The Wall is a central hub for communication between you and your students. The Faculty Engagement and Development team has some innovative ways to utilize this digital space to save you time during your live sessions, help build your digital community, and further your learner outcomes.
Time Saving Strategies
- Asynchronous Introductions
- Change up the same old way of doing introductions by having students create video introductions. You can provide a few questions, prompts, or guidelines for the introduction videos, and students can break free from the predictable mini-resume speech and one interesting fact about themselves in your first live session.
- Level Setting
- Prime your students so that they come fully ready to actively engage in class! You can also remind students to bring along an article or current event related to the week’s objectives, or to do something as simple as updating their Zoom client for smooth breakout room sessions.
- Provide your students with an agenda for the live session. Directly post the agenda as text, as an attachment, or as a link to a collaborative doc. Within your agenda, you can link useful resources and references that students may need during the live session.
- Ask students to reply with questions that they have which can be addressed during the live session. By having access to these questions in advance, some quick answers can be taken care of before the live session, and you will be better prepared to provide students with the information they need.
- Housekeeping & Reminders
- Proactively remind your students of due dates for upcoming assignments, tests, and even completion of asynchronous work. Keeping everyone on the same page will help to reduce the influx of last-minute questions via email.
- Notify students of new supplemental content you have published. Each group of students is different with unique needs and backgrounds. Providing supplemental materials is a great way to meet unanticipated needs. Using the Wall as a way to notify students not only alerts them of the useful content but also can be a way to start a thread for students to discuss, question, and highlight information from the supplemental content.
Build a Digital Community
- Social/Emotional Check-ins
- It is no secret that this past year has been very heavy. There may be some days where your students may not be in the headspace to tackle heavy topics or particularly complicated subjects. Providing a space where you check in with your students, and invite them to share with, respond to, and support one another, helps your students feel connected to their classroom community and gives you insight into how you can best facilitate.
- Personal Anecdotes
- We are all human! Some of your students may be new to the field, so sharing personal anecdotes that highlight the challenges you faced early on in your career, or are currently facing as a seasoned professional, will go a long way to showing that you understand, can give them useful guidance, and that you, too, are human and not someone reporting from the Ivory Tower.
- Highs and Lows / Roses and Thorns
- One secret weapon for transformative outcomes is metacognition. Taking the time to reflect on the learning process allows for areas of opportunity to be discovered. Have your students share their roses, thorns, and buds for the week. Roses are moments of success, thorns are areas of challenge, and buds are newly forming experiences that you are looking forward to. (Source: https://www.mindfulschools.org/inspiration/mindful-reflection/)
Further Learner Outcomes
- Live Session Recap
- Have your students provide a short, 3-sentence summary of the key takeaways from the live session. This gives you great insight into what was successful or stood out to the students in one, cohesive space.
- Ask students to reply to your post with an essential detail, aha moment, or a muddy point they still have questions about. Knowing your students’ learning growth and areas where you can help them can be useful for guiding the learning you provide asynchronously and in the live sessions.
- Additional Readings and Current Events
- Post any articles that you come across during your own professional development. You can insert a link to the article or upload it as an attachment, and students will appreciate that you are thinking of them beyond your live sessions.
- Ask questions or bring up current events relevant to your field or curriculum. Giving students a space to practice using professional jargon and allowing them to gain insights to what’s happening in the field can strengthen their connections between the coursework and the career.
- Broaden Response Styles
- Have your students respond to a prompt and one another by uploading multimedia such as a PowerPoint, an image, or a video so that they can connect in as many ways as possible. Students can compare their upcoming presentations with one another to consider areas of strength and improvement before presentation day.
Additional Resources:
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank you for your input!