Discussion Notes

Successes (and how to continue those moving forward)

Classroom activities that can be adapted to online or strengthened that way

• Social annotation to feel more comfortable sharing challenges in class
• Perusall free tools; Hypothesis (canvas integration); Tophat (paid)
• Still presents challenges with students who don't have or bring laptops

Shifting to new tools that we discovered only because of online needs – jamboards

• Live-writing and adding content brings content to better pacing where we're all working simultaneously – and have permanent record of that work – jamboard or powerpoint annotation

Check-ins and emotional honesty

• Adapting pedagogy to the needs of students and instructors; relationship building
• Warm-up question by QR code, answer on phone, anonymous share-out; added check-in questions, how are you doing? What's going on? Can be responsive to student realities and needs
• Acknowledging student and teachers' whole selves
• Also acknowledging that takes a lot of emotional labor, administrative assignments to take on student mental health – we all have mental health needs and the institutions need to provide professional services and practitioners!
• Help students to build community, classroom as a space to make friends, so we can support students in finding their own support systems

Students opened up more online – easier to chat when feeling more anonymous, building community online from synchronous meetings – naturally and spontaneously

• Marginalized and non-dominant students especially feel more comfortable speaking up in chat, less pressure to be correct
• GroupMe or other messaging service to use in class for question or comment submissions, possibly more comfortable and may encourage participation; compare with chat/messaging that may be embedded in your LMS

Challenges (and how to ameliorate those moving forward)

Most post-its: burnout and overwork; having to do everything myself

• Challenge: Burnout for students as well – dual hostage situation
• Shared idea/solution: Reduced workload in class – benefits both students and instructors
  • Missed some content – but not overall detrimental, probably because it was a stand-alone intro course, especially because large
• Shared idea/solution: Shifted to ungrading – reduced stress AND increased engagement
  • No letter or number grades – give feedback in form of clarifying questions, reflections with guided questions, self-assigned grades, then reflect, meet, and negotiate final outcome – same amount of work but more fulfilling – benefits for instructor and students
  • Share most compelling ungrading resource?
  • How to implement in large enrollment classes?
  • Explicitly discussed learning outcomes as focus rather than grades
  • A past student of ungrading – moving to a grading instructor is challenging
  • "Focus on the point, not the points"

Participation and attendance

• Challenge: Same students transition from online to in-classroom – poor participation in both places
• Shared idea/solution: Accountability – give students a specific end-point or deliverable when doing an activity in class, even if just a share-out upon return
• Shared idea/solution: Online engagement before class to use as a prompt in class – like canvas discussion, show on screen in class
• Shared idea/solution: Use digital tools to make new kinds of assignments
• Shared idea/solution: Group exams as follow-up for difficult questions on initial multiple choice test; rely on each other for success, inspiration and preparation to take advantage of group work opportunities more often
  • Can add to an explicit grading rubric, contributions to group collaboration
  • Normalizing uncertainty and being new to the content – that's why we're in this class, it's new content

Hybrid/Hy-flex class requirements leading to student expectation that they can join online at all times if they want

• Challenge: Good in theory to allow students with any sickness to stay home – but feels untenable to instructors
• Challenge: Many experienced huge attrition in attendance – affects students who maintain attendance
• Challenge: Need for instructor to split their attention is the biggest challenge, a student either on screen or in class will be neglected
• Shared idea/solution: Jamboards, collaborative documents, Kahoot, tools that allow in- and out-of-cass students to collaborate in real time

Easy for an online instructor to lecture for an entire class – but that's not how we want to teach and it's tiring

• Challenge: Easier for faculty to be lazy with the transition when we thought it might just be temporary; didn't realize it would be a commitment; but then get in the rhythm that's difficult to break out of
• Challenge: Wary of making students work in groups in the classroom and increasing their physical contact – not wanting to give another reason to avoid coming to class
• Shared idea/solution: Remind yourself to return to best practices – in Fall, will bring back small in-class exercises, 20 minute lecture then the activities including drawings solo and as a class, student critique and collaboration
• Shared idea/solution: Ease students back into interaction after they're used to solo work

Need for frequent additional accommodations

• Challenge: Felt that students sometimes might have avoided the classroom for the sake of convenience; added extra work on instructors – extra hybrid teaching requirements
• Shared idea/solution: Syllabus needs to be very specific to address situations like this – if you miss more than X in-class meetings then we need to meet and talk about it and find solutions
• Shared idea/solution: Set standards together at the start
• One shared approach: trying to avoid posting class recordings, but provide slides and encourage coming to meet and go over material

Identified need: dedicated time and planning to new content, new logistics, new strategies