-: Thank you Grace.
And she mentioned I was going to do a short intro
and we're talking really short.
My intro is thanks for joining I'm Jean.
I teach psychology at UNK
and today we're going to build a toolbox.
And I don't say that lightly because we're really
going to spend 25 minutes zipping through a variety
of different tools that you may or may not use.
And I think that's important because we often go
into this acting as though somehow this online teaching gig
we should all be doing the same thing
or using the same strategies.
In fact, one of the things that everyone has complained
about for the last, well, gosh, we're over a year now,
so let's go with 14 months,
is talking to the zoom black boxes.
And everybody's like, "How do we make them turn it on?
And what is our policy for turning on the camera?"
I don't care if they turn on the camera.
And I don't say that lightly
because it's not that I don't care
that they're learning or care that are engaged,
I just don't use the camera as a proxy to tell me
that students are paying attention or that they're engaged.
I am fully aware that they can set up
all kinds of things right behind their camera
and they can be watching TV,
playing with their phone, doing other stuff.
And if they're just turning on their camera
to meet some check the box to prove that they're engaged,
I don't care.
So I actually tell my students
whether or not you want to turn on your camera or not
is completely irrelevant to me.
Would I love to see your happy shining face? Sure.
But I also recognize
that seeing your face does not mean you're engaged.
What I care about
and what we're gonna build some tools on today
is how do we get students to think.
They could be thinking with their camera off.
They can be engaged with their camera off.
But if I can get them to think, to react, to respond,
to even contemplate, to put one or two words in the chat
we're starting to trigger those cognitive processes
that are going to lead to learning.
So if they wanna turn their camera on
and I get to see their happy shining face, awesome.
If not, I'm going to integrate other things.
And so that's what we're gonna talk about today.
What really matters?
When we talk about engaging students
there's a whole body of research on what engages a student.
And notice when we boil that down
to kind of the six key factors
if we really want to engage students
nowhere on the list, does it say, "Turn on the camera".
What it says is students who are engaged
when it feels authentic,
when they can see how they use that information,
when it's relevant and they can apply it to their life.
When they think what we're doing
actually has real value for them,
whether that value is in their life right now today,
whether they can see it in the future
if they're moving on down the line
but they want to be part of a community
where they feel like what they're doing matters.
So they do want to connect to the instructor
and they do want to connect to their fellow students.
They want to feel that instructional presence
so that it doesn't seem like they're just
in an online course with content,
that they want that surrounding stuff that matters.
So we can't build in silly games
and fun little activities just to be present
and just to connect and interact
if they're not also feeling
like it's valuable, and authentic and real.
So we need to think about that
as we're building our toolbox.
And that's what we're gonna talk about today.
We're just gonna put together a handful of tools.
But before you pick up a tool
you have to know why you're picking it up.
And so this isn't just about tips and tricks.
It's about intentionally picking the right tool
to meet the goal that you have as an online instructor.
If you ask your students to do things
and they don't know why they're doing it
and they don't see the value
and they don't see the relevance,
they're not going to be engaged.
So the very first thing you need to do
before you even start thinking about your tools
is what are you trying to accomplish?
And that's what I want you to keep asking yourself
as we go through our toolbox this morning.
Because, I might show you some tools
and you'll say to yourself, I would never do that.
And that's totally fine,
because I have a whole toolbox of tools,
physical tools sitting in my garage right now
that I've never touched
because I've never had a purpose or a reason to use them.
But by golly, my husband convinces me that they're there
because when we need them
we're gonna need the right tool for the job.
And so today let's build our toolbox a little bit,
see what we could possibly have in store
so that when we have a goal or a need that arises
we're ready to engage our students in a meaningful way.
So what are the first ones?
And I would actually argue
this is probably my engagement tool I use the most often.
And it's the muddiest point.
And what I really want students to do
is just think a metacognitive task
where they ask themselves,
what do I know?
What do I not know?
What still seems fuzzy?
What still seems muddy?
What am I still confused about?
But what's important in the synchronous classroom
is to go beyond just saying,
what is everybody confused about?
Because if we say, what are you confused about?
Please post it in the chat.
Nothing happens.
And they don't post it in the chat
because they're unsure and they don't know where to start
and they don't want to look silly
and their name is affiliated with the chat.
So we have to do more than simply say post it in the chat.
What I like to do is use what I call the 30-30-30 chat.
And I'm actually going to, I've got two screens going here.
So I promise I'm not looking off into the never lands here.
I'm gonna pull that down a minute.
And what I actually do is in my class
I will share this timer with students.
And what I'll say is, I'm gonna ask you a question
and I might say that question is
what are you still confused about?
What is your muddiest point?
But then I tell students, I want you to stop.
And if your camera's on, put your hands up.
So I know you're not typing
because I want you to think.
Your brain is the only thing
that should be engaged right now.
For 30 seconds, I want you to think.
And then for 30 seconds you're gonna type,
but you're not going to actually type it
and hit the return button.
When I say go
you're all gonna hit the return button at once.
And then what happens is your chat suddenly goes, boom.
And it all fills up.
And then I say,
"Okay now we're gonna take another 30 seconds.
And I want you to skim through and read the chat".
And what I'm doing then is I'm skimming
through and reading the chat
and I'm going through and picking out the pieces.
And then I might call on them and say,
"Hey Kim, can you tell me more what you meant about X?
But they actually have something to base their comments on.
So the timer that I just put up here
and the link is in the presentation
so you can get this.
It's just called a presentation timer.
I set it for 30 seconds.
And then I literally say, "Go".
And then I shut up and I stopped talking for 30 seconds.
And I tell them the question
and I tell them you should just be thinking.
Silence is a wonderful thing.
Silence makes students uncomfortable.
And when students are uncomfortable
they start to look to figure out what they should be doing.
And then I'll remind them
what you should be doing right now is thinking.
What don't you know?
What's still muddy?
What's still uncomfortable?
Then the minute that, that stops
and it goes to the next one, I say,
"Okay everybody type while it's yellow,
but do not hit return.
Do not hit return until we go to the red.
So everybody take a couple moments
and type what you were still confused about.
What's still muddy, what you're still uncertain of."
And then I stop and I try to be quiet
and I give them a few minutes so they can type.
And then the minute it goes, red, I say,
"Hit the return.
You've got 30 seconds to skim the comments."
Now, of course.
So now they would be skimming the comments, I would hop in.
I would pick up and ask questions.
But the point is, we've given them a visual.
Let me get my presentation back up here for you.
We've given them a visual and we've told them what to do,
and we withheld when they do it.
When they've now all typed,
when I want to hop in and ask a question,
they have something to respond to
because they've already typed something
and shared that with me.
Another opportunity, and I like to do this one
because it gives us a baseline to jump into a discussion.
I use video explorations a lot in my course.
And what I tell students is prior to class today
I want you to pick any topic
that you found interesting, anything.
And I just want you to learn a little bit more about it.
Now you can make a video of yourself
just sharing what you learned.
Your video should only be about 30 seconds.
You're just sharing a little more
than what was presented in the textbook,
or then what I've talked about.
But you're gonna be prepared to share that.
Then when we get together on zoom,
I'll actually start by saying,
"Okay, everybody just in the chat,
hop in and share what topic you learned
a little bit more about."
Now I have a whole list in the chat
of what they learn more about.
And as we're going through, I'll tell the students,
"Okay, you know Tanya, I'm gonna turn it over.
You said you learned a little bit more about this.
I'm gonna give you the controls.
And I just want you to do a share screen
and you can share your video.
Or if you didn't prep a video
just share screen and for about 30 seconds
tell us what you learned about this topic."
What I love about this activity is first of all
it gives students some autonomy over the learning.
They can dig into what they care about.
But it also makes them feel like experts.
And they come to class saying,
"Hey, I read something in my video exploration,
didn't make sense to me.
Can you explain a little bit, can you connect this?
Can you provide more information?"
So it starts to bring them in as experts
not just receiving the information
but contributing to the learning environment as well.
Another one that I like to do
and I use this one all the time
when we're going through journal articles,
in psychology students really struggle
with the whole science behind psychology.
And so in our zoom session
rather than it just being, my talking head
or my PowerPoint slides, I'll actually do a share screen.
I tend to use hypothesis, perusal works just as well.
You can do Google Docs.
The technology itself isn't important.
But I'll share the collaborative screen.
And then I'll give students the link in the chat
and I'll tell them, click on the link.
You're gonna see the collaborative document.
And we're gonna work on this together.
And I'll call on them to make comments
and to add things, and to annotate, and to highlight.
And so they're not just receiving the information
they're doing something,
but they're doing it with my guidance
and we're talking through it and we're working on it.
And I can correct them right there
in the moment as we explore the document.
Another one that I like to do is the think-share-pair.
Now, historically we call this the think-pair-share
because they think,
they get together with their buddy and they share.
But in the online environment to tell students,
just talk to somebody about it, doesn't really work.
And if we tell them, I'm just going to randomly puts you
into a breakout room.
Students have told me consistently,
we get in the breakout room
and we all just kind of sit there
'cause nobody really knows what we're supposed to do
and the teacher's not there.
And so they just start doing stuff the way we would want.
So rather than having them think, pair and then share
I actually use that same kind of muddiest point phenomenon.
And I say, "I want you to think about it.
And now we're going to share it in the chat".
So everyone's going to share theirs.
Then I intentionally pair them up.
Sometimes I pair up a group of people that have like ideas.
And I want them to talk about why they share that idea.
Sometimes I'll intentionally pair them up
into groups that disagree
and I'll say, "Fight it out.
See if you can come to a consensus."
But we start with
they've already taken a position.
So now they have something to actually use
as the launchpad for that discussion.
Tanya asked if I use the hypothesis integration in Canvas
I haven't, but I assume it works just as well.
So I can't actually speak to that.
And if anybody has used the integration
please hop into the chat
and share your experience with the integrated version.
I just don't have any experience to share on that one.
The other one that I use a lot, this one would compete
with the muddiest point for my frequency of use,
is I'll tell the students, "Really quickly,
I just want you to flip your camera on
to give me a quick answer.
And if you absolutely
can't turn your camera on, that's fine.
You can put it in the chat."
But rather than having a poll where there ABCD
I just call it a five finger poll,
and their answers are designated by one finger,
two finger, three finger, four finger, five finger.
And so I'll have a lot of students,
and I say, "I'm gonna do a five-finger poll".
They quickly turned on their camera.
My poll question will come up.
They'll hold up their hands, their fingers,
whatever, we quickly glance through.
And then students will talk about why they agreed
why they disagreed or whatever it might be.
The value here,
not that we couldn't do this with a pull button, we could.
Students are much more willing to turn on their camera
for brief, little responses.
And the more they're gonna do those brief,
little responses, they tell me.
It feels like I'm kind of glancing around the classroom.
You get a sneak peek.
Don't have to leave the camera on.
I don't have to feel uncomfortable
about where I'm looking or what my background looks like
because I only turned it on for five seconds
just long enough to hold up my vote.
But they said, it feels like it's a little more connected,
a little bit more engaged.
Another one that we like to do,
I do this one a lot when we're learning
a brand new topic is a scavenger hunt.
And so I will actually do a screen share
and I'll tell the students,
"We're gonna go on a scavenger hunt,
So let's start with the following question".
And I'll put the question into a Google.
Like I'll just Google it.
And then you see, of course
all the Google responses that come up.
And then I'll tell one of the students,
"Okay, pick what button we're going on,
where are we starting this exploration?"
This is a great activity to help them become
more information literate,
to help them differentiate what's a good resource,
what's not a good resource.
Not only are we doing an information literacy activity
but we're learning more about a topic.
I've also done a scavenger hunt
where I actually have the students go to a scavenger hunt
and then they come back and do a little show and tell
and tell me where they ended up.
So when I do that route,
I start with the question and I tell all the students,
"Okay, here's the Google question you're gonna start with.
We're gonna go on a five minute scavenger hunt.
Here's the pieces of information you need to find."
And then when they come back at the end
of that five minutes, I say, "Okay, let's show and tell.
We're gonna do some screen shares
and let's see where we ended up and what we found out."
And so it's just another way
to get students doing something.
Let's face it.
They're sitting at the computer.
In front of them is more information
that we could ever humanly have.
So let's take advantage of it and let's have them jump in
and do something and bring some of that information back,
bring those questions back.
Along the same lines
I will often do a screen share of concept mapping.
We do this in psychology for my literature reviews
where I'll start with their main topic in the middle
and we'll start figuring out what are the big themes.
And then we start drawing those in.
And then I tell the students,
"Okay, here's all the assigned readings.
Now go in and start mapping,
which studies and which authors
and which theories go with which themes?"
And we start to build a visual representation.
And so we do that together in our session
to get students thinking about that whole big concept map
that's organizing their information.
Let's face it.
Sometimes we simply need the lecture
but we need our students to pay attention, to be engaged,
to really dial into what we're talking about.
So I'll tell my students,
"Open up a second window or a second tab.
And I have an outline here.
Here's the Google doc with the outline of our lecture today.
And as a class, I want you all to contribute to that
as we're going through this."
You're creating group notes from this lecture.
And here's the value.
Every one of them that contributes to the lecture
then gets to keep a copy of it.
So they have to contribute to keep a copy.
And then I go through the notes at the end of the class,
fill in any gaps, make any corrections, add an examples.
So now they have this really rich set of notes
that you only get if you contributed to it.
When I want to get them talking I will often use,
would you rather kind of questions.
Let's face it.
When we just ask open-ended questions
it's really hard to get students talking and responding.
But what we can do is ask them questions
that have no clear answer.
For example, I teach theories of personality.
So sometimes I would say, would you rather
be a research assistant to Freud or Ericsson?
Why? There's no clear answer to that.
When we're studying sensation and perception,
would you rather lose your sight or you're hearing, why?
And now they have to take a position.
And so there'll be in Camp Freud or Camp Ericsson,
but the why is what I care about.
And then I come in and I start going, are you sure?
And what about this and how about this theory?
And what about this approach?
And now as the content experts
I can poke and prod and try to lead them through that.
Another one I like to use to start class
is just I say, GIF it, bring it in.
If you find anything relevant to class
they can earn a couple bonus points if they do this.
But the reason I have them do this
so that they get comfortable
screen-sharing talking about it, joking about it.
And students think it's funny.
They said, this is a great way to think about the content,
think about why the memes are funny.
We talk about it.
What I probably spend the most time on
is talking about whether the meme is accurate,
whether it's real and what would make it funny.
But we just use this as a very short icebreaker
to get people sharing and talking.
Another one that can be fun.
If it fits your learning objectives is a virtual talk show.
I like doing this for review activities,
particularly at the end of the course for me
like theories of personality
or history and systems of psychology
where we've learned lots of different theorists,
I'll assigned students to be a person.
So one student's Freud, one is Adler,
one is Jung, and everybody has that.
And I tell them prior to class prep up on who you are.
And then in our discussion, I'll actually ask questions
like, what do you plan on doing after dinner tonight?
But they have to answer like their character
in a way that lets us know about their theory.
Students have said, this is so much harder than it seems
but also so much more memorable.
That they like to think about
what would that person had for a viewpoint or a worldview?
How would they have approached all these kinds
of current event topics that didn't exist in their lifetime?
Another fun one is two truths and a lie.
And I'll tell students to come into class
with two truths and one lie about the course content.
And then I'll randomly pick on students to share
on their two truths or a lie.
Speaking of randomly picking
that same website I shared with timers,
it has a random name generator.
And so I will put the whole class's name in that.
And if nobody's answering
when I say I need a volunteer, I'll just pull that up.
I just have it minimized on my computer.
You hit the button and the wheel spins
like a big wheel of fortune wheel.
And it stops on a name and you'll hear students cheer
and laugh and be like, "Ha-ha-ha, it wasn't me".
Even though it's a silly way to get them talking
they pay attention and they look.
And so then they'll go into the chat
and they'll share their two truths and a lie.
And as a class
then we'll try to figure out what's the lie and why.
And so it's another fun way to not only get them to prep
the students have to dig into the content
to make their two truths and a lie, but also to review.
Do they understand it?
Do they get the big picture?
Are they on the right track with things?
I also like to do for review activity,
the big picture presentation
and what I'll do is my slides will literally
be one big picture about some part of it.
So it might be a theorist's name.
It might be a graphic representation, something like that.
But I don't have any words with my slides.
And so I'll have these images that would represent
the big picture things that they should know.
Normally I have about five slides.
And I'll just call on students and I'll say,
"Okay, here on the screen we have Freud
share something big picture about Freud.
What do we know?
What have we learned?"
And then they get to pick the next student.
And so I'll have, three, four
or five students share something,
and then we'll go to the next slide.
And we'll let the students call on the next student
to share something big.
And if they don't hit all the highlighted points
I just hop in and highlight the rest for them.
Speaking of the student generated,
I will often tell students your assignment
before class is to send me a discussion topic
you'd like to explore.
So they'll all email me their questions prior to class
I can go through and pick out a handful.
I might pick out five to 10 questions
and I bring them to class.
And then I'll tell students,
"Okay, if you submitted the question
you're now the discussion leader.
I need somebody else to try to be the devil's advocate".
Maybe somebody else's on examples
somebody else's on perspective, but they have explicit roles
about what they're looking at
and topics that they're interested in
because they generated the discussion questions.
Along the same way.
If you're feeling adventurous
you can use branching scenarios.
When I do branching scenarios
it's generally a topic I know inside and out.
Let's face it.
Sometimes we teach things we're not super comfortable with.
But when I know it inside and out,
I'll start with just a general question that says,
"Okay, class what would you choose?"
And then they pick, you know, A or B.
And then I say, "Ooh, if you pick that,
here's what would happen and here's the consequences".
And then I'll give them another one.
What would you choose?
And I just get to keep walking
through as a function of their choice.
Similarly, you could use real-world mysteries,
find things that actually happened case studies
and don't give them the end, just give them the beginning.
And start walking them through.
What do you think?
What would we need to know?
Where would we go with this?
And then at the end, they can come back on.
Notice in our toolbox, not everything applies.
The key is what are you trying to accomplish?
How do we make this real?
What is the purpose of integrating that tool?
With that said, we are out of time.
That was our rapid 25-minute toolbox building
but I'd like to open up our final seconds
to see if there's any last minute questions.
-: First, I want to hop in and say, thank you, Jean.
I'm going to put in the chat a link to the re--
Yeah, this was amazing.
So I wanted to put a link to the evaluation.
This has been a really power packed session.
I did see one question already.
Tanya wanted to know how you can,
when people add to the shared notes, how you can restrict
who can access those to just contributors.
And aside from that, people can keep adding your questions
to the chat or a stick around.
We have a 10-minute break before the next session.
So if he wants to ground and ask questions, feel free.
-: So, on my how,
I've only used the group notes in smaller classes,
classes with an enrollment of 35 or under.
So at the moment I just manually do it.
It's open to everyone with the link
when we do the activity in class.
And then when the class ends, I just go through
and I see who contributed based on their log-ins.
You can see that with the Google doc.
And then I just will now do a share
to those specific people.
So I change the sharing privileges.
If anybody more techie than me has a better strategy.
Please tell me.
'Cause it is a little bit clunky.
It takes me about five minutes afterwards
just to change all my sharing privileges.
So if you have a better one, I would love that.
Several people have asked about the slides,
happy to share the slides.
Feel free to email me.
I popped my email into the chat.
It's mandernachj1@unk.edu.
I'm happy to send the slides to you
for anybody that's interested.
Yeah, I really think if I had to give like my final key,
it's don't use a tool that you don't need.
If students start feeling
like you're just doing silly jumping hoops things
and they can't see the value, you're gonna lose them.
But if you can go through this presentation
and I'd say any given person, hopefully would find two
maybe three things that they say
that's a goal of mine, that would help me.
I would call it the presentation of success.
So don't feel like this is, I use everything.
You just find the ones that fit your needs
and your goals in your course.
-: You presented so many fantastic tools.
So if would like to stay
and keep asking questions, feel free.
Otherwise this is the break before the next session.
So I'll hang out here with Jean.
If you have a little bit of time, Jean.
Ashley: Can I, is it okay if I mute myself
and ask the question?
Grace: Absolutely. Jean: Absolutely.
Ashley: About the gift exercise,
did you have them do that before class?
I missed if that was,
you took 30 seconds or something
because it seemed like that would be a little more detailed.
-: So the way I've always used it
is at the beginning of the class,
at the very beginning of the semester,
and I shouldn't say class,
beginning of the semester
all always start class with a couple gifts.
And I'll just have the little things I'll be like,
"Ha ha, let's talk about this".
And it's usually really kind of pre class actually starting.
So, you know, like the five minutes before
when you're kind of waiting for everyone to log in
and there's not a lot happening
we'll just be kind of chit chatting about it.
And then what I tell students in the syllabus is
you can earn bonus points later in the course
if you find ones that are relevant to what we're doing.
And so then they'll usually hop in just a few minutes early
to share those with me
and we'll put them up and talk about it.
I would say any given class, because it's not an assignment,
so it's not everyone.
There are some classes we have nobody show up with one.
I think the most I've ever had is three students
show up with one.
So it's not like we've got 25 of them coming in.
Typically it's one or none and sometimes two or three.
But it's not an assignment.
So most students will do that once or twice a semester
to get a couple bonus points here and there,
but not as a regular assignment.
Ashley: Thank you.
-: Marty, if you want to unmute, we could take your question.
-: We lost Marty.
-: Marty gone.
Sorry, Marty, we lost you.
Marty: Sorry. I'm wondering--
Sorry I have to mute buttons (indistinct)
I'm wondering if you see any variations,
and first thank you, lovely ideas.
Do you see any variation from small seminar
to large class sizes in the application of these techniques?
And I know that's a large question, but--
-: Yeah.
And actually I can give you kind of
a general answer to that.
The first answer is yes, absolutely.
The larger the class the less effective is anything
that requires them to turn on their camera or video.
They just don't do it in the larger classes
at the same ease they do it.
I can get just a handful of them,
but when I have classes of 75 or 100,
I'm not getting 75 of them to turn on their camera
for a five finger pole.
So the larger the classes,
the more I'm going to rely on quick, easy chat activities.
Larger classes I do a lot more of the muddiest points
rather than us talking about like two truths and a lie,
we'll do it in the chat.
So I kind of have to formalize the chat activities.
I find the larger the class
the more I'm gonna need to put that question
into a slide that's on the screen
because chances are I've lost a few of them
until they see we have a chat activity happening
and then they go to tune back in,
and if it's not on the screen,
I've lost them and they don't know what to participate with.
So I would say shifting to a little more formal,
a little more planned, more reliance on chat,
the larger the class gets.
-: Thank you.
-: Yeah.
It looks like our numbers are dwindling
and I'm in the next panel session as well.
So I'm gonna go ahead and hop off.
But if anyone has a last minute one
that we're not getting to
or that you just didn't want to ask publicly
feel free to reach out via email.
I'd be happy to continue the conversation.