How to Manage Teaching Online

In this season of isolation and shelter-in-place, many teachers have suddenly found themselves teaching at a distance. There are all kinds of technological and pedagogical challenges for this, obviously. But working from home provides another whole challenge of its own.

I had an email from one of my grad students that named this challenge pretty squarely. He reached out, knowing that I teach online a lot, and wondered how I manage teaching online. I was glad he asked! He asked several questions, which I've included below, along with some of my thinking to respond to each of them. 

I should note that while some of these are aligned to research-based best practices, a lot of this is anecdotal examples of things that I have found that work for me. Consider this a case study in managing the work of teaching online, as developed through practice, experimentation, (some) research, and a bit of the school of hard knocks too.

Image by Thomas Lefebvre via Unsplash

Lament and Joy and COVID-19

I have been so busy. So, so busy. It's weird that in a season when so many things have been cancelled so we can keep distance, I have felt as busy as ever.

Pivoting online has meant extra work in some ways, and different work in others. Working mostly from home has been good, overall, but it means a lot of distractions from my kids and my dog.

As you can see, he is very distracting to me as I work from the couch.

I've been wanting to blog more during this time, to capture my thoughts and feelings and document them somehow for the future. I've been wanting to write more words of encouragement to folks who are new to distance teaching, since that's something I know a bit about, and have things I could share.
I've been wanting to take time to write about things other than the current pandemic crisis.

But here I am, about a month since my last post, and feeling a little glum about it.

Truth is, I've realized I'm in a season of lament. I am grieving things that feel "lost."

This doesn't mean I haven't still felt deep joy as well. But I am lamenting the state of the world, and the state of our country, and the state of my own situation.

Teaching at a Distance: Keeping it Human

I'm thinking a lot about my students right now. I miss them. I've done distance office hours both yesterday and today, and it was so, so good to be able to hear them, see them, and communicate live for a little while, even if at a distance.

I'm grateful for technologies that allows so many different avenues of communication. One of my research interests is social presence. There are multiple different definitions for what "social presence" is all about, but one that I really like is, "the degree to which a person is perceived as a 'real person' in mediated communication" (Gunawardena, 1995).

How can I do this? How can I share a sense of myself as a "real person" in my communication with students? How can they share a sense of themselves as "real" with me and their classmates? There are lots of different ways. Videoconferences are a great way to connect. But lower tech tools--even good ol' email--can also be great ways to connect. How can students perceive me as a real person? The affordances of a particular technology matter, I think. But even more important? My tone, and the way I use the tool to communicate. Basically, I'm working with the belief in mind that my students are real people, whole people, and the way I communicate with them matters.

Teaching at a Distance: Human Connections

Today is day one of our emergency distance learning adventure.* As I'm writing this, it's about 2:30 in the afternoon. So far, so good.

I've had about half a dozen emails from students so far today, mostly just checking in to make sure they understand what is expected of them for the work this week. One shared a concern for a grandparent who is ill--not COVID-19, but a broken hip and related complications. I've had a couple of colleagues check in to see how I'm doing, which was really nice and thoughtful of them. (Last week was a crazy busy week for me, helping many folks figure out new skills and strategies for engaging with their students from a distance. Don't get me wrong; it was a good week...but I crashed on Friday night and rested well over the weekend.)

As much as I'm working on helping my students keep learning--and my colleagues too--I recognize that am learning things throughout this process as well. Here are three things I've learned already:

The Emergency Pivot to Online Teaching and Learning

So.

Here we are.

This is a fascinating time.

It seems to me, based on what I'm reading online, that most colleges and universities in the US, and many (most?) K-12 schools have either already made the decision to suspend face-to-face meetings, or will very soon.

You might think, given my field (Educational Technology) and my particular interests in that field (Online Teaching and Learning, Social Presence Theory, Technology Integration, and Social Media for Learning) that I would be cheering for this whole scenario.

Honest answer: I'm a little worried about how this is going to go.

I say this because I know how much work it takes to teach online. It's not less work in any way than teaching face-to-face. And especially at the beginning, when you're first learning how to teach online, it might very well be more work--perhaps substantially more work.

And I also recognize that I'm biased in all of this, because I actually really like teaching online, and for folks who aren't already on-board, it's going to be even more challenging.

So.

How are we going to do this, folks?

Well, this post is just a place where I figured I'd share a few initial thoughts and resources. This is just my take on things, and a few ideas I've gleaned from other places and Twitterfriends. But if you're suddenly thrust into teaching online, and find any of this helpful, please feel free to run with it, okay?

When Should We Go Digital?

I'm teaching a course this semester ambitiously entitled "Teaching and Learning with Technology." It'a actually the...eighth time I've taught it, and I have it almost dialed in where I want it at this point. (But it's always a process of refinement, you know? Always becoming, and never arriving...)

A perennial question that comes up at some point each time I teach the course is along the lines of, "When should we use technology, and when should we avoid it?"

I love it when students start asking that question. All too often, I think we assume that technology is somehow going automatically improve teaching and learning. But I think that "when should we use technology" might be the wrong question, honestly. Probably this has to do with the fact that I tend to take a very broad view of technology; sure, computers and tablets and projectors are technologies. But so are books, and pencils, and crayons, and paper, and white boards, and scented markers, and play-doh, and protractors, and juggling balls, and...well, you get the idea? We use an awful lot of different kinds of tools to support and encourage students to learn. Some are digital. Some are not.

So the way I'd like to reframe this question is, "When should we go digital?" Here too, there are probably a variety of answers, and it's not always clear.

But tonight I was in on a Twitter chat with one of my all-time favorite groups of Ttweeting teachers, #iaedchat (Iowa Educators Chat--but there's a lot of folks from beyond Iowa who join in.) Tonight's chat centered around this idea of leadership and learning in digitally-enhanced learning environments. As part of the chat, one of my long-time Twitterfriends, Devin Schoening, shared this wisdom:

I've always had 3 Qs I use when working w/teachers re dig tools. 1. Does it make something more efficient? 2. Does it enhance something you are already doing? 3. Does it making something possible that otherwise wouldn't be? Have to be able to answer at least one "yes". #iaedchat

— Devin Schoening (@dschoening) February 24, 2020

I love this! Great advice, Devin. I'm going to pass this along to my students, and hopefully we'll continue to spread this wisdom into lots more schools as well.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

I am a Yellow Crayon

At a meeting last night, my friend, Ruth, gave me a yellow crayon...

This is my crayon. (Thanks, Ruth!)

She gave it to me because--her words--I am a positive, sunny person who spreads joy to everyone around me.

This seriously warmed my heart.

Many people have told me that I am a positive person; this is not surprising to me.

But the tangibility of being given a token like this was a welcome reminder for me of the impact I have on the people around me. Ruth mentioned something specific that had happened a week or two ago while we were working on a mutual, technology-related problem. She tried sharing a file with me, and after I was unable to open it, I emailed her back. My email said, "No joy on my end." And she told me when she gave me the crayon, "I can hardly imagine you with 'no joy.'"

What a lift, from a simple little gift!

I'm embracing it: I am a yellow crayon.

How about you? If someone was going to give you a crayon that represents something about you, what color would they give you, and why?