Designing engaging synchronous class sessions
By Jessica Parr, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Chemistry – September 9, 2020
Even in person, students show up in our first few classes of the semester not quite sure what to expect. We often assign texts for students to read or provide videos for students to watch to prepare them for what we will do during class time. In my chemistry classroom I would be showing them demonstrations and asking them to apply the chemical principles to what they are observing. Time would also be spent on problem solving strategies and opportunities to work with other students in the class. As I prepared for a semester completely online, I had to decide what I could continue to do and what I had to let go.
I decided to keep the work needed to prepare for class and the demonstrations. I recorded myself performing small experiments or found videos online of others performing the demonstrations. I am showing them to my students during the synchronous Zoom sessions with no sound from the video. I narrate what is happening “live” the same way that I would during a regular in person class.
Even in person, I took advantage of polling software in my large classes, where it is challenging to get more than one hundred students to engage in a discussion. I use Poll Everywhere, so that I can ask multiple choice questions, prepare word clouds live from student responses, ask open-ended questions, or even prepare a series of questions and have students compete to see who answers the fastest. If students seem to have trouble with the questions asked, I lead them through the solution, or if there is time send them into breakout groups to discuss their responses in small groups and repoll when the whole group comes back together.
Breakout groups in Zoom are a great tool that allows students time to digest the material and discuss it with each other. If you want to monitor a group’s progress, you can prepare a shared Google Doc where they can work collaboratively on questions. Beware that too many people (more than 100) working on a Google Doc at one time will cause it to slow down and some students will not be able to contribute. Google Forms could be a solution, but it is harder to see the real time progress. Shared Google Docs are great for small classes, and also a way for you to collect responses easily in one place for later review. You can assign students a quick write on a subject or a minute paper and look over the responses to see how comfortable students are on certain topics. It is also a good way to identify misconceptions.
One thing that I have learned is that students will not complete the work before class if they know that you are going to go over everything again in class. Teach your classes on the assumption that all students have completed the necessary assignments to be prepared to participate in class. Anyone who did not do the work quickly realizes that they need to. I have also learned that I cannot complete the same activities in a 50-minute online class that I would be able to in the same time in-person. To make up for this I prepare extra videos and resources that students can review asynchronously.
We are in week four and my strategies have students returning to the synchronous class sessions. They seem to want to be present and participate. They recognize that they get more out of being there than from watching the recording at a later date. It might have a little to do with the required asynchronous assignment that they are asked to complete if they do not participate in the synchronous session, but that is for another day.