As we approach the middle of the semester, you probably have a good sense of how your students are performing in class. But do you have a sense of how they are feeling about your course? Do you wonder what suggestions they might have that would improve their learning? Now is a good time to… Read more »
Nonverbal feedback in Zoom meetings can be a quick and easy way to gauge the meeting. You can ask your students to show their understanding with a quick “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Have you noticed that you could make your Zoom more personal by changing your Zoom reactions’ skin tone? This might help you… Read more »
In our use of Zoom over the past year, many of us got used to the “backchannel” conversations that happen in the chat tool. Those chats could be students asking questions, someone providing a useful resource, or just fun asides. Even when you are teaching in-person, backchannel chats can be useful ways to let students… Read more »
It is important to help students settle into the rhythm of the semester. One way to do this is to nudge those who have missed assignments. You can easily contact students in Canvas who have missed a specific assignment using the Message Students Who function. This Canvas Guide explains how to quickly send these messages… Read more »
If you’ll be teaching an online synchronous class this summer, think about how you could use your Zoom background as an icebreaker and way to build community. For example, you could set your background to a photo related to your research or to the class. Then you can start the class chatting with students about… Read more »
As we’ve learned this past year, building community is an important part of an online course. An aspect of building community is projecting care and support. A quick way to do this is to build in opportunities for students to have deadline extensions without having to ask you permission for them. Build in “oops tokens”… Read more »