When Are Those Assignments Due?

What time are assignments due for your class? Most learning management systems (LMSs) have a default time of midnight. But do assignments need to be submitted by midnight? Why is that the magic hour?

I'm on a mailing list from Faculty Focus, a resource for instructors in higher ed. Today's email had the subject "Cinderella Deadlines." I thought that was clever enough to click the link to this article: Cinderella Deadlines: Reconsidering Timelines for Student Work. It's good stuff, and it echoes much of what I do for my own courses, most of the time.

Why have assignments due at midnight? It's not like I'm sitting there waiting to get started on the grading at the stroke of 12, after all! So why not reimagine due dates a bit?

For my face-to-face courses (and the hybrid-flexible courses I'm teaching this semester) I set my assignments to be due by class time. If class starts at 9:25 a.m., assignments are due at 9:25, right? Makes sense.

So now I'm reflecting on my practices for online courses. I generally an approach more like the "due dates are arbitrary and give a nudge for the procrastinators" (like me.) What I mean by this is, I know often need a deadline as a student, or else the tyranny of the urgent means other things will crowd out the assignment in question. So I do have due dates...but I'm generally pretty easy on these. If a student doesn't have the work in at a particular time, does that mean they didn't learn the concepts?

I know, I know...work habits and all that business. Yes, there are external obligations and students do need to learn to comply with those obligations. But in all seriousness...most due dates are arbitrary and are set for the teacher's convenience. 

My encouragement: use due dates in your LMS to set deadlines...but be gracious. I suspect most of us would respond well to a little extra grace in our own lives, yeah? So as long as there isn't some compelling reason that a particular assignment must be submitted by 9:25 a.m. (or midnight?), maybe a little flexibility could be a blessing for a student in your life?

Image by Rishabh Agarwal via Unsplash

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Learning Targets to Guide Your Teaching

You've probably heard the old saying, "If you don't care where you're going, any road will get you there." I think there is a lesson for all who serve as teachers in this in terms of setting goals for what we want our students to learn: if we aren't clear about our goals...any road will get us there.

But most of the time we do have goals for what we intend our students to learn! And this the key idea for learning targets: a well-framed learning target will help keep you on track as a teacher, and will also give clarity for students, so they will know what we are learning, and why.

In their excellent book, Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe describe an alignment process from learning targets to instructional methods to assessment vehicles. The big idea? Clear learning targets give clarity on how you will know if students understand (which informs your assessment vehicles), and knowing how you will know what students understand informs your instructional methods. Basically, learning targets are the key for everything else! Without clarity on what we are intending students will learn, how will we know if they have hit the target? How will we know what we should be focusing on in our teaching?

Image by Annie Sprat via Unsplash

Now, certainly clear learning targets are a benefit for all learning situations, not just distance learning! But in my experience clear communication is key to helping students manage the work of learning at a distance. Clear learning targets makes for clear communication about what they are learning, and why. So get in the habit of clearly explaining the target--why make students hurt themselves trying to figure out the main idea? It's much kinder of us to just tell them!

What makes for a strong learning target? You might use these principles to guide you...

Strong learning targets:

• Give a clear explanation of what students should know, understand, be able to do, feel, or believe.
• Are focused on what students do, not what instructors do. (Try starting them with, "I can...")
• Use action verbs to give direction for how students can provide evidence of their learning.
• Demonstrate awareness of both activity orientation and coverage orientation--the “twin sins" of design, as Wiggins & McTighe put it. (Walking that line of not just devolving into a series of activities that aren't connected to important learning and also not devolving into a series of topics to be "covered" with no time to actually understand them.)
• Ideally, allow for multiple pathways to mastery. (There might be multiple ways to learn something, and multiple ways to demonstrate that you've learned it!)

How to write a strong learning target? Here are a few examples to consider...

1. In a grammar lesson, perhaps the teacher has a learning target of, "Students will know how to identify the main idea in a paragraph." Now, this is an excellent skill that students should learn! But in light of the suggestions above, here is perhaps a stronger way of framing this learning target:

• I can summarize a paragraph’s main idea by writing one sentence in my own words.

2. In a history lesson, perhaps the teacher has a learning target of, "Students will read pages 125-128 of their history textbooks to learn about the causes of the American Civil War." Again, students should learn about the causes of the war, but this one perhaps leans into the sin of "coverage." A stronger way of framing this learning target:

• I can describe multiple sources of conflict that led to the start of the Civil War.

3. In a science lesson, perhaps the teacher has a learning target of, "Students will build a paper airplane that can stay in the air for at least five seconds." This is a very difficult task! Is this the real learning target--the building of the airplane? This is likely the sin of "activitymania." A stronger way to frame this target might be:

• I can describe my design process for creating a paper airplane that can stay in the air as long as possible.

These are just suggestions, of course, but I hope they illustrate the principles listed above. Will crafting a strong learning target suddenly make you into a master online teacher? Perhaps not...but it's a step worth taking!

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Instructional Videos: Chunking Content

I'm thinking today about how we can better convey content to our students in instructional videos we might create. I'm hoping that this brief post can summarize a few helpful ideas.

First off, we have to help our students out. We know the content--we're the experts in this stuff, and sometimes we forget that the material is almost always new for our students. I think this is especially true for concepts that we've taught many times; it's old hat for us...so we think students must already have a working familiarity with the ideas as well, yeah? (Or maybe that's just me? I do catch myself regularly so I don't fall into this trap!)

Here's the key idea I hope to convey: if you're going to create instructional videos, right-size your video-based instruction for what students need and help manage the cognitive load while also maintaining attention.

What I mean by that is, we have to be sure we aren't over-taxing students' working memory. The analogy I sometimes use is that working memory is like a glass, and new information to be learned is like water being poured in. The glass can only hold so much water, right? So you can keep pouring it in all you want, but the water will just start spilling over the sides of the glass. Only so much can fit in the glass at a time...and then we have to stop pouring to let students take a drink. :-)

Image by Wallace Chuck via Pexels.com

In the same way, we have to "measure" our instruction to not over-tax students' working memory. There is only so much they can handle at a time. So breaking up instruction into logical chunks is a promising practice to help students engage the new concepts, work with them to understanding, and actually learn the material being taught.

I have four principles I'd like to share that I think will help you to chunk content in useful ways for creating better instructional videos. These are my synthesis of some of the research I've read on creating "better" instructional videos, but the terminology is mine. I'll briefly explain each one here, and I'd love to hear your feedback on these in response.

Principle #1: The Alignment Principle

• The key question: What is your learning target?
• Take aim! Focus your video on ensuring students will understand the concept you are teaching...so they will be able to hit that target!

Principle #2: The Pragmatic Principle

• This sounds sassy, I know...but do you want your students to watch that video you create or not? Seriously, if you're going to take the time to create instructional media...we want to ensure that students will actually benefit by watching that video!
• Tight, focused videos are the rule. I encourage you to put a hard time limit of not more than six minutes. The longer the video, the less likely students are to actually watch it! Six minutes or less, they are likely to watch the whole thing.
• Six minutes might not sound like enough time, and it truly might not be enough time for you. Never fear! It's okay to make several videos! Just break up the longer instructional segment into logical chunks--find those logical breaking points in the flow--and record several shorter videos instead. String them together with some interstitial activities (e.g., reflection, answering a key question, etc.) to give students the opportunity to work with the ideas in your presentation.

Principle #3: The Attention Principle

• The human brain thrives on novelty. Consider ways you can work in something novel that will draw students in and capture their attention.
• Humor, surprise, and dramatic tension can all help keep students' attention focused.
• Stories are a great way to grab not just their heads, but also their hearts--think about ways to infuse a storyline into your lesson.

Principle #4: The Human Principle

• This might sound funny at first, but hear me out: I strongly encourage you to be a real person with your students in the videos you create. What I mean is it's often tempting to record and re-record videos over and over again. I understand this drive very well! I want to come off polished and professional too, and all those "umms" and "aaahhs" drive me batty.
• My encouragement: fight that instinct! Unless you go completely off the rails as you are recording your video, try to do it in just one take. (Okay, maybe two...because practice does help...) But think of it this way: when you present in a live setting, you only get one go at it, right? I understand the desire to have the recorded version come off more polished, because of the re-watchability. (Trust me, I get this!) But I think being a real person wins out overall.
• I encourage you to aim for authentic professionalism, not perfection. Isn't this the truth in all of the courses you teach? You want to be an authentic, real person to your students...and you want to convey yourself professionally. We aren't perfect. (Okay, at least I am not perfect.) :-) We should't pretend otherwise.

So that's my advice. I hope that you might find this valuable--and that your students will find this valuable as well!

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Taking Students Seriously

One of the things I've been really grappling with is how to take students seriously. Part of this is the fact that I'm teaching an online course right now for future middle school teachers. It focuses on how to teach young adolescents, with all of their wonderfully weird developmental changes. These changes impact the way we approach teaching young adolescents, obviously. And one of the things I've been trying to convey to these future teachers is that we need to take our students' needs seriously. Want to be an effective middle school teacher? You should know some things about how middle schoolers are developing--physically, cognitively, socially, emotionally, spiritually...all of it! And taking their needs seriously means giving them what they need to flourish in your class. Yes, they need academic input--that's what school is for! But if it's only academic, without accounting for their physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs...well, good luck to you in actually reaching and actually teaching those students!

And where my thinking is currently pointing? This approach of taking students seriously is probably true of every group of students! 

I'm mostly teaching undergraduates right now. They definitely have their own peculiar needs! And the graduate students I'm teaching have a different set of needs, because of their station in life and where thy are in their professional career.

Certainly this is not just true in a distance teaching situation, which is where I've been focusing my blogging this month. Obviously it matters in a face-to-face classroom as well! But I am thinking right now specifically about how to take students seriously when you aren't meeting up with them face-to-face. Here are a few ideas I've been trying in my own online teaching practice this semester:

• When I have synchronous meetings with students, I am trying to make sure to have an opening circle where we can just check in and see how everyone is doing. I don't compel students to share--this is at their level of comfort--but by making space where sharing about life beyond class is normalized, I think I'm taking students' needs seriously.
• I am using case studies and small group discussion extensively in one course. This allows for students to get to know a smaller group of their colleagues better (working in a small group) which will, I hope, build greater trust among them. The cases we are considering are "controversial" in the sense that they are designed to have multiple "right" answers, and I have some structures in place for the way I'm setting up the discussions to help students engage with each other around ideas. This means that even if they disagree with each other, they are disagreeing about content and not character. All of this to say, I think I'm taking students' social and emotional needs into account in the way I'm arranging for this learning experience to unfold.
• I am being even more flexible than normal with due dates. Let's be honest: most due dates are completely arbitrary and are about the instructor's convenience, rather than being driven by students' needs. I'm at a point in my teaching career that if a student reaches out and says, "I could use a little more time on this," I'm willing to extend the deadline with no questions asked. I know how much extra grace benefits me personally. I'm willing and ready to extend that extra grace to students as well.
• In my communication with students, I am checking my language to ensure I'm conveying confidence in their ability to learn, a sense of high expectations for the quality of work we will do together, and a clear message of support and encouragement from me--that I am for them and not against them. 
• I am intentionally looking for their input on how things are going in the courses they are taking with me. Soliciting feedback from students might not be a norm for you right now, but if you are open to hearing from students--and taking their comments about their experience in your class seriously!--you can learn a lot.

I hope that these suggestions give you some encouragement. What else are you doing to demonstrate that you are taking students seriously?

Image by Tim Gouw via Unsplash.

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Lecturing Online

Lecture is a staple teaching technique in higher education. All right, it's probably a staple teaching technique at every grade level. (Though in elementary grades we might prefer to call it "direct instruction" instead.) There is a time and a place for the teacher simply conveying the key concepts of the lesson to the students directly, and a lecture can be an efficient way to do this.

Image by Sergey Zolkin via Unsplash

The problem--for teaching online, anyway--is how we lecture. A live class meeting via webconference certainly can work for this. (Though I have a few reservations about this approach, and I encourage folks teaching at a distance to use webconferences judiciously.) Alternatively, a teacher might record the lecture ahead of time, and share the recording with students to view on their own time. As I generally am a proponent of asynchronous distance teaching (that is, not requiring students to all log in at the same time for class) you are probably not surprised to hear this! 

There are a few rules of thumb that you can use to make for a stronger pre-recorded lecture, however. Here are a couple of promising practices I would encourage you to consider:

• Using visuals is typically a good idea, but be thoughtful in the way you do this. I think many of us (okay...me...) use powerpoint to prop up possibly-shoddy instruction. I like HaikuDeck as a presentation tool because it helps me limit the amount of text I put on screen at any given time.
• If you are going to have text onscreen, don't just read it to your students. (Don't do this in a face-to-face lecture either, for that matter.) But do match your verbal presentation to the slides, if you're using slides! (We can't really focus on two different pieces of information simultaneously, so it's important that the auditory and visual messages match up.)
• Think about using a tool that allows you to show your face along with your visuals. This boosts social presence for you as a presenter--and can help students feel more connected to a real, caring human being who is presenting this lecture.
• I can't stress this one enough: Keep. It. Short. Seriously, some research I've read on this suggests that if the video is more than six minutes (SIX MINUTES!) in length, students won't watch it anyway--and then why are you creating the video?

Now you might be saying, "I can't give an entire lecture in just six minutes!" That might be true, but without live interaction with students asking questions, etc., you might be surprised how much more quickly you will present the material. Still, six minutes might be pushing it. So consider using chunking to help break up your longer lecture into shorter segments. As a benefit, I think it's easier to record several shorter videos and string them together instead of having to get it right in one long video: how stressful to be 20 minutes into recording a video lecture and then go completely off the rails! That takes some more editing to fix it, for sure. :-)

To chunk a lecture, think through the overall structure of the content. Where are the logical breaking points? See if you can split a 20 minute lecture into four 5-minute segments instead, and record them as separate videos. You can then put them into a playlist (I like YouTube playlists for this.) Or you might break it up something like this:

• Begin with an introduction video that sets the context for the lesson and prompts students to read something. (3 minutes)
• Go off and read the chapter/article/website/what-have-you. (As long as it takes them to read it.)
• Come back to a video in which you gloss over the main ideas and elucidate a few key ideas, giving examples to illustrate. End with 2 key questions that students should be able to answer. (5 minutes)
• Students write their responses to those 2 key questions. (5 minutes)
• Come back to a video in which you explain the answers to those two key questions, so they can check their understanding. (5 minutes)
• Use a video to introduce an assignment for synthesizing their learning. (2 minutes)
• Students do the synthesizing assignment. (As long as it takes them to complete.)
• Come back to a video in which you recap the key ideas from this lesson, and let them know when you'll have feedback for them on their work. (5 minutes)

While this is just a suggested lesson structure for an example, it might be something you could consider doing--or tweaking to make it work for you!

Here is an example of a playlist-based lecture I created some time ago to give advice on how to create better online discussions. It is a playlist of five shorter videos--it is about 15 minutes in total--that will automatically play one after the other. But the easy pause-ability of this approach makes it perhaps more appealing for students. Give it a watch, if you like:

The big take-away here, I hope is that you certainly can lecture, even in an asynchronous online course. But with a little extra planning and preparation, students will get the most out of this learning experience, which is what it's all about anyway!

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Offline Activities in Online Courses

One thing I've been thinking a lot about in this season of distance teaching is just how much screentime students of all ages are experiencing in their lives. I recognize that I spend a LOT of time in front of screens: I use a laptop for teaching, and preparing for class, and often for assessing my students' work (which they hand in digitally through our LMS.) I often have my smartphone in hand, and use this for both communication and distraction. I regularly find myself streaming something while exercising or relaxing. 

Online learners, by the nature of the work, often find themselves spending a lot of time in front of screens for their learning activities. I'm not apologizing for that, exactly...but I'm aware of it.

So I've been thinking about ways to get students away from screens too.

Certainly reading an actual book (like we did in the olden days of yore...and perhaps still do regularly?) is a good place to start, of course. Giving students a frame for their reading can be a promising practice. (As an aside...I think we can generally do a better job as educators in teaching students how to read different kinds of texts. I think many of us assume that students know how to read a textbook, but it's a different skill than reading a novel, for example. I digress...)

What else can students do offline? I'm thinking about ways to have students actually create physical things to demonstrate their learning, which they could submit via taking pictures, for example. Or maybe they could do physical things to learn concepts, and then share a photo or video to illustrate?

I don't have a lot of clear examples to share of this one, at least just yet...because this is a relatively new idea for me, and I don't have a lot of examples at the ready. But one I can share, though it's very context-specific for a course I taught during our emergency distance teaching adventure last spring...

I was teaching my Elementary and Middle School Science Methods course, which I've "always" taught as a face-to-face course on campus. It's typically a very hands-on course, where we do a lot of science together as a way of learning about how to teach science. When we pivoted to distance teaching, I had to re-imagine the course quite a bit to continue that hands-on learning experience. In the process of redeveloping the course, I gave students challenges to try, and then get photos or videos of their results.

For example, one challenge was "build a paper airplane that can stay in the air for at least 5 seconds." This is an almost impossible challenge--5 seconds is a really long time to keep a plane in the air! The point of this learning experience was NOT the actual plane flight. The point was to think like a scientist: to collect evidence, to make multiple attempts to solve the problem, to refine thinking through a process of design and iteration, and to practice intellectual honesty in reporting what we discovered. Students made an awful lot of paper airplanes, and had phenomenal stories to share about this learning opportunity.

But what did they need to be on their computers for in this lesson? Just 15-20 minutes of introduction...and then 15-20 minutes to share their results, and hear from their colleague's in their groups to find out what they tried and what they learned.

Getting students away from their screens might be just what they need to keep things fresh in their learning!

Image by NeONBRAND via Unsplash

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Office Hours at a Distance

In my experience teaching in higher ed, few students take me up on office hours. Partly I think this is due to my discipline (Education)--it's probably more likely that students in other disciplines like Engineering, or Math, or History might capitalize on the individualized learning opportunities provided through office hours. 

The basic intent of "office hours" is that I set aside a few dedicated blocks of time each week in which I am hanging around in my office, ready and willing to work with individual students on their questions and concerns about course material. But is this a waste of my time if no students show up? (I can say with confidence that it is never wasted time...I always have something else I can work on if no students show up.)

One thing I've tried recently is rebranding office hours as "student hours." By explaining it to students as "I'm here for you, students, and I'm always glad to meet up with you," it seems like I've had a slight upswing in the number of students who drop by. But overall, it's still a small number.

I have a couple of colleagues who have taken a different approach: they encourage their students to just sign up for a time slot to connect. Some are using youcanbookme.com, and others are using the Bookings tool within Office 365--both work great for this sort of thing. You can designate available hours for students, and they can sign up for a time as needed. This eliminates that "sitting around and waiting for students to show up" (I joke...I'm never just sitting around!) because students are deliberately adding a calendar item for themselves and their professor in question.

And this kind of approach works pretty well for both face-to-face and online student hours: you can schedule a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting really easily this way too.

But how about for fully online courses? Honestly, in the almost 10 years I've been teaching online, I think I've had three (three!) students show up for a webconference meeting during my scheduled office hours. That seems like a pretty demoralizingly small number doesn't it?

But one of my professors-turned-professional-colleagues, Patrick Lowenthal, gave me an interesting idea. Patrick suggested that maybe office hours needs to be rebranded: "office hours" doesn't sound like something many students would want to attend. And perhaps even "student hours" doesn't work well for this. In one course I took with Patrick in my doctoral studies, he hosted "happy hour" (no drinks required) as an interactive online learning experience. We had "warmly-welcomed-but-not-required" webconferences several times during the semester--basically online office hours. But here's the thing: most students in the course attended. We wanted to be there! 

And so I've taken this approach into my own distance teaching repertoire now. I regularly now hold warmly-welcomed-but-not-required synchronous meetings for most online courses I teach. (This might sound like it's flying in the face of my last post, which argued for asynchronous learning, but I think this is an example of using webconferences judiciously.)

Here are a few tips for how I manage these meetings, which might give you some ideas of how you might incorporate these into your own online teaching:

• I explain the purpose of these meetings as clearly as I can: they are an opportunity to get clarity on key topics for the course, to ask questions about assignments and course content, and to build up our community of learning.
• I limit the meetings to not more than one hour. (This is key! Zoom fatigue is real...)
• I try to always have a brief agenda. My typical agenda looks something like this:
• Check-in/opening circle - how are things going?
• A brief lesson/update/further explanation of a key idea from class
• Questions and answers - about assignments, course content, etc.
• Closing encouragement - previewing assignments to come, giving group feedback, etc.
• Depending what is going on in the course at a given time, I sometimes invite students to share their work-in-progress for informal feedbacking from the learning community. This has been a mixed-bag for me; sometimes it goes really well, sometimes less well. I think that if I were to do this again in the future, I would have some clearer protocols in place for how we share and how we provide feedback. 
• Students are not required to attend these meetings, but I do want to provide equitable learning opportunities for all students in the course. In this light, I always record these live sessions and share the video with the students so they can catch up on what we talked about.
• Depending on the course and the group, I might have these kinds of synchronous sessions on a weekly basis (more common during the compressed summer term, where students appreciate the condensed support of a one-hour weekly meeting) or scattered throughout the term every few weeks (more common during a fall or spring term, where it might be more difficult to get everyone together regularly.) I don't think there is one right way to do this, and I'm continuing to experiment with what works well for this approach to "office hours at a distance."

In my end-of-the-term feedback surveys, I usually include some sort of item along the lines of, "What aspects of the course really helped you learn?" Many students specifically name these synchronous meetings as a key part of supporting their learning. While many students express their appreciation for the asynchronous structure of the course overall, they see the value in these optional live meetings for the efficiency, the immediacy, and the opportunities to develop relationships with their professor and their colleagues.

A screengrab from a meeting with some of my grad students this past summer.
(They really are the best!)

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Use Webconferences Judiciously

Overall, I strongly prefer designing my online courses as asynchronous learning experiences. What I mean by "asynchronous" is that students typically do not have to be online at the same time as me--or their colleagues--to engage in learning experiences for the course. While there are benefits for synchronous learning activities (i.e., webconferences such as Zoom meetings,) I believe the benefits for asynchronous learning outweigh these, at least in most instances.

First off, let's talk about time zones. Many of the courses I teach online are in our Master of Education program. I often have students in multiple time zones--often across North America, but increasingly around the globe. (In one course I taught recently, I had students in the US, Canada, Liberia, South Africa, Indonesia, China, and South Korea.) From a purely pragmatic perspective, it's hard to find a good time to have everyone meet up when your students are spread out this way! 

There are ways to address this, of course:

• You could just have one meeting, and record the video for students who are in a time zone where they are likely to be sleeping while you're meeting. I don't like this approach, because it sort of defeats the purpose of a live meeting, if students are only going to watch a video of it after the fact.
• To address that weakness, you could rotate the time of the meeting, so different students would miss the live meeting each time. I would not prefer this approach, personally, because many students are busy people with many other competing interests in their lives. Having a regularly scheduled time to meet so they can plan on it helps make it more likely that they would be able to plan to be there.
• Alternatively, you could plan for multiple meetings held at different times, so everyone could attend a live class meeting. This is great for your students...but less great for you as the instructor, having to manage multiple class meetings. Also, it's a bummer that all of your students can't actually connect and be together at the same time in this way.

Next thing to consider: is a live class meeting really the best way to convey what you want students to learn? Sometimes it is, obviously. Other times, there are equally effective ways--or even more effective ways to help students learn the content than requiring them to all be interacting at the same time. And, let's be honest, is the most important thing about a face-to-face course the fact that you're breathing the same air? I suggest that it's often about efficiency and immediacy. It's much more efficient to have a class with many people attending at the same time. And there is definitely an importance to students getting your input and feedback immediately, which meeting at the same time can obviously facilitate. 

So...what I'm saying is this: it's not that you should never have a synchronous class meeting via web conference. Rather, you should use these kinds of webconferences judiciously. Is there a need for efficiency and immediacy? It might make sense to have a live meeting in this case. But is it more important that students take their time with reading, reflection, writing, creating, etc.? In that case, an asynchronous class might be the better option.

And it's not as if students can't or won't interact with you and each other asynchronously! I've previously written about why I view online discussion forums a power tool for online teaching, and I shared some tips for how to foster authentic conversation those online discussions. In future posts I'll give a few more ideas of alternatives to the synchronous web conference, but for now I'll just say that it's worth asking the question about whether a synchronous web conference is the right pedagogical move for what you're trying to accomplish. 

Image by Chris Montgomery via Unsplash 

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Soliciting Feedback

All right, friends...it's time to have a hard conversation. Some of us are concerned about what students think of our classes, and of our teaching. Some of us worry about whether students are learning. Some of us even think about whether there are things we should perhaps change about our teaching practices to ensure students are learning.

I hope that my slight tongue-in-cheek tone is coming through: I actually think it's really important to understand what students think about our teaching. In some sense, they are the best equipped to give us feedback on our teaching, because they are the ones it directly impacts, and they are the ones who are there on a day-to-day basis experiencing our teaching! True, they might not be experts in our content in the same way that we are...but they do have a lot of experience as learners. 

So...why not ask them to share their experiences as students in your class?

(Okay, that last question was rhetorical...but check your own mental answer to that question. If you don't want to ask them to share their experiences...why is that? Is it because you don't actually want to hear the answer to the question? If so...I hope this nudges a little introspection for you.)

Going back to my early years as a middle school science teacher around 2001, I have regularly solicited feedback from my students. I have learned a lot about myself as a teacher, just by asking students for their insights, and this is true of all the different age groups I've asked: middle schoolers, undergrads, grad students, and teachers in professional development sessions I've led. I try to frame it this way for them: "You are uniquely qualified to share things with me about your experience as a learner in this class, because you are a learner in this class. I want to get better as a teacher, and you sharing about your experience as a learner helps me reflect on what I should keep doing, and think about things I should perhaps stop doing as well."

But here's the thing: if you're going to ask for feedback, you have to be willing to do two things:

1. You have to be willing to hear the good stuff, the not-so-good stuff, and the ambivalent stuff. (You'll almost always get some of each of these, if you ask.)
2. You have to be willing to at least consider the feedback you're soliciting as information about things you should perhaps change about your teaching. (And this might take some thick skin.)

I do like what this models for students though. I regularly give students feedback on their work, and expect them to make changes based on my comments and critique. Asking students for their feedback on my work and being willing to consider making changes makes for a healthy, reciprocally-respectful environment, I think.

So in that light, here are a couple of things I do in my online courses to solicit feedback:

• I typically make the feedbacking opportunities anonymous so students will feel more okay with telling me the "bad stuff" especially. We have to recognize that there is a power difference between students and teachers that will always exist, though it can be minimized in some ways. Some students will never offer critique if they feel it could come back to hurt them in the end.
• That said, I often do invite students to share their names if they feel comfortable doing so. It is rare that I have students take me up on this--I've found it most common among grad students, then middle school students, and then undergrad students--but when they do, I always find it impressive that they are willing to stand by their words.
• I like online surveys (I typically use Google Forms) to collect their feedback. They are easy to build, easy to share, and easy to explore the resulting data.
• A friendly reminder: survey fatigue is a real thing, and so asking students to complete multiple surveys should be carefully considered!
• I typically ask for feedback around 3-4 weeks into the term (so we are far enough in to a course that they have a sense of what the course is like, but still early enough for me to make changes if warranted.) I also always ask for feedback at the end of the course. Other than this, I very selectively survey students based on specific things I'm changing or trying. For example, if I try something wildly different in the way I'm facilitating a discussion, or if I create a brand new assignment, I might really benefit from hearing students' thoughts on how it went so I can make adjustments for the future.

Here's an example survey I use in my Teaching and Learning with Technology course that I teach at the graduate level. I usually send it to student 4 weeks into the term to get a sense of how the course is working: EDUC 508 Feedback Survey. It includes several course-specific questions, but you'll notice that many of the questions are more general-purpose questions that help me understand how students are perceiving the course.

Another approach I really like that I've used several times is "2 Questions, 2 Minutes." My colleague, Tim Van Soelen, mentioned this one to me a year or so ago, and I've found it to be a can't-miss approach for getting feedback from students. How does it work? I build a Google Form that has just two questions, and I tell students that it should only take them two minutes. (And I usually get about 90% participation this way!) The two questions? Here you go:

• "What should I keep doing that is helping you learn?"
• "What should I STOP doing that is not helping you learn?"

Two simple questions that get right to the heart of the issue! And then...plenty of food for thought about what I should keep doing...and stop doing.

I hope you'll take this encouragement to ask your students about their experience in your class. It can be uncomfortable to humble ourselves to actually ask how we're doing. However, if we're serious about continuing to get better as instructors, I think it's worth asking!

Image by Jon Tyson (modified) via Unsplash

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Social Presence: Being Yourself on Video

I use a lot of video when I'm teaching online. Most of these are short videos that I record on my phone and then upload to YouTube with little to no editing at all. I might trim off the beginning and end of the clip, but that's about it.

Sometimes I stumble over my words. Sometimes I umm and ahhh my way through. But I try not to re-record if I can possibly help it. I figure that in my face-to-face courses I don't get a do-over, and those students get to see me in all of my Porky Pig blathering...so my online students should get the same opportunity. :-) 

Yes, there is the concern that video is a record of my errors, and so there is a little more pressure to get it right the first time. And I should note that I do sometimes trash the video and re-record it if it goes horribly off the rails. But I figure that being a real human being in my videos is more valuable than a slick, over-produced video clip. Video is a great way to infuse more social presence into your online course, that sense of "how 'real' the other person feels to you when communicating online" that I've been talking about in the last few posts on the ol' blog. (See my posts on names, photos, and language usage for more ideas.)

A couple of tips for recording better videos:

• I do usually write a script. Often it's just bullet points, but I do try to think through what I'm going to say before I start the recording.
• I definitely try to keep these videos short. This makes it much more likely that students will actually view them! My general rule of thumb is to try to keep them to 2-3 minutes with a hard upper-limit of not more than 6 minutes. If I need more time than that for a given video, I find the logical breaking points and record multiple shorter videos instead.
• I am mindful of my background. Often I record videos in my office, but I try to use different views. Sometimes I set my phone on my bookshelf, sometimes on the table by the window looking back towards my desk, sometimes on the stool in the middle of the room so I can sit in my overstuffed chair. Closing the blinds if they are behind me is a good idea. Opening the blinds if they are in front of me is also a good idea.
• I try to have a solid place to set my phone when I'm shooting video so I don't make my viewers feel seasick. I picked up a tiny little tripod for my phone for $5 at Walmart. This makes for a more stable shot.
• On the other hand, I sometimes just take my phone in hand and record myself while walking around on campus. This gives a sense of "place" that is bigger than just my office. It takes a little practice to walk around and keep my phone stable, but it probably helps that I have ridiculously long arms, so the focal length from my face to the camera is a bit longer. :-)
• Try to look exactly at the camera when you are talking, but don't just stare. It often helps me to picture a particular student on the other side of the camera, and imagine that I'm talking right to that person as an individual. This helps me to keep "eye contact" without getting creepy about it. It also warms up the way I talk instead of feeling robotic.

Video updates to the class, video explanations of assignments, and even video feedback can be great ways to share with students in your own voice and letting them see your face. I highly recommend that you give this approach a whirl in your own class!

Image by Julia M. Cameron via Pexels

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Social Presence: Watch Your Words

I'm sure it has never happened to you, but I have accidentally offended people via email. It wasn't necessarily the words I used...it was the way I said it. Communicating only via text can be a little tricky, because so much of the non-verbal subtext that we also use to convey meaning gets stripped away. Sometimes we wind up sounding angry (or angrier?) than we might mean to. Sometimes we might sound vacuous or silly. Sometimes we might come across flat, even when we are actually enthusiastic.

We have to watch our words when communicating online...but also how we say them!

In my last few posts I've been talking about social presence in online communication as "how 'real' the other person feels to you when communicating online." (Check out my posts on names and photos for more.) But even in a text-only environment--without graphics and videos and other richer media--you can definitely convey a sense of yourself as a real person. So let's think through a few ideas for how to do this...

I love Brené Brown's adage that "clear is kind." I think that this is a helpful rule for communicating online, but we don't have to be cold to be clear. I try to use a warm, conversational tone in my assignment descriptions as much as possible. Compare these two descriptions:

• You will write a philosophy paper that explains your current philosophy of education, including your view of the purpose of school, the role of the student, the role of the teacher, the purpose of the curriculum, and your approach to classroom management. Your paper will be at least 4 but not more than six pages in length, and you must follow the conventions of standard written English according to APA style.
• In this assignment, I invite you to reflect on your beliefs and how you put them into practice. Write a paper of about five pages to share your current philosophy of education. I want to see your ideas about the purpose of school, the role of the student, the role of the teacher, the purpose of the curriculum, and your approach to classroom management. While I will assess your paper for content, I expect that you'll put your best writing on display, following the conventions of standard written English. As a friendly reminder, in the field of Education we use APA style, and there is an APA reference guide linked below.

How do these feel? The first version is precise, but I think it feels cold and a little uncaring. The second version still conveys the expectations, but in (I hope) a way that feels warmer and more invitational and supportive.

I think using "I" language or "we" language instead of "you" language can really help with conveying care to students. I would encourage you to do this too!

Exclamation points can be an important part of communicating online to show a bit more emotion in your writing. It's certainly possible to overdo this(!!!) but it can help. I also think using italics, underlining, and bold can help to infuse a little more "voice into your writing. I try to avoid ALL CAPS WHENEVER POSSIBLE, because this--by convention--is the equivalent of shouting online. (My mom has a Facebook friend who always types in all caps...and I laugh because this friend actually does have a very loud voice, and it just seems to be her online, text-based communication matching her actual speaking voice.) :-)

And...silly as it might sound...think about using emojis in your writing. Including those little smiley faces like the one I added at the end of the last paragraph can actually make a difference. They help convey a sense of tone that may or may not come through in the words alone.

These are admittedly small things that you can do, but cumulatively they demonstrate more of the idea that you are a real, whole person on the other side of your computer connection. Modeling this sort of use of language for students--and even pointing it out to them!--might be a promising practice for humanizing your online communication. 

Image by Juliana Romão via Unsplash

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Social Presence: Photos, Gifs, and Memes

In my last post, I introduced the concept of Social Presence in online communication as "how 'real' the other person feels to you when communicating online." I suggested that calling on people by name is one way to boost social presence; this is just one simple thing you can do to foster a learning community.

Ready for another easy thing? Think about using images in your course as a way to boost social presence. Photos, animated gifs, and memes can all be tools for increasing that sense that the people with whom you are interacting are real human beings.

Photos

Most of us who are active on social media already know the value of having an avatar photo of some sort, to graphically and visually identify the person with whom you are interacting. And while some folks will use a cartoon character, or a photo of a celebrity, or a logo, or some other representation, a grand majority of people will use a photo of themselves to identify themselves.

Most learning management systems (LMSs) have a feature that allows--or even requires--everyone in the course to have some sort of avatar. This is a simple way to increase social presence: ask students to include a photo of themselves as their avatar. You can almost certainly find a tutorial for how to do this by googling the name of your LMS (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) and adding the search term "profile picture." And, of course, follow the Golden Rule for Distance Teaching: if you ask your students to post a profile picture, post one yourself as well!

Photos can also be a great way to liven up a course announcement: include a photo of yourself, of an object in your office/classroom/campus to illustrate, of your pet (I find students always are happy to see pet photos!), etc. This is some self-disclosure on your part that can model and encourage students to share about themselves as well.

Animated Gifs and Memes

There has actually been some academic research done about the benefits of including animated gifs and memes in your online communications to boost social presence. (Seriously! Check out this, this, this, or this, if you're interested.) But even before I learned about any of this research, I had been using gifs and memes as a way of boosting social presence in my own online courses. And I've found it is something students respond to as well; when I survey students at the end of the course for things they liked/disliked, I have never had a student say they disliked gifs and memes, and I seem to always have a handful of students at least who call this out as something that they enjoyed. So...anecdotal evidence here, for sure, but I don't think it could hurt to try it. :-)

I try to work gifs into my assignment descriptions or announcements. These can be just for fun, or they can be purposeful. For example, when I'm introducing a team project, I might use this classic gif from High School Musical:

Via giphy.com

Or if I'm giving a "great work, everyone!" message in an announcement, it might be a "Give yourself a high five!" with this gif:

Image via giphy.com

Or  maybe you'll make your own gifs with a tool like MakeAGif.com, and you'll end up with something like this:

I made this one a long, long time ago.

Memes...ah, how about memes?

WARNING! MISUSING MEMES IS A GUARANTEED SIGNAL TO YOUR STUDENTS THAT YOU ARE AN OLD.

But I still use memes, even though my teenaged kids tell me I'm hopelessly out of touch with "meme culture." My students generally seem to get what I'm going for--and I admit that I am an old--and I've had a few specifically tell me that they find them hilarious. (Though they might be laughing at me, rather than with me...but I'm okay with that, if it helps to build some social presence in the class!)

What kind of memes do I share? Usually geeky, content-specific memes. For example, when I'm introducing a research project, I might use this one:

This one is all over the web, but I found it here.

Is this a bunch of ridiculousness? Maybe! (Well, not the photos part--that part seems pretty solid.) Are gifs and memes going to win you accolades as teacher of the year? Unlikely. But taking a playful approach to your pedagogy like this might just help to win students over, and it will almost certainly boost the social presence of your online course.

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Social Presence: Names

Want to do just one thing that will almost immediately have an impact on the feeling of connection and community in your online class? Start using students' names.

In the academic study of online learning, we often talk about "social presence" as a key part of developing a community of learners. In a nutshell, social presence is about how "real" the other person feels to you when communicating online.* One simple way to connect with the other person and foster a stronger sense of social presence: use their name.

I know, I know...this might sound ridiculous. And I should caution that it is possible to over-do this. (I mean, you probably don't use their name every time you speak to a person, you know?) But in all seriousness, calling someone by name is a powerful action and we should not minimize the importance of this pedagogical move!

Think about how it feels in a face-to-face classroom when you are the student: being called by name indicates that you are seen and known. (This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how your name is spoken, I suppose!) :-) But the reality is that hearing your own name spoken is a signal that someone else has taken a notice in you, and this can easily convey a sense of connection and belonging that strengthens the community of learners.

Image (modified) by Allie via Unsplash

What does this look like in practice? Here are a few ways I use students names in discussion forums:

• When I'm interacting with students in discussion forums, if it's the first time I'm commenting in response to a person in a given thread I call on them by name. ("Jared, that's a wonderful story and it really illustrates the big idea very well...")
• If I am responding to a question a student raises in the discussion, I reply by name, usually with some word of affirmation. ("Thanks for asking that question, Dawn. Here's what I'm thinking...")
• Later in a discussion thread, if I'm referring back to an earlier comment, I try to always note who brought up an idea by naming that person specifically. ("I appreciated Kristina's comment about this earlier in the thread. Her suggestion reminded me...")

Beyond discussions, here are a couple other ways I try to be very intentional about using students' names:

• When I leave written feedback in response to students' work, I try to use their name at least once in the personalized comments I leave.
• When we use video-based comments (such as with Flipgrid, for example) I try to always respond to the student by name in any comments I leave.

These might seem like small things, but if you're not in the habit of doing this with your online students, I encourage you to give this a try, and see what impact this tiny teaching tweak might have on the classroom community.

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

*There is plenty you could read to learn more about social presence; if you'd like a quick look, here's a chapter I co-wrote with a former-professor-turned-professional-colleague, Patrick Lowenthal: Social Presence and Communication Technologies: Tales of Trial and Error. 

Getting to Know Your Students

I believe that education is fundamentally a communal endeavor.* As such, there is a burden placed on educators to foster a community of learning, a shared space where we can come to understand. (I should note that my thinking about this has been deeply influenced by Parker J. Palmer. I highly recommend his book The Courage to Teach.) And maybe it seems easy and obvious how we might go about forming that kind of community of learning in a face-to-face classroom...but how can I do this in a distance learning setting?? I definitely hear this question from many teachers who are new to teaching in the online environment!

Two comments off the bat in response to this wondering:

1. I don't think it's actually all that easy or all that obvious how to create a community of learning in a face-to-face classroom situation. Some people seem to be able to do this rather naturally, but for most of us, we actually spend a lot of time, and thought, and planning, and preparation for different kinds of activities and classroom arrangements that can make this happen. And I don't think that the online environment is all that different in this regard: we still need to plan and prepare for this relationship-building to happen!

2. Often, when I hear educators wondering this, it's phrased to imply something along the lines of, "You can't really get to know someone online!" But I would like to push forward on this idea; I think you definitely can get to know people in an online-only environment. Just ask anyone who has met their spouse online! Yes, yes...there comes a point where that relationship has to transfer to a face-to-face relationship, I know. But that's minimizing the fact that you definitely can build a relationship through self-disclosure and shared experience. 

And there, I think, is the key for getting to know your students and developing relationships: self-disclosure, and shared experience.

In this post, I'd like to focus in on self-disclosure a bit. In a future post (or maybe multiple posts) I'll share some ideas for how I create collaborative learning experiences that can result in shared experiences that help to strengthen the learning community. But those kinds of experiences have to be built on a beginning relationship...and that relationship has to start somewhere.

So how to get students to share things about themselves?

Well, there are a few considerations here. First off, I want to encourage you to follow the Golden Rule for Distance Teaching: Never ask your students to do something you would be uncomfortable doing yourself. In this case, I think it's important to model for your students the kind of self-disclosure you're asking of them. In other words, however you ask students to share about themselves...you go first! :-)

If you're concerned about this kind of self-disclosure, I'd encourage you to read this blog post by David Goobler: The Pedagogical Power of Opening Up. It's short and accessible, and I appreciate the advice he gives instructors here about why we should share about ourselves.

Next thing to consider: what do you want to know? And why do you want to know it? I typically invite students to share things about their personal life, but I try not to require them to share things that don't have relevance on what we are doing in class. That said, knowing a bit about who they are, where they are from, what they love, things they like to do, etc. can help me tailor learning experiences to their strengths and interests.

Here are a few things I have done to get to know my students:

• A few semesters ago, I started using a Google Doc class roster that students fill in for themselves at their level of comfort. I ask them to share a photo of themselves, if they feel comfortable doing so, and include a few bits of information. (For example, if they are graduate students in our Master of Education program, knowing what subjects or grade levels they teach/coach can be very helpful for me, as well as their locations--since I often have students in different time zones.) 
• I often ask students to create a video introduction of themselves. (Either using Flipgrid or recording a video and uploading it to YouTube.) I like this approach because it allows us to hear our classmates in their own voice and to put faces with names. (I also like to use this as an informal way to gauge my students' tech savvy.) 
• And...I should note that I sometimes just have students write a brief personal introduction in a discussion forum in the first week of the class. This is not a bad way to go, of course! But I like to get them a little more actively and creatively involved.

As for prompts, here are a few I've used before:

• Tell us who you are, where you're from, something you love, and what you're looking forward to in this class.
• I like this one because it is simple, straightforward, and relatively non-threatening. This is a nice general-purpose introduction with a low bar for entry.
• Share 3-5 objects with us that tell us something about you. 
• If you do this one, model it! I use some of the kitsch I have sitting on my desk, including a family photo, a plastic dinosaur, an "Easy Button" from Staples, and a Bob Ross coffee mug. (You know, the essentials.) :-)
• What's your favorite book? Why did you choose that book to share with us? 
• Often I've had students who say they can't choose just one, and wind up sharing 3-5 books that tell different things about them.
• If you were a superhero, what would be your superhero name, and what would be your superpower? Tell us why! 
• Again, model this! As a superhero, I am "The Technopath" with the power to wave my hand at misbehaving technological tools and make them magically work. This gives me the opportunity to share about my background as a technology director, and my doctoral work in EdTech, and how I often have so many of my own woes with technology and have to learn how to solve my own problems, and then use that knowledge to help others.
• Create a playlist of 4-6 songs to introduce yourself to us. (I invite them to actually create the playlist using Spotify or YouTube.)
• This is a fun one to model, and it really gives you a sense of your students too! And, somewhat awkwardly, I now have "The Dave Mulder Playlist" in my Spotify library, which includes music by Michael W. Smith, U2, Nirvana, Jars of Clay, Rend Collective, and Judah & the Lion.
• If I'm having students introduce themselves to a small group online, a prompt I've used is "Figure out why Mulder has put you together as a group." 
• The secret? I usually make the groups randomly...so they wind up sharing quite a bit about themselves with the group to get to try and figure out why I might have grouped them this way! :-)

Image by Tamarcus Brown via Unsplash

Does this all magically result in an incredible classroom community? Umm...no. I wish it were that simple! But I will say that making intentional space to invite students to share and help me get to know them--and sharing about myself so students can get to know me has made a big difference in the "feel" of my online courses. I'm still working on this, obviously. But these are, I think, steps in the right direction for creating a community of learners.

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

* I suppose I could get really philosophical and contrast "education" and "learning"--learning can certainly be individual...but that is missing the point what this post is really all about. :-) Suffice to say that I think there is a formalized, interactive, interpersonal nature to education that makes it different than learning.

The Golden Rule for Distance Teaching

Teachers expect a lot from their students. At least, this is true in my experience! We expect students to read, to write, to compute, to think, to discuss, to reflect, to make models, to generate hypotheses, to create beautiful artifacts to illustrate their learning...the list goes on and on!

This is probably not surprising, if you've spent any time at all in a classroom as either a student or a teacher. And...students are expected to comply with teachers' expectations, right? In my experience, almost every time I've had conflict with a student, it's because I had an expectation, and the student did not meet that expectation. Most of the time these kinds of conflicts are behavioral, but they can also be connected to content, or communication, ...or my poor pedagogy. (I hate it when that happens, but it does sometimes happen.)

Why bring this up? Well, I'm thinking about teaching at a distance, and how this is relatively undiscovered country for so many teachers. We might not be as adept at communicating our expectations in this new teaching environment. Teaching online can look a little different than teaching in a face-to-face environment, and because of this, we might have to check our expectations as educators. At the very least, we might need to be much more explicit in communicating our expectations!

And here's the conflict: I think that some of us (okay...me)--particularly when we are new to teaching online--might have to check some of those expectations. We are (okay...I am) so used to the power dynamics in a face-to-face classroom setting, we might be surprised with how the online environment can disrupt some of our sense of what is "normal."

Here is my encouragement for everyone teaching at a distance: consider the "golden rule for distance teaching." What is this golden rule? Here's how I'll frame it:

Never ask your students to do something you would be uncomfortable doing yourself.

Here are a few examples to illustrate what I mean:

• I like to have my students create short introduction videos to help us all get to know each at the beginning of the course. So, if I'm going to expect students to create such a video, I make my own introduction video and post it for them.
• I use discussion forums pretty substantially in the online courses I teach. If I expect students to be actively involved in reading and responding to their classmates, I too am active in reading and responding.
• If I want my students to take small risks in the kind of work they undertake--in responding to controversial issues, for example--I model this by doing some self-disclosure about my own thinking.

On the flip-side, I also try to be very cognizant of the message that I send to students in the things I ask them to do in the way I manage the learning environment. If it's something I would be uncomfortable with personally, I try to not ask students to do those things as well. For instance:

• I don't typically use plagiarism-checking software when having students submit assignments. If you read the fine print on services like Turnitin, it is nebulous at best as to whether the student or the company maintains ownership of the intellectual property contained in that academic work. I want to be able to maintain my own rights to my intellectual property, and so I also want my students to maintain these rights for the academic work I assign to them.
• In synchronous web conferences (e.g., Zoom meetings) there are times I want to have my camera off and my microphone muted, because I'm eating lunch, or my dog is going crazy in the background, or something of the like. Because I want to be able to have some privacy in these kinds of moments, I also want to extend this sense of privacy to my students as well.
• Personally, I would be very uncomfortable with having my work monitored digitally, through constant screen recording, or having my webcam turned on, or having my keystrokes logged--not because I'm doing anything morally reprehensible, or unlawful, or questionable, but because of the principle of being trusted. For the same reason, I don't ever want to use some sort of invasive proctoring system for my students; the fundamental message in this is "you are not trusted," and I don't want to model that for my students either. (I know that there are many concerns about students cheating in online learning environments; I'll have another post sometime on that topic. The point is, I would be terribly uncomfortable constantly being "watched," and so I don't want to demand this of my students either!)

Do I follow this golden rule perfectly? Perhaps not. But the longer I've taught online, the more important I've found this to be. I want my students to trust me...and that means I have to lead by trusting them too!

 

Image by enegerpic.com via pexels.com

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)

Embracing Many Approaches to Distance Teaching

I received an email yesterday afternoon with the subject, "Teach online correctly—from the very start." I confess, I was intrigued. I clicked to open, and this is what I saw:

It was an ad for an online course being offered by an organization I follow. I get their newsletter, and that's why I'm on their mailing list for this ad, I suppose. But this fascinated me, because the implied message here is "there is a right way to teach online, and a wrong way to teach online, and you don't want to do it wrong, do you???"

I wonder about this. Would the folks putting on this course suggest that there is one right way to teach a face-to-face course? Or would they take a more nuanced view, that teaching well depends on the needs of the students, the needs of the content, the conventions of the discipline, the affordances and constraints of the classroom, and the preferences of the instructor? Because I suspect teaching math looks different than teaching music--the content alone makes these very different endeavors, regardless of the medium of instruction and the classroom environment!

I view teaching as a craft, rather than a pure art or pure science. Yes, there are some universally valuable pedagogical approaches. And, yes, there are many different ways to conduct our work--different style preferences that we might have as instructors. I don't see this as an either-or proposition. Both of these can be true at the same time. And...I would dare to venture that this is still true in the online learning environment, just as it is in the face-to-face learning environment.

Somehow it seems that some people see "online teaching" as a monolith, that there is just one way to do it. But, seriously...let's think that through. Is there just one way to teach in a face-to-face classroom? Obviously not. Some folks lecture. Some facilitate discussions. Some incorporate hands-on, experiential learning opportunities. Some use inductive, "solve the mystery" approaches. Some use collaborative learning. Some incorporate reflective thinking. Some use combinations of these--and lots of other approaches--in just one lesson! 

And the same is true of distance teaching: there are lots of possible approaches that can be used, just like in the face-to-face classroom. Some folks lecture (via video.) Some facilitate discussions (in asynchronous discussions forums.) Some incorporate hands-on, experiential learning activities (by getting students away from their devices to do something, and then share about what they discovered.) Some use inductive, "solve the mystery" approaches (like digital breakout rooms, or mystery boxes.) Some use collaborative learning (because there are all kinds of tools that can be leveraged for online collaboration these days!) Some use reflective thinking (by writing blog posts, or papers, or student-created videos to make meaning of their learning.) Some use combinations of these--and lots of other approaches--in just one (online) lesson!

Come on...just one "correct" way to teach online? I suppose the one "correct" way to teach online is to match your teaching methods to the learning target, to keep in mind your student' needs, the needs of the content, the conventions of the discipline, the affordances and constraints of the online learning environment, and your preferences as an instructor.

Let's embrace many approaches to distance teaching!

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(This post is part of a series offering tips on distance teaching. You can read more about this project here: Distance Teaching Tips. You can also read all of the posts in this series here: Distance Teaching Tips Series.)