Zoom Check-ins — Preventing the Zone Outs in Meetings and Online Classes

We're living in a Zoom world. Recently, I heard people questioning if students are actually participating in the synchronous online sessions, or if they "set it and forget it" — walk away or let someone else babysit the screen. The same goes for any of us in a meeting. Zoom fatigue is real, and check-ins help to re-engage participants.

Whether in class or in a meeting, a few little tricks and tools can help engage participants in low stakes ways. I can't take credit for these — I'm collating tips from a recent conference and my university's HyFlex training. 

Annotate - You can ask participants to mark up your slides. This requires some thought beforehand like checking your settings to make sure you have allowed for participants to annotate slides. You could have a slide in your presentation with lots of space for student comments. Or it could be a T chart where students leave an emoji or drawing to indicate a level of comfort with a subject or even their opinions about a course topic. As someone who has taught editing, I'm tempted to insert a bunch of typos and have students edit as we move along. (Remember to clear the annotations as you move to the next slide.)

Breakout rooms - Everyone needs a change of scenery. Using breakout rooms gives participants a chance to refresh. Maybe ask the participants in each room to do quick intros or answer an easy question to get the ball rolling in the new room. Ask participants to assume roles like notetaker and reporter. When you reconvene as the larger group, small group reporters can help lead the larger discussion.

Rename feature - In Zoom, you have the option to change how your name appears. Once I joined a session at a national convention with "Sarah's Iphone" appearing on the screen. I quickly changed that to a more professional name with personal pronouns. One suggestion was to have students change their screen name to "Anon" and then with video muted, they could anonymously chat with feedback or check understanding with reactions. For a fun change, have them rename their profile with a pet's name. 

Reactions - Simply ask participants to use the reaction (clap or thumbs up) to a question or comment. You could use the symbols as a polling feature, too. Participants can change the skin tone of their hand icons in the settings.

Write or speak option - It's not ideal to have everyone responding in unison, but you can give participants the option to write or speak in a discussion moment. You could use the chat feature for a quick one-minute writing assignment that can be used to check understanding. Or ask everyone to type one question others might want to ask about the topic.

Chat advocate - You can assign a chat advocate who makes certain the questions being asked in the chat stream receive attention. You could throw the mic to this advocate every-so-often to change up the pacing and the speaker's voice.

If we're honest, people can check-out mentally in face-to-face classes and meetings, too. Just as we read the room in a physical situation, we need to read the virtual room and decide if the audience needs a change or a check-in. 

What tricks or tips have worked for you? 

Hello from 2008

While looking for something totally unrelated, I stumbled upon a bucket of my teaching documents from 2008. Instead of staying on task, I  jumped down a rabbit hole of worksheets, tip sheets, graded papers, student evaluations, and more from semesters teaching an advanced media writing course.

As I unearthed parts of my teaching past, I found myself motivated by that teacher from 12 years ago. The time she would take to create a new worksheet and the lengths she would go to connect students with real-world learning was inspiring. I still spend time crafting documents to help students and developing real-world connections, but when reflecting on an entire tub of pedagogy, I'm reminded that the time invested matters. 

Time matters, too. It was a stark look at how much has changed in my field. The Associated Press help files are from a style guide long ago and the print-focused stories my students crafted screamed for a multimedia make-over. The gentle reminder -- keep learning and keep up -- lingered in my mind. 

This tub of goodness arrived at just the right time. I'm finishing my class plans and syllabi for the fall, and past me gave present me that extra boost of motivation I need after an unusual spring semester and stay-at-home summer. 

Did I recycle the entire contents of the tub? Whoa, let's not get too wild. I did pare it down A LOT and it now fits in one tidy binder. I hope your fall planning is coming along, and if you get diverted, don't fret. It might be exactly what you needed.

Listening and Feedback — in online classes

At the crossroads of my teaching and research, I'm thinking of how my research on listening in social media translates to listening in our online courses. In my four-week feedback for two of my online-only courses (before COVID-19 turned everything online), students liked that I offer personalized comments and feedback on each assignment. For them, this is evidence that I am listening and am a real person.

A colleague and I looked at listening expectations of stakeholders when communicating with organizations in social media. What we found is that people expected active and emphatic listening. This means responses that acknowledge the stakeholder's situation and perspective, as well as working toward a solution or action.

What if we consciously applied those concepts to our interactions in an online class? I think many teachers do this without even thinking, especially in primarily face-to-face courses. Bodie et al. (2012) identified high-ranking verbal behaviors of competent listeners. Here, I'll try to translate those to online courses, which really means continuous feedback.

• Responding with something pertinent — in many of my classes, I ask students to reflect on the week's tasks in low-stakes writing. The journal entries could be assessed with a quick rubric of check, check+, check-. But it's also an opportunity to take something they said and respond to it.
• Answers and asks questions — this could mean popping onto a discussion board to further a thread along with a follow-up question, or answering a wonder suggested in a reflection paper with another question or a link to further information.
• Elaborates on topics being discussed — when students seem to have similar questions or misunderstandings about a concept, an extra video lecture on the specific topic could help. Or if a student really seems interested in a topic or is ready for the next level, elaborate on the next relevant topic.
• Offers advice, opinions, perspectives — this is where we excel, right?! Maybe we offer a counterpoint or share how the topic worked in a real-word setting in industry or a recent news article. I shoot a weekly welcome video where I can incorporate advice, opinions, and perspectives, based on student work from the previous week.

You may be thinking, this would take me forever. It's really not that time-consuming, and it has a big impact. Quick responses to assignments in a comments field, in addition to a rubric, can make the student feel like a real person read and reviewed their work, not a teacher-bot. Additionally, I use the student's name in the response, and write in a conversational tone, using some emojis and !!!. 

Recently, a friend shared with me how her students lauded her for feedback in her online sections. She felt like she could do more. (Me, too!) We were both surprised by how thankful students are for even basic feedback — evidence that we are listening. 

As you plot your next online section, consider your feedback plan and other evidence that you are listening. Could you be more purposeful in creating that social presence? How do you show that you are listening in your online courses?

Some of my listening research has been supported by a grant from the Arthur W. Page Center​.

Reference

Bodie, G. D., St. Cyr, K., Pence, M., Rold, M., & Honeycutt, J. (2012). Listening competence in initial interactions: Distinguishing between what listening is and what listeners do. International Journal of Listening, 26(1), 1-28. doi:10.1080/10904018.2012.639645

Celebrate Teaching Week

This week is Celebrate Teaching Week on my campus, with guest speakers, a teaching conference and even a fun run. In addition to the external celebration, I think it's also a call for an internal review of our own teaching efforts and innovations. Here are just some musings on ways to reflect on your teaching this week:

Your Teaching Goals
Use this free online survey to measure goals specific to teaching one class (Angelo & Cross, 1993). Check how essential you believe certain skills are, and how they prioritize with your teaching structures.

Your Dominant Teaching Style
Grasha-Reichmann have a survey for assigning your dominant and secondary teaching styles. A free online version will give you feedback on if you're more of a facilitator, delegator, expert, formal authority, or personal model.

Your Teaching Brand
Like a great company, you have a brand. These might be the words your students and colleagues use to describe you or the words you use to describe your teaching. Can you boil it down to a catchy tagline? Or try pasting student evaluations into a word cloud generator for a visual representation.

Your Teaching Philosophy
What do you believe is "teaching" and what is "learning"? Whose responsibility are these concepts? How do you share in this teaching and learning adventure with your students? You may have written a statement while on the academic job search, but when is the last time you looked at it? Give it a review and possibly an update. Or create one. Your Center for Instructional Innovation will likely have a repository of examples. This document has a variety of examples that begin on page 160.

Your Teaching Conversations
Open a dialog about teaching with a campus colleague, maybe even one from a different department or college. Ask about interesting classroom techniques and projects. Our colleagues have so much to share as far as ideas you will want to replicate in your own course. These conversations could be the start of creative collaborations between two classes.

How do you celebrate teaching? What strategies do you use for reflecting on your teaching?

Quilting Adventure Update

Two mini-quilts down and I'm learning what I like, and don't. I'm also remembering what it's like to be a new learner. After the initial excitement of a new challenge wore off, I put the project on the back burner. It's the same stall-out I see with our students who pitch a great story idea or research topic and then peter out in the middle.

Doll bed quilt: A reminder of being a new learner 

I used this quilt for doll bed as a way to test different techniques and supplies. For example, I learned that I needed a wider border and made the adjustment for the larger quilt. I tried machine quilting and hand quilting. Discovering my talents and likes was valuable and something we can offer students with low-stakes projects. In my classes, I encourage my students to experiment with a new writing style or design. We need to create the safe spaces in our courses for students to use trial and error to make discoveries.

How would I grade my quilt? Average. C. I met the learning objectives, but my technique could use some work....OK, a lot of work. But I learned along the way, and that's our main goal as teachers, right?!

A semester in review

In my classes, I typically ask students to reflect at the end of the semester. Sometimes I hand back the first-day assignment and other times I challenge them to list everything they learned in the semester. What did they learn about themselves and what inspiration did they find this semester? It could simply be the revelation that they didn't like a certain aspect of public relations. This goes beyond the course learning objectives and regular course evaluations. If I believe it's good for them, then I should follow my own advice.

Reflections from this semester

1) Nap time is a great time for writing. While the toddler sleeps, I feel the urgency to work as efficiently as I can. I worked on two new research projects and three revise and resubmits. So far in 2017, I have added three publications to the vitae. I should have been doing this before the kiddo came along!!!

2) Class size makes a difference. In retrospect, I should have changed how I handle our graduate ethics class when it moved beyond the 10 students I had last time. Each night, we had so many peer presentations to jam into our time together that I fear class became predictable and routine.

3) Expect a lot. I'm a believer in setting expectations high and helping our students get there. And they will. Our grad students submitted to NCA, a call for book chapters, and a PRSA conference. The ethics case studies they wrote this semester were exceptional and I hope to see them present and publish soon.

As the semester winds down, what are your semester-in-review reflections?

A New Learner - Let the Quilting Adventure Begin

As part of my teaching philosophy, I write: "I want to forever remember what it feels like to be a new learner, and admit that I’ll never be in the exact position as my students."

I may not be able to hit rewind on my understanding of Intro to Mass Communication, but I can place myself in the vulnerable position of approaching an unfamiliar topic or task. So begins my quilting adventure.

My tiny helper and her quilt topper.

I'm immediately reminded that every topic has its own vocabulary. Have you ever "stitched in the ditch" or bought a "walking foot"? I had to look up so much just to understand what the online tutorials mentioned. I needed the online tutorial for the online tutorial. Our students feel this way when we start yammering on about any topic for the first exposure. This brings me to pacing.

Instead of zipping right along, I am having to move at a much slower pace. I read and re-read my instructions. Hesitation happens. The confidence I feel with well-known tasks and topics is not there. I struggle with the tools, too. Every bump in the road seems much larger than it might be for the experienced quilter. So imagine if our students are trying something new AND they are new to BlackBoard or a social media tool AND they experience setbacks.

Quilt topper for Little One's doll crib.

As a beginning quilter, I want to see progress. Our students want the same kind of validation and assurance that they are on the right path. Maybe more checkpoints or self-checks are in order for brand new topics and tasks. And more self-help videos.

I would be lost without the quilters who have taken the time to post how-to's on YouTube. Some are better than others, but getting to see the process in action and being able to replay, replay and replay has helped me to understand quilting concepts. The take-away for me is to create more help videos of my own and develop curated lists of better videos for students.

How is the quilt, you ask? I'm starting small, a quilt for a doll crib. I have the topper complete and will now actually quilt (after I buy more supplies!). I'll let you know how it goes. What do you do to remind yourself of how our students might feel?

Week 4 Evaluations = Real-time Feedback

Student evaluations can be informative, but generally only help the next semester's students. Since I started teaching in 1999, I've used the "week 4" evaluation. I've used index cards and online survey tools like SurveyMonkey.

For index cards, I ask two questions. Students do not write their names on the cards. On one side, they report about something they've liked so far about class. On the other side, I ask them to suggest one thing they would like changed. I tease that I can't change things like our scheduled day to meet.

For the online survey, I typically program a whopping three questions: the same two from above and "Is there anything else you would like to add?" If I have access to a learning management system, I link it from there and ask students to log-in during class. If we're not in a computer lab, I use the announcement feature to force out the survey invitation. In an accelerated summer semester, you might employ this tactic at the end of week 2.

Brace yourselves for the results, but generally students like that you're even asking. I look for themes and try to make changes where possible. I also tell students that I'm making the changes based on their feedback. Who doesn't like to think they've made a difference? I have found that I can always implement something they have suggested.