-: Thank you, Eric, and thank you all for coming
and allowing us to talk about how we in the Honors Program
have moved to discussion-based classrooms online.
I want to be clear, though, most but not all
of the classes in the Honors Program
are small and are...
And encourage them to engage students as much as possible
in discussions.
But, I guess for today, we're really just speaking
about our own experiences in the Honors Program.
So, before we even introduce ourselves,
let me just jump immediately to our bottom line
and our major take-home for this presentation,
which is that moving small discussion-based Honors classes
online were not nearly as hard as some of us thought.
And I know, at least for me, I became a much better teacher
because of my experiences in the past year and a half.
So, I'm excited to talk about all of the things
that we learned this year.
Tamy, do you want to...
There you go.
Okay.
I'll just introduce myself and then let Tamy do it.
So, my name is Patrice McMahon.
I'm the director of the Honors Program,
and I'm also a faculty member
in the Political Science Department.
Extra classes up to about 200 students.
And I also did small in-person seminars.
After the pandemic, that's the little dotted line.
After the pandemic, mostly smaller classes,
and we have played around in the Honors Program
when we've had to.
Just being flexible and responding to student needs.
Mostly small, in-person classes,
but we've certainly had to do online synchronous classes
and some hybrid classes.
So, I think Tamy's gonna talk a little bit
about some of her experiences
trying to teach hybrid classes.
-: Yeah, my name's Tamy Burnett.
I'm an associate director for Honors.
And my background is through the English
and Women's and Gender Studies program here.
And so, I have taught...
A lot of the teaching I have done,
or all of it, has been more 20 to 30-person classes
with a lot of focus on discussion.
And activities tied to that.
But I did have some experience
with asynchronous online classes in those areas prior.
And, of course, synchronous online, whole 'nother world.
And there's a little bit of a time gap between those two,
which, you know, affected things a little bit.
But last fall, I had two in-person classes,
but in each one, I had one international student
who was not able to get here.
So, we learned a lot through having to have Zoom available
and in-person available each class period
for the entire semester, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
So, and then since then,
I've also done some fully web conferencing synchronous
as well as in-person.
Hybrid.
-: So, I want to just start off by mentioning
that last summer, when we were starting to move online,
I received some training with a university called Minerva.
That's an online global university.
And for me, it was just incredible
to get this training, and to also just feel really empowered
in online teaching.
And one of the first things that they talked about
was creating ground rules for online learning.
And I won't go into all of the things
that they shared with us, but just three points
that I think are so important is not to apologize
for teaching online.
And that was something that I almost did kind of by default.
Like, you know, we're pivoting and I'm sorry we're online.
But their approach is don't apologize, empower people.
This is what is,
and they also, as an online global university,
don't feel like there's really any major difference
between teaching online or teaching in-person.
And so, for them, it's all about the scaffolding
and the intentionality.
So, what they suggested is just saying
this is a great way to get lots of people together
in a way that they might not be able to do in person.
And so, what we're gonna do is start
with some pretty basic ground rules,
but they're really important to engage learning,
like turning on your camera.
Making sure that your technology works.
And encouraging students to also get headphones.
To find a place where they, you know, felt comfortable
and could talk.
Arrive early to classes.
Some really basic and maybe obvious things,
but for them, it was really important
to establish kind of protocol.
The two other points that they made
and reiterated a couple of times,
how important it was to say to students,
you know, we're inevitably
gonna have some computer challenges.
I mean, for their university, they're teaching students
all over the world.
It's gonna happen.
We're gonna lose power, or you're gonna go offline.
We're gonna go offline.
Here's the protocol.
Here's what we do.
Here's how long we wait.
And I realized how important that was this fall
when I was teaching online.
I guess it was this fall.
And Canvas was down, so I wasn't able to teach my class.
So, some students were trying to get a hold of me
and were worried, but for the most part,
we knew what to do, how long we would wait,
and everything worked out fine.
My final point about ground rules for online learning
is to, again, help empower students in classes one and two
saying here is what we're doing on Zoom.
Here is some of the different features on Zoom.
And so, what I have done with my online classes,
is I spend the first class talking to students
about the reaction buttons and about whiteboard
and about breakout rooms.
And we practice it a little bit
so that students feel more comfortable.
So, for me, one of the really important ground rules
is just empowering students and letting them know
that this could be and, hopefully, will be
an incredible educational opportunity,
and we're all gonna be a part of this process.
Tamy, I don't know if you want to add to some of this.
-: Well, I think the philosophy,
it's a little less about the specific rules.
Although, you should definitely think through,
everyone should, what works best for them.
But it's about the communication thereof,
I think, is the really important part.
And I've gone in my face-to-face classes
through wide iterations of the what is the behavior
I expect from you in class rules in the syllabus, right?
And all the way from let's detail as much as I can
to let's, right now, they mostly say act like an adult.
And here's five things I think that means.
Like show up on time and be prepared.
But I think that, especially when it's new,
the online environment for students
requires a little more concrete framework.
And then, that helps, I've definitely learned
that that helps be successful.
So, as I mentioned, in my fall classes,
I was not quite as, I didn't think through
some of those frameworks about when can you join online
if you're not the person who's in Brazil
versus what circumstances.
And I had different levels of success.
One class was upper-level and one was first year.
And definitely the age of the students,
also I think, impacted that.
But it gave me a lot of insight for this semester
and what I was doing when I had situations
where it wasn't an every time thing,
but it was an option, right?
If students got sick or one student fell on the ice
and had to have surgery and wanted to...
It was like, I can come, but not in-person, right?
Making sure to be able to have set those frameworks up.
Did you want to go into essentials for?
Okay. -: Go ahead.
-: We also know with creating community is really important,
and there's a lot of icebreakers and things
that are easy to adjust.
And Patrice and I have used two different methods
this semester.
And for building community in our classes,
both online or hybrid, and Patrice can talk more
about her approach of having smaller groups
that stay consistent throughout the semester.
And I've taken the other end of the spectrum
of mix 'em up every single time
to try and help them get to know more people and whatnot.
And I think, from our experiences,
both have been successful, and you probably
want to think about your class a little bit.
But also thinking about how to help students
identify people as people and each other.
One student held a puppy repeatedly in class,
and I think that built a lot of community.
Certainly talking about those things that make us
a little more human.
And then, in terms of planning and intentionality,
I think this is our other really big takeaway,
which we've kind of alluded to,
which is you really want to have a well-planned out idea
of what you're doing each day.
That's certainly true for a class,
right, that you want to have it well-planned out
and asynchronous especially requires a lot of front-loading.
I think synchronous online still requires
quite a bit of front-loading,
but my experiences in these areas
have shifted the amount of front-loading I do
in the regular in-person classes too.
And I think that has really framed things
and helped me grow as an instructor
from the individual lesson plans
to the overall class structure
and scaffolding and intentionality,
as well as articulation of it to students,
because I can be super intentional
and you as another instructor might be able to look
at my syllabus and say, oh, I see what you're doing.
But students need it to be a little more transparent,
or a little more articulated, I think,
to understand how and why everything fits together.
-: Yeah, I just want to add in terms of creating community.
Political scientist by training.
And for 20 years, I focused on content, content, content.
And now what I do more of, because I've had this experience
with online teaching and the need to create more
of a community, is I regularly check in with students.
And we check in in different ways.
But I really kind of spend 10 minutes maybe
at the beginning of the class just helping students
transition from what they were doing five minutes ago,
or two minutes ago, to what we're gonna do in the class.
Try to get to know them a little.
Sometimes do breakout groups so that students
can talk to each other a little bit more,
kind of as they would in a normal classroom.
'Cause that kind of spontaneity
is something that you don't have with online classes.
And I also tried to create community
by doing group discussions online and in the Canvas page.
And, I guess, the final thing that I realize
was really important...
Like, computer-generated automaton.
And that I wasn't in my house,
and I didn't have a dog, and I didn't have kids.
And then, I realized that was really a way
for me to build community with my students
and say, yeah, here's my dog right here.
And there's my daughter.
She just walked by.
So, instead of pretending that, you know,
I was in some kind of virtual no person zone,
I opened the door to having students get to know me
and who I was in a way that I never had to
when I was doing in-person classes.
But I really felt like that was a great way
to get to know students and to also have them
get to know me.
And we, you know, played different games
and had show-and-tell and different ways
to build in some of that spontaneity in the classroom.
-: Right.
So, we wanted to also then get into some specific examples.
And strategies.
Classrooms.
-: Yeah, the one thing, I'll just start here
and then I'm sure Tamy will pick up.
The one thing I also learned from Minerva
is how important it is to plan what the online classes
will look like and to leave some time for flexibility.
But, I really came to the point where all of my classes
minute-by-minute were mapped out.
I'd start off in a certain way.
Try to get students from the very beginning
to be active, to answer a question.
Start off with a poll.
Have them articulate what the learning objectives were
to help them, again, transition from what they were doing
two to five minutes ago to what we're doing in the class,
and to also get them
to co-create the educational experience.
And then, also, trying to mix things up.
And, again, none of the discussion-based classes
that I have had is there much lecturing at all.
I spend some time at the beginning, five to six minutes...
Key concepts and key terms.
And then, I just, you know, constantly,
I'm trying to shift things up so that students stay active
and stay engaged.
And then, always having, kind of at the end,
some closure moment or ways for students
to talk about what they've learned
and to identify some key points for the class.
-: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so, and these are some of the different types
of activities that we've utilized in terms
of having students help co-create the experience.
And so, using some of the things that might work on,
like, do it for a smaller portion of the class period,
or scaffold it up, that we can use individually,
up to and,
with the three-week web conferencing class I taught
in December, we spent the first week
where I modeled different approaches to researching
the day's topic and presenting information.
But then, on day three,
the activity was really coaching them through the steps
of doing some of that research on a lower-level scale
and presenting to their peers, because starting week two,
I assigned in groups, okay,
you're responsible for this class period.
And to try and really have the students take on
that ownership of their learning
and come up with interesting
and unique discussion activities.
A little harder, of course, when you don't know
what the person the day before you is going to do.
Whereas, if I'm planning it, I can space things out.
But also thinking about how they would present information
and not be boring and to mix it up and all of that.
It was an upper-level class,
and it worked really well, I think.
Obviously, step in and reinforce or intervene as necessary
if things are going off-track.
But the students, I think,
really appreciated that opportunity to take that ownership.
Is there anything else you want to add on this one, Patrice?
-: No, I don't think so.
-: Okay.
So, and I guess we've hit on this a lot,
but in addition to planning out your day
or your class period in your lesson plan,
one of the other things that was really reinforced
to me the value of in the online environment
is very clear communication about expectations.
So, with the first time we did whiteboards,
for example, in my class, I have a set of directions,
where do you click to find the annotations?
How do you get there?
That I put in Canvas.
And every time we do an activity
and it's gonna be a breakout,
they know it's in the same spot for that day in Canvas.
And they can go access it.
So, there's that consistency
as well as really specific directions.
Spend this amount of time.
And then, of course, I pop in to the breakout things
and send the two-minute warning or whatever's appropriate.
With, of course, the knowledge that flexibility
is necessary as I'm going in and out.
We might find that this discussion is wrapping up
much more quickly than I thought,
or definitely needs some more time
and can adapt in that way.
But being able to make sure that,
you know, it's thinking about how everyone
is going to access the same information.
And that's especially necessary when some of them
are in the room and can see the board,
or the screen, and some of them can't,
because they're not in the room
unless I've remembered to share.
But once you go into breakout rooms, the sharing disappears.
So, having the information pre-prepared, posted, accessible,
and consistently communicated is really significant,
I think, to a smooth class experience.
And then, we're focused on what we're trying to learn,
not the hiccups.
-: Yeah, well, Tamy, you've mentioned this,
but I'm gonna say it again, how important it is,
I think, with online classes, to be clear with students
that this learning really requires them to be engaged
and to be active.
That they cannot be passive and just sit and listen
and have their computers off.
And, in fact, that's not at all the way
the class is gonna go.
And so, what I have started to do,
also now in my in-person classes,
is I assign students different roles to take.
So, one of them will be the synthesizer.
And they'll be in charge of synthesizing different ideas
that are from the readings or from different materials
that students have read or listened to
or what's said in class.
And then, at some point in the class,
the synthesizer will talk about how the different authors
or different ideas or articles speak to each other.
There'll be someone who will be assessing the evidence.
And when people say, well, I read this,
or I know this, they'll say, well, you know,
where did this evidence come from?
What is your evidence?
And really encouraging students to be an active part
of the classroom.
And, students, I was really surprised,
but students really showed up.
And, as Tamy suggested in her classes,
what I had students do the first few days of classes
was say here's kind of the structure that we're gonna use.
Here's how you're gonna help facilitate the classes.
Here's what we're gonna do in the breakout rooms.
Here's how we're gonna give us a real-world problem
to address and talk about how the literature
that you've read would address this real-world problem,
because I teach classes on international relations.
And students really enjoyed it
and appreciated the challenge and really,
I think, enjoyed facilitating and leading class discussions.
And I would have them, you know, use whiteboards
to make sure that they talk about
and define the important concepts that they read.
And I think, just in general, that if you set the stage
and communicate to students your expectations,
whether it's in-person or online, they'll show up
and can really be an active part of this learning process.
-: Well, to not my surprise and probably not Patrice's,
we're almost out of time.
We kept talking about how we had so much we wanted to say.
So, I'm going to go really quickly and happy to talk
with anyone after.
These are just a couple of examples of utilizing
and leveraging some technology in different ways.
So, shared things like shared Google Slides
or PowerPoint in OneDrive or something.
We did an activity in one class around food
that was more of a community-building
and everybody contributed their favorite dish in a group.
But being able to see it is a lot different
than just talking about it.
The other one is from another class
where groups generated just
on a shared word processing document.
Discussion questions, but then we could read
through all of them before we started discussion.
Highlight as we use them or discuss them
and make sure that we were bouncing around.
Also, I don't know if y'all are familiar
with Padlet and Kahoot, other examples.
And little Post-it notes.
And people can color code,
or they can respond or like, that kind of thing.
Another way of doing a similar sort of shared generation
of discussion questions and observations,
Kahoot is an online quizzing tool.
And then, we also used it to crowdsource resources.
And I had my, well, it's a TV-based class,
so it makes sense, but video essays
instead of regular written papers,
which the students took to
with very little technical support from me,
which has always been the concern
with tech-oriented projects.
But it worked very well.
And I don't know if you want to say anything
about the crowdsourced resources, Patrice?
-: Well, I used technology when there was a lull
in the conversation, or I felt like things weren't moving
in a new direction and gave students a challenge.
And what are the different resources out there
that allow us to measure failing or failed states?
And so, students go out and spend five or six minutes
looking around online.
And then, we talk about the different ways
of measuring fragile or failing states.
And that way, they know what's out there
and what's, you know, available to them.
And it also provides them a way of,
again, being in charge of their own learning.
And they can use these resources for their papers
or research that they do in the future.
So, and students love a challenge, love competitions,
love ways to go out and search things down.