No Apologies for My Email

In the age of COVID-19, I'm struggling with keeping up with email. (I mean, I'm struggling with other things too, but this is one specific and tangible struggle.) I have some strategies that I use for managing my inbox, but they aren't always working these days. I'll share a few of my strategies here, but also a nugget of truth that I think I've finally settled on for not feeling guilty about struggling to keep up.

I rarely achieve inbox zero, but because I use my email inbox as a key part of my workflow, I do generally try to keep my inbox to fewer than 30 items whenever possible. I use folders to sort messages I need to hang on to--"department business," and "academic affairs," and "church stuff," and "IMPORTANT" are all folders I use regularly, in addition to a dedicated folder for each course I'm teaching. And I'm learning to delete with abandon--how did I get on so many mailing lists that are only tangentially related to me and my interests anyway? If it's not something I am going to need to keep, into the trash it goes. All of this helps remove the clutter.

I learned in grad school that I had to compartmentalize my day, or I would wind up ping-ponging back and forth between things and losing productive work time. One strategy I practiced then--and have recently reinstated--is closing my email for big chunks of the day. That little pinging email icon with the numerical counter of unread messages is designed to grab our attention. Closing the program and only opening it when I have the time to dedicate to answering messages helps manage this distraction.

My general rule is that I plan to respond to messages within 24 hours, and I almost always am able to do this. I will say that I prioritize: if it's a message from a current student or from a colleague about something time-sensitive, I do try to answer those ones as soon as possible. If it's from someone outside the institution, or something that is less time critical...I try to hold off on those ones if possible.

Setting up a few times a day to read and respond to email does help. One approach I've tried to practice in the past and still mostly successfully achieve is the 2-minute rule: when I'm "doing email," if I can respond to a message in less than 2 minutes, I will do it right now and not put it off until later. This helps free up space in the inbox, and thus in my mental workflow as well.

As useful as these strategies have been, however, I still am finding that I struggle to keep up with the email avalanche from time to time. There are still some messages that get lost in the shuffle, and then I find them days later--far longer than my normal 24-hour window. I hate this feeling, and my first impulse it to send an apologetic email in response.

But here's the nugget of truth, and the associated strategy I've been using lately. Instead of an "I am SO sorry...!" opening to my tardy email in response, I've changed up my language a bit. I am now starting those emails with, "Thanks for your patience with my slower-than-normal response." 

Because this is the truth: I think we are all up to our eyebrows in keeping up, and I am finding it relatively easy to extend grace to other people who don't get back to me as quickly as I would like...because I'm so grateful when they extend this grace to me as well. Opening with a "thanks!" message instead of an apology is my way of signaling this.

I hope that we all can normalize this. Certainly there is a sense of professionalism and responsibility in getting back to people as soon as possible. But in the age of COVID? Let's make it "no apologies needed."

Image by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.uk.com via Unsplash

Writing, Teaching, Thinking, Working

Thanks to the many of you, dear readers, who commented (via Twitter, Facebook, text, email, hallway conversation, or carrier pigeon) in response to my writing project here on the blog last month. (If you weren't reading along, no worries! I'm glad you're here now. If you want to take a look at that project, it was a series of posts offering tips for teaching at a distance. You can read the whole series here if you like: Distance Teaching Tips Series.) This is my 33rd post on the blog for 2020. 18 of those came last month, trying to get myself disciplined to write again. 

It's amazing to think about how this year has unfolded. 2020 has just been a tough year in so many ways. I thought that with the time at home on quarantine in the spring, I would have written a lot. I just didn't have it in me. It was hard work just to keep up with the teaching.

Then I thought I might do some more writing this summer. Nope--I was busy with teaching online in our Master of Ed program and doing some consulting work offering PD sessions to help K-12 teachers prepare for teaching at a distance this year.

And then came the end of summer, with the scramble to prepare for hy-flex teaching this fall. Oof. It's been demanding, friends, to say the least. Don't get me wrong...my students are amazing. My courses are going well. My colleagues are incredibly supportive. But I'm tired. all. the. time.

Teaching is hard work under the best of circumstances. I know none of my fellow educators are surprised to hear me say that. But I am often amazed at how non-educators think that our profession is some sort of walk in the park. And this year? The emotional work of teaching is all the more demanding. All the extra demands for...everything...just feels like a burden. I'm SO grateful for what I get to do, so I don't want this to sound like complaining. I'm not. But I'm acknowledging that this has been hard--really hard. And I know my students are feeling that way too; several have said as much. They are grateful to be here, they are glad to be on campus, making the efforts to do all the things that have to be different this year to make it happen. But several have named it: it's hard, and they are pining for the "normal."

I am too.

One of the joys in my work as a professor is that I am expected to think, and research, and write, in addition to my teaching. I love this stuff. But this year, the thinking, and researching, and writing feels sort of superfluous. Or at least, maybe it's less important than the teaching? I'm thinking a lot, of course. But so much of my thinking ends up circling back to thinking about my courses, about my students, about how to help them, and support them, and encourage them, and how to not get buried in the work.

Ah, the work. Working in academia is kind of weird. The work is almost all cognitive, and emotional. Teaching is such public work, but intensely personal as well. And as I'm thinking about what has just blurred out of my keyboard in the past 15 minutes here, maybe this is a great example of what I'm doing. I just had to get this feeling out of my head and heart in some way, and so the words spilled out into pixels here on the blog.

I guess I'll title this post something about writing, and teaching, and thinking, and working. This semester they all feel so interrelated--even more than normal.

I don't know if I'll even push this one on social media now that it's written. This one might actually just be for me.

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

---

(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!

---

(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!

---

(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.

---

(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!

---

(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.)