuring that all students feel belonging and have equal chances to thrive regardless of their abilities, identities, or perspectives.

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Attendance policy - sent via email

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Expectations and Considerations for Online Teaching at Concordia (send via email)

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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Synchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging Students

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Online courses are increasingly holding synchronous sessions. Here’s how to increase engagement, participation, and accountability during virtual meetings.

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Introduction

You've built engagement into every corner of your online course. You've got ways for students to interact with you, the instructor, through video and audio, assignment feedback, and discussion posts. Students interact with each other in large group discussions and small group projects.

Don't stop there! Even with a robust engagement strategy in place, some students in online programs may still feel disconnected from their instructors. One way to combat this is through the use of synchronous sessions.

I know what you're thinking. How will working students have the time to join a sync session every week? It is important to respect the time commitments of adult students, but it is also critical to reach all of the students in your class, including those who thrive on face-to-face interaction. Read on to learn how you can accomplish both.

Cultivate Active Learning

It can be tempting to turn a classroom lecture into a webinar or live video conference lecture in your course. Go with what you know, right? Actually, there is lots of evidence that active learning trumps lecturing when it comes to student performance. That means long slideshows or screening videos during synchronous sessions are going the way of the dinosaur.

So what can you do as an alternative to lecture? Here are a few ideas:

Field question from students. Why not hold an introductory Q&A session near the beginning of the quarter so that you can field student questions about the syllabus and course structure?

Screenshare to demonstrate tasks or navigate documents. There are some tasks that are easier to show than to tell. Share your screen to give students a peek behind the curtain.

Ask guest speakers to join your class. One reason many adult students pursue a degree is to network with their instructors and peers. You can make the most of this ambition by inviting guest speakers to join your class for a synchronous session. You may consider inviting other professionals in your field or alumni of the program.

Plan an activity. Make sure that your students have a reason to show up. A sync session with a nebulous purpose will likely be underattended. Instructional Technologist William Guth suggests structuring the time spent in the sync session with an agenda, and then announcing it in advance. If you promote it for at least a week prior to the session, "those who can't make it will have an incentive to review the recording," he says.

Keep in mind that open hours typically don't work well. Instructional Technologists in our office have observed that faculty who hold open office hours via synchronous session (e.g. all Monday evenings from 6-9pm CST) often get a low student response. There is often a Q&A discussion for high level questions, and personal questions are more likely to be directed to the faculty member by e-mail.

Ask students to prepare in advance. Instructional Technologist Jackie Wickham-Smith suggests assigning preparation activities in her blog post, "Maximizing Your Synchronous Sessions Part 2." That may include pre-reading or an activity like a QQTP, where students prepare a question, quotation, and talking point for the session.

Invite interaction and active participation. Beyond information delivery, encourage a conversation. Invite students to respond to you using the chat and audio features. While not all students are comfortable sharing webcam video, make sure that students have the opportunity to "sound off" throughout the session by giving informal polls for opinion ("What do you think? Are we on the same page?") and understanding ("Am I going too fast? Does this make sense?").

Flip It Around

To make sync sessions even more engaging, you can ask students to guide the conversation as part of your assessment plan for the course.

Have students take the lead. Learning Designer Elizabeth Lemke suggests using sync sessions to "deliver group and individual presentations," and Lindsey Mercer recommends "[having] your students create something that they will demonstrate or present" in her 2017 article for the University of South Florida, " Conducting a Successful Live (Synchronous) Session with Ease." If cultivating presentation skills and long-distance collaboration-a critical 21st-century workplace competency-are prioritized in your course- and module-level objectives, presenting synchronously can ensure that students have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in an authentic way.

Hold sessions at the request of students. Use your syllabus policies to invite students to request sessions on specific topics ("pinch points" that they are having difficulty with) or at hot-button moments, before a big exam or the week before final projects are due. This ad hoc technique is less time-consuming than holding a regular session each week, and since they are more targeted to student interests they are likely to be better attended.

Anticipate the needs of students with disabilities. Students with disabilities, including those who are blind or low vision, or who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, may find it difficult to participate in synchronous sessions. If your course will involve optional or required synchronous sessions, and especially if students will be presenting, follow these steps to ensure that you meet their needs from day 1.

Give students a choice about how they would like to present. If students have the opportunity to give a live presentation (to an individual, small group, or the full class) OR record a video OR record a podcast, it is likely that they will select a method that works for them. Then they won't even need to request an accommodation.

Call out synchronous sessions in the syllabus. Then students with disabilities will understand what it required of them and be able to request accommodations early on.

Connect students with accessibility resources. Ensure that your syllabus includes (at least) the AccessibleNU recommended syllabus statement to encourage their accommodation requests.

Think About Logistics

When you are planning to hold a synchronous session, it's not enough to know what you will do in the session. You must also be comfortable using videoconferencing software, which will almost certainly include troubleshooting with students. Consider these logistics before you begin.

Practice, practice, practice. Get to know the ins-and-outs of the software. How do you share (and mute) audio and video for yourself? For others? How will you monitor the chat whilst also sharing your screen? Call in from your phone and from your computer, switching back and forth. This fluency will be appreciated if the call drops for some reason.

If you need a refresher on Blue Jeans, take a Northwestern Information Technology workshop.

Give students the opportunity to practice. Instructional Technologist Jackie Wickham-Smith suggests allowing students to test the technology prior to the first session. "If you are using Blue Jeans for synchronous sessions, students can have a test meeting with a Blue Jeans representative. During the test meeting, the representative will assist the student with any necessary troubleshooting to ensure their audio and video are functioning prior to the meeting," she writes in her blog post, "Maximizing Your Synchronous Sessions: Part 1."

Stick around. Join the call early to field access questions and stay on the call late to answer any follow-up questions.

Compose your environment. Think about how you will appear on screen. Ensure that the lighting is clear, not dark or over-bright. Dress as you want to be perceived: serious, laid-back, quirky. The same goes for your background. Will you set yourself up in front of a bookshelf? At the kitchen table?

Limit distractions. If possible, silence your phone and go to a room where you can close the door. Be sure to consider white noise, too. Is there an air conditioner, fan, washing machine, or dishwasher that will make it difficult to hear you?

Provide guidance in-meeting. You can't expect students to know how to use the software the first time they join, so be prepared to provide a quick tutorial on how to mute audio and video, type in the chat box, and join by phone. Likewise, be familiar with the Blue Jeans privacy and accessibility policies (or at least know where they are!) in case you need to field student questions.

Have a contingency plan. If the connection fails, what will you do? Ray Ostman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests "[having] a plan-of-action prepared if [you] run into issues." Is there another way you can reach your students, even if it's to say, "I'll be back in a moment"? Check out the Northwestern IT Blue Jeans page for information about when to contact Northwestern's support and when to contact Blue Jeans' support.

Plan to record your sessions. At the School of Professional Studies, it is our policy that synchronous sessions must be optional in order to accommodate the needs of busy adult students. However, current students that can't attend should still be afforded the opportunity to review the session. Be sure to record and post your session to your class after it is over.

However...

Don't reuse recordings from previous classes. It is important not to use recordings of past students in classes with future students, as this could be a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). A saved video conference of students participating in your class may constitute an education record.

Want to learn more?

Get in touch with a trusty Learning Designer or Instructional Technologist to discuss incorporating a strategy for sync sessions in your class!

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Best Practices for Synchronous Sessions - SPS | Distance Learning

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You've built engagement into every corner of your online course. You've got ways for students to interact with you, the instructor, through video and audio, assignment feedback, and discussion posts. Students interact with each other in large group discussions and small group projects. Don't stop there!

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The classroom is a dynamic environment, bringing together students from different backgrounds with various abilities and personalities. Being an effective teacher therefore requires the implementation of creative and innovative teaching strategies in order to meet students' individual needs.

Whether you've been teaching two months or twenty years, it can be difficult to know which teaching strategies will work best with your students. As a teacher there is no 'one size fits all' solution, so here is a range of effective teaching strategies you can use to inspire your classroom practice.

1. Visualization

Bring d ull academic concepts to life with visual and practical learning experiences, helping your students to understand how their schooling applies in the real-world.

Examples include using the interactive whiteboard to display photos, audio clips and videos, as well as encouraging your students to get out of their seats with classroom experiments and local field trips.

2. Cooperative learning

Encourage students of mixed abilities to work together by promoting small group or whole class activities.

Through verbally expressing their ideas and responding to others your students will develop their self-confidence, as well as enhance their communication and critical thinking skills which are vital throughout life.

Solving mathematical puzzles, conducting scientific experiments and acting out short drama sketches are just a few examples of how cooperative learning can be incorporated into classroom lessons.

3. Inquiry-based instruction

Pose thought-provoking questions which inspire your students to think for themselves and become more independent learners.

Encouraging students to ask questions and investigate their own ideas helps improve their problem-solving skills as well as gain a deeper understanding of academic concepts. Both of which are important life skills.

Inquiries can be science or math-based such as 'why does my shadow change size?' or 'is the sum of two odd numbers always an even number?'. However, they can also be subjective and encourage students to express their unique views, e.g. 'do poems have to rhyme?' or 'should all students wear uniform?'.

4. Differentiation

Differentiate your teaching by allocating tasks based on students' abilities, to ensure no one gets left behind.

Assigning classroom activities according to students' unique learning needs means individuals with higher academic capabilities are stretched and those who are struggling get the appropriate support.

This can involve handing out worksheets that vary in complexity to different groups of students, or setting up a range of work stations around the classroom which contain an assortment of tasks for students to choose from.

Moreover, using an educational tool such as Quizalize can save you hours of time because it automatically groups your students for you, so you can easily identify individual and whole class learning gaps.

5. Technology in the classroom

Incorporating technology into your teaching is a great way to actively engage your students, especially as digital media surrounds young people in the 21st century.

Interactive whiteboards or mobile devices can be used to display images and videos, which helps students visualize new academic concepts. Learning can become more interactive when technology is used as students can physically engage during lessons as well as instantly research their ideas, which develops autonomy.

Mobile devices, such as iPads and/or tablets, can be used in the classroom for students to record results, take photos/videos or simply as a behaviour management technique. Plus, incorporating educational programmes such as Quizalize into your lesson plans is also a great way to make formative assessments fun and engaging.

6. Behaviour management

Implementing an effective behaviour management strategy is crucial to gain your students respect and ensure students have an equal chance of reaching their full potential.

Noisy, disruptive classrooms do no encourage a productive learning environment, therefore developing an atmosphere of mutual respect through a combination of discipline and reward can be beneficial for both you and your students.

Examples include fun and interactive reward charts for younger students, where individuals move up or down based on behaviour with the top student receiving a prize at the end of the week. 'Golden time' can also work for students of all ages, with a choice of various activities such as games or no homework in reward for their hard work.

7. Professional development

Engaging in regular professional development programmes is a great way to enhance teaching and learning in your classroom.

With educational policies constantly changing it is extremely useful to attend events where you can gain inspiration from other teachers and academics. It's also a great excuse to get out of the classroom and work alongside other teachers just like you!

Sessions can include learning about new educational technologies, online safety training, advice on how to use your teaching assistant(s) and much more.

Being an effective teacher is a challenge because every student is unique, however, by using a combination of teaching strategies you can address students' varying learning styles and academic capabilities as well as make your classroom a dynamic and motivational environment for students.
What strategies do you use to be an effective teacher? Have you got any top tips? Comment below - we'd love to hear from you.

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7 Effective Teaching Strategies For The Classroom - Blog | Quizalize

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The classroom is a dynamic environment, bringing together students from different backgrounds with various abilities and personalities. Being an effective teacher therefore requires the implementation of creative and innovative teaching strategies in order to meet students' individual needs. Whether you've been teaching two months or twenty years, it can be difficult to know which teaching strategies will work best with your students.