In the last week, most universities in the United States and abroad closed their physical campuses and moved their instruction online in an effort to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. This changed life for students, staff, and faculty in countless ways, and presented a range of challenges – both in terms of learning, but also in terms of living – for everyone involved.
What does this drastic shift mean for university courses? Overnight, thousands of teachers are trying to learn how most effectively to teach their courses online, and hundreds of thousands of students are adjusting to learning through various online platforms and teaching styles.
There are many ways of teaching online, both synchronously (in which an instructor offers instruction to students in “real-time,” simultaneously) and asynchronously (in which an instructor prepares materials, including lectures and guided assignments, for students to prepare on their own time). Each teacher and their particular group of students will need to figure out, together, what works for their current conditions and for the subjects of their study. These circumstances – a global pandemic – don’t call for exemplary instruction; they call for kindness, empathy, community, and continued dedication to teaching and learning under rapidly changing, and increasingly more challenging, conditions.
Synchronous instruction doesn’t work for everyone. It requires students to have access to a computer or smartphone as well as access to the internet or cellular data. (At the time of my writing this piece, for example, my internet was down for several hours.) It also requires students to be residing in similar enough time zones to be able to tune in at the same time, at reasonable hours. And, instructors need to inquire about students’ various accessibility needs and cater their online teaching styles to the needs of all of their students – which requires a range of strategies, including closed captioning for those with hearing difficulties, sending materials such as handouts and weblinks in advance for those who need to see them in larger sizes, and recording class sessions for those who can’t connect.
But synchronous instruction, when it’s possible, also presents many opportunities: the chance for classmates to continue to connect with each other and with their teacher despite spatial and social distance; the ability for a teacher to check in with students to make sure that they are okay; the benefits of learning together in diverse groups of people and discussing the subject matter in an interactive way; and the possibility of maintaining a sense of campus and class community at precisely the time when we don’t want to feel disconnected for one another. It was surprisingly moving for me to see my students’ faces and to hear their voices last week, as I sat at my dining room table to conduct my first online class. I can’t wait to see and hear them again after spring break.
Below, I explain a number of tools that I have found to be especially helpful with the online platform Zoom. I do not have any stake in this company; I have simply found it to work well for my own online teaching needs as well as for those of my children, whose school migrated to zoom two weeks ago. As of writing this piece, anyone can sign up for a free Zoom account, which allows you to hold meetings of up to 40 minutes for as many as 100 participants; for longer class sessions, you can set up two or three 40-minute meetings with a short break between each one. That is how I conducted my first Zoom class meetings, though since then my university has become an institutional member and I can hold longer sessions without interruption. I can also hold weekly office hours with students on Zoom. Many of the tools available on Zoom are also available through other platforms, including Blackboard Collaborate, WebEx, and others. I encourage you, to the extent that you can, to experiment with the resources to which you have access and to find a consistent way of conducting class, either synchronously or asynchronously, so that you and your students can get used to these new rhythms of learning – and even find comfort in them.
I am currently teaching undergraduate and graduate seminars, which meet once or twice per week, and so my reflections are based on these experiences and will likely be most relevant to those teaching lecture- or discussion-based courses in which teacher-student interaction is important or desired, but many of these reflections can also be adapted for other contexts. My notes are divided into two parts, the first is a list of Zoom’s features that work well for instruction, and the second is a list of teaching strategies that employ these features. I conclude below with a few thoughts about what I have learned so far about teaching online during a time of crisis.
A List of Zoom Features Useful for University and Adult Education Teaching:
1. Muting and Unmuting Participants: As the moderator, you have the ability to set your meeting to automatically mute everyone as they enter the meeting (you can do this when you first create the meeting, or at any point thereafter by changing the settings of the scheduled meeting). You can also unmute particular students when you want to call on them and then re-mute them when they are done speaking. Alternatively, you can ask all of your students to manually mute themselves at the beginning of the meeting. I didn’t need to use the automatic function for my smaller classes, because all of my students knew how to mute and unmute themselves, but this function will be especially useful for those teaching larger courses or teaching students who are less familiar with digital technologies.
2. Chatting: There is a “chat” feature, through which any participant of the meeting can send a typed-out message either to a particular individual or set of individuals or to the whole group. These chats appear on a sidebar and allow messages to be sent and questions asked and answered without interrupting the flow of the class. This feature works particularly well for a variety of purposes. For example, an instructor can pose a question for students to consider, or a topic to brainstorm, during class. Rather than asking students to respond with video/audio, as they might if you called on them in an in-person class, they can share their answers as chats. This works especially well when posing yes or no questions, or questions that require brief answers. Alternatively, if a student needs to ask a basic question – such as what page the class is reading together – or if a student wants to excuse themselves for a minute or needs to log off early, they can chat that message to the instructor or to the entire class without disturbing the discussion. Finally, for students who are able to tune in but for whom the audio or video doesn’t work well, they can participate in the discussion with comments and questions through chat rather than video/audio conferencing.
3. Raising Hands: When participants click on the “Participant” feature on the bottom of their screens, a sidebar to the right allows them to “Raise Hand” and “Lower Hand.” Once they have pressed “Raise Hand,” a little blue hand icon is displayed next to their video image, communicating to the meeting moderator (usually the instructor) that they would like to jump into the conversation or ask a question. This feature is helpful because it isn’t always entirely clear when a student is raising their physical hand through the video, especially when there are many participants; it also means that students don’t need to wave energetically or keep their physical arm raised for long periods of time. Once the instructor has called on them, or if their contribution is no longer relevant, they can press “Lower Hand” and the raised hand icon disappears.
4. Screen Sharing: The ability of an instructor to share a screen with students is invaluable. You can share a word document, a google doc, a pdf, PowerPoint presentation slides, a website, a youtube video, and more. For example, in my undergraduate course, I shared with students the source sheet with texts and images we were discussing; I used my cursor to point to or highlight words or phrases that were important to emphasize. In my dissertation seminar, we were able to pull up the dissertation chapter we were discussing; when I enabled “track changes,” I was able to edit a section of the introduction so that the students could see their suggestions taking form in the text. If I had used a Google Doc and given editing access to all of my students, I could have asked them to contribute to editing the paragraph together. Another use of a shared Google Doc is to treat it as one would a whiteboard during class when an instructor asks students to come up to the board to share ideas.[1] In my next class meeting, we will be looking at medieval maps and so I will make sure to screen share the images of the maps with my students so that we can analyze them together as we would were they projected on the board during class. In order to screen share, there is a “Share” button at the bottom of the Zoom screen that looks like a file with an arrow in it (in the same panel as the “Participant” button); all you need to do is press “Share” and then select which screen you want to share with the participants. To stop sharing the screen, you just click the red “Stop Share” button on the top of the shared window, and then the display focuses again on the speaker’s video.
5. Break Participants into Small Groups: For those who wish to ask students to discuss a question or source in smaller groups, Zoom allows the moderator to break the participants into groups. The instructor can choose how many groups to create, the size of groups, and whether participants should be automatically (randomly) or manually (deliberately) assigned. These small groups create more intimate opportunities to interact with one another. For instance, in an upcoming class, I plan on introducing the class’ topic and goals and then asking students to break into small groups, with each group tasked with analyzing a different text. I will ask the students, in advance, to make sure to designate one person per group to be the “note-taker,” so that that person can report back to the rest of the class the ideas generated in their small group discussion. Doing so will also help me, when I bring my students back together to the full class, to facilitate a group conversation among students without the discussion becoming too chaotic. Each student will have participated in their small group, and each small group will have shared their ideas through their student representative. Here is a youtube video of how to break your class into groups on Zoom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_O7rDILNCM
6. Music: Zoom allows a moderator to play music as participants join the meeting as well as at any other point of the meeting, including the end. (Here are the Zoom instructions for doing so: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362643-Sharing-Computer-Sound-During-Screen-Sharing) When I teach my undergraduate courses in-person, I usually ask my students to spend a few minutes brainstorming a prompt I provide, and I always set this opening exercise to music that is appropriate to that day’s lesson. I do so in order to get students “in the mood” for class and allow their minds to settle into the subject matter. Zoom provides the ability to replicate this type of activity online. I can, for example, screen share a pdf of the prompt (which often includes an image or text with a set of questions) while I play a song and ask my students to brainstorm their answers in their notebooks. Then I can ask them to share their answers either by video/audio or by chat. At the end of the session, instead of just signing off, I can play another piece of music and “Spotlight” each student as they wave goodbye. Doing so is a way of ushering students out of the space of our class – a ritual that usually happens when they pack their bags and say goodbye to each other on their way out the door – and also emphasizing again that our class is a community. It also ends class on an upbeat note.
Here is a Sample of my First Zoom Class, for those looking for ways of introducing students to online learning:
1. In advance of our first online class meeting, I sent an email to all of my students explaining the plan for the class. I included everything they needed in a single email because I assumed that they were being inundated with emails; simplicity, clarity, and concision are key. In that email, I sent students the link to our zoom class along with call-in information for those who could not connect by computer. I also attached all readings and handouts, so that students had the materials for the class in advance, with enough time to download or print anything they wanted. I also asked them to mute themselves at the beginning of class and to arrive promptly so that we could begin right away.
2. As soon as class began, I welcomed everyone and explained the key features of zoom, as I did in the section above. I asked all those students with their video off if they intentionally had video off (some did, others didn’t realize that their video was off and they turned it on). Then, I asked all students to try the “Raise Hand” feature so that everyone could find it; we guided a few students until everyone got it. This whole process took 2 minutes.
3. Next, I asked each student for a “check-in” to see how they were doing. I called on them in the order in which they sit in class (more or less, as I remembered their seats). Each, in turn, unmuted themselves and said “hi,” usually also telling everyone where they were calling in from (e.g. their near-campus apartment, home, etc.) and how they were doing. Some took the opportunity to express sadness about the new circumstances, and I imagine that, as we “check-in” at the beginning of each upcoming class meeting, their updates will change. This itself only took 3-5 minutes but was a really nice way of creating a community in a virtual setting. It also allowed me to make sure that each student’s audio worked properly so that they could smoothly join the conversation at later points in the class meeting as well.
4. I then led my hour-long class, which happened to involve some lecturing, some discussion, and some questions. It worked really well.
5. We used the last couple of minutes of class to debrief: I asked students to tell me what worked, what could be improved for next time, and so on. I reminded students to send in their upcoming assignment and answered some questions about what lies ahead. I also told students to email me with suggestions and reflections so that we can continue to improve the learning experience online. After class, I sent them the readings and zoom link for our next class meetings, and also asked them to email me if they had any technical difficulties in our previous class, outlining in detail the various questions that I had for them about the online learning experience. The day before our class meeting, I’ll re-send this email, and add any handouts and PowerPoint slides as well.
I will conclude with a few reflections about teaching at a time when everything has moved online so abruptly. First, an observation: Students often appreciate learning in the most straightforward ways. As we design online classes, this means that often erring on the side of simplicity – for example, blending lecture with discussion – is better for our students’ learning than trying to accomplish technologically complicated feats, especially when we’re still getting the hang of these platforms and the limits and possibilities of online teaching. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t try new tools; rather, we should always keep our pedagogical goals and students’ experiences in mind when we design our online lesson plans. Second, an advantage of the online experience that I had not anticipated: The Zoom platform has different views. One view (“Speaker View”) is designed to focus on the person who is speaking by placing them at the center of the screen, in a much larger size than the other meeting participants. When one person speaks, everyone looks at that person’s face. Another view (“Gallery View”) allows participants to see everyone’s face at once, no matter who is speaking. That doesn’t mean that online learning is the same or better than in-person learning. But we don’t necessarily need to lose the face-to-face experience by moving online. Third, a note on the intersection of work and life: I have found teaching from home – amidst my children and spouse, the smell of stir fry or reheated pizza - to be oddly refreshing. I have invited my students into my home, and also into my life – and not an ideal version of it, but rather the realness of the moment, when a child sits on my lap for comfort, or when the house phone rings in the middle of a profound question. My students have also invited me into their homes – their living rooms, their balconies, and often their families. It’s the best reminder that we’re all multi-faceted people, with webs of connections, limitations, and possibilities – and now, more than ever, also fears and hopes. It also models, for my students, that professors are human beings, with distractions and lunches to warm and people to care for. Fourth, a warning: Spending so much time online, and being so intimately connected, can quickly begin to feel overwhelming and exhausting. It can be a relief to close your screen to cook a meal, read a book, play a board game, help a friend, call a relative, or exercise. That’s true for both instructors and students, and is something that should be encouraged, both for everybody’s spirit and also for their health. Otherwise, we will all lose steam and motivation; this is a marathon, not a sprint. Fifth, a suggestion: Some of us, and many of our students, are, or have relatives who are, immuno-compromised, elderly, losing jobs, anxious about the present and the future. As teachers, we can choose to be forgiving of ourselves and also of our students and to treat one another as equal members of a community in crisis.
Acknowledgments: Over the past week, I have learned much from the way in which SAR Academy in Riverdale, NY has provided online education to their elementary school students, and this prepared me for my own online teaching – not least my kids’ insights and tutorials. I have also benefited from the wisdom, experience, and generosity of my colleagues at Fordham, both in the Theology Department and across the university, who have shared online teaching ideas, articulated ways for us to be sensitive to our students’ needs and circumstances, and shared their own concerns and vulnerabilities.
Sarit Kattan Gribetz
Fordham University
[1] I learned this idea from Michelle Lynn-Sachs.