Screenside Chats feature online practitioners as they discuss their experiences, strategies, and tools building and interacting in pedagogically sound online learning environments.
In this Screenside Chat, IU High School social studies teacher, Christine Hitchcock, offers suggestions for using visual cues to give your course a feel of consistency and improve students’ experience in an online course.
Please watch the video and then join the conversation below!
Making sure students have cues to navigate through the course will help the students and their parents know the expectations for the course. I really like the idea of indicating the type of task students are being asked to do by an icon or specific color background. The easier it is for students to find course items and complete their work the more likely they will engage with the course. The point about the consistency of the course set up will help decrease the stress students have learning how to learn online is important.
Alice, do you think you would explain to your students the cues? I don’t always explain my cues to my students in my classroom, but I’m also not sure if a student would remember the color of a particular page a week later after not seeing it for so long. I suppose adding pictures to the top might be more self explanatory if the picture is a symbol of the type of work (maybe a pencil and composition book if the student is writing something). Do you have any easy sites for open domain (I think thats what it is called, things without a copy-write) images? I know my school gave us a web address about where to legally get images many years ago when we were first trained in Canvas, but after years of never using what I learned, I have forgotten. Do you know of any?
If you use Google Slides, there’s an add on called Unsplash that has images (really high quality ones) that are free to use). You could create banners for pages or just images to use. I use some images from Wikimedia but cite them in a caption under the image.
I am still exploring what cues I will give my students. Online I think we will need to explain a lot of navigation and expectations to our students. The cues will be a good way to show students what they should do. How they should do it will need to be explained as well. I think there is going to be a lot of front end work at the start of the semester getting students comfortable with learning online.
Alice, I think you’re exactly right with the front end loading. If everyone gets used to the routines and understands them early on, it should make for smoother sailing over time.
This is interesting to me because I definitely color code stuff in my classroom all the time. I never considered color coding text online though. Would changing text and background color potentially disregard any IEPs? I don’t know if text is an accommodation, but online standardized tests allow students to change text and background color (or, I think they used to at least), so is there a disadvantage to one color over another? Is having a student read purple text going to cause issues for any students? Some colors are supposed to have different affects on people too. A IDOE book club book last year really recommended covering your walls with blue paper to help create a calm and inviting environment… so are blue backgrounds on a computer better?
Was the light music at the end a cue that the video was almost over? Does that count? Or was that just part of making a video? (like, is confetti upon submission of an assignment considered a cue or is that just something for fun?)
How long is it recommended to stick with something before changing it? New teachers are notorious (at least at my school) for trying a new technique, deciding it doesn’t work after 2 days, and then switching to something else. Although I absolutely believe in jumping ship with an idea when needed (even mid day if needed!) but how many weeks online should a lesson be kept consistent before it is decided that it needs remodeled?
Since consistency is key in online classrooms, it seems the less switching around the better. If a student contacts you about not being able to read or in an IEP it says to use a specific color then those would be good reasons to switch up what you are doing. I would say after 4 weeks of instruction you should stick with the program. Asking for student feedback at the start of the class is a good way to make modifications or if you are getting a ton of questions about where to find information. Once you have a routine I think the students will catch on and if you do need to change something provide a reason so your students know why the change was made.
When I discovered during summer school is that after 4 weeks, there were still kids not sure what was going on. One student who had completed assignments in Big Ideas Math didn’t even know there was a Canvas page (which means he missed EVERY video he was supposed to watch and all of the assignments on Canvas).
Do I just let kids follow along with what I create and figure it out? Switching something after 1 week may be switching too fast. I did not like our professor’s organization week 1 (too much clicking) but I did not like it week 2 either (too much scrolling, and I don’t like numbering where we don’t provide an answer). By week 4, I feel like I’ve figured it out. So, who is to say that method 1 wasn’t great and we just were complaining a bunch because it was new to us? If I do something one way, I want to provide the students time to get use to it before deciding they don’t like it, but I also don’t want to stick them with something that they genuinely don’t like. It seems that consistency should be there for a few weeks before switching things up if needed.
When to switch? What to do with the students, that for whatever reason, are not following along?
So I think that this conversation has led me to the conclusion that organization is crucial for a working model of on-line instruction, but there has to be some variety that works with the recursive activities of the class.
Is the student not following along because of issues of will or because of a type of vote to change the assignment into something more useful. So among my cues I will have an extra-credit design element so that they have the opportunity to create their own cues. Gimmicky, perhaps, but some might take me up on it.
I also have watched a couple of these now, and enjoy the light music cueing the end. I also check the minutes of any video before I ever start….10 min a bit long….3-6 min…just right, so this gives me an idea of how long to make videos for my students. FORMAT is of utmost importance, but I get that we need to consider IEPs. I started using color-coded Headings just to keep my lesson plan more streamlined, but I think ICONS are a great idea. I was recommended to nonproject.com and bought a year for under $20.00. It offers icons of all kinds and when I settle on 10 or so, I am then going to use them consistently throughout my lessons.
Connie, I really like the Noun Project. With the paid account, you can download icons in different colors so they can match the headings, if that would be helpful. You can also make custom buttons that you can link to different Canvas pages, quizzes, etc. or to outside websites. Here’s one button generator that I have used (it used to be called Da Button Factory): https://www.clickminded.com/button-generator/
Thank you for mentioning this website. I LOVE free!
I love the idea of icons too. I would like to have mine so that when students hover over them they will know what they need to do. So for instance if a pencil means write a reflection or what ever…then when you hover over the pencil it would say that. Or maybe just use the pencil icon and then in words have a title too? Is that too clunky?
I watched the Screenside Chat: Holding and Directing Student Attention in Online Learning and feel this screenside chat dovetails nicely with that one. Chunking and streamlining material discussed in the former chat, can be facilitated by color coding or icon cues. Like others have stated, I too color code things in my classroom. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that for my virtual classroom.
Color coding or icons will help students anticipate what will be coming up as well as providing cues to keep them engaged. A cue at the end when assignments are complete is something I haven’t done either. I think my students would enjoy music or an animation at the end of a video or something like the confetti after submission. It might also lessen anxiety that some students feel about whether there is “anything else” to do.
I am thinking about a color heading for directions (read, brainstorm etc)
and then an icon for the activity (annotate, summarize, answer questions). Am I overthinking this?
A key would definitely help and would need to be easily accessible to the students
A key to the icons used in the online class is a really good idea. I wonder if you could put a description next to the icon and then shorten/remove it as the course progresses. For example, you may use a pencil to indicate the student should take notes in a notebook. At the start of the year, have the icon and “Take out your notebook and write down important information”. Then after a few weeks have the icon and “notes”, then just the icon.
I do not think you are overthinking the cues you should give in your classroom. The more descriptive the course is to the students the less backend work you will need to do. Since online classrooms the consistency is important, the ways you choose to cue students will be repeated enough it may become automatic.
Alice- I like this idea of gradually lessening what the cue is for students. That does seem like it might take some work on your part, maybe it would be ok to always have both the icon and the title. I think you would need to see how things are laid out in your particular online class or learning management system to know what will work best. I think in mine…which is canvas, color coding might be the best way. I’m not sure how well icons work in canvas.
So I like many of the others who have posted in this thread like the idea of different visual cues be that changing color or an icon or something of that nature. I know I would appreciate those visual cues if I were taking an online course. I noticed one of my peers mentioned that they feel some of the videos are too long and that helped them with how long they should make their videos for their own students. I agree with this, if students see that a video is “too long” many times I don’t even think they will attempt to watch it, they will just move on. I also liked the idea that one put out about having a key for the icons that are in use or the colors that are used, I think that is a great idea. Another thought might be the “helpful text” that pops up when you hover over some items (This might be a programming thing that is too complex) but I know I appreciate it when I hover over something before clicking and then know what I am getting myself into!
I am a person who thrives on structure, so I do think that making my class see very structured from week to week is a great idea, and in doing so the students know exactly what to expect.