This weekly series–a continuation of the CFD summer publication and workshops–will showcase faculty discoveries, strategies, and innovations emerging from HyFlex/remote teaching.
If there is a teaching tip you would like to share, email Mary Balkun, Director of Faculty Development, at <mary.balkun@shu.edu>.
Daniel Cymbala, English Department
Some ideas from my little back-to-the-future classroom:
- To help fend off the dangers of “bumps on logs” phenomenon, I’ve given students “jobs.”
- Note-takers (3 students each week, rotate primary role, the other 2 responsible to add, delete, modify)
- Attendance-taker (this saves on lost teaching time)
- Chat-watcher (If I’m sharing my screen, I can’t see hands or comments, and anyway I’m not good at multi-tasking online, so they do it for me.)
- Each week it is the job of the current week person to find the next week person (I have enough to do)
- All part of the participation grade
- Keeps students interacting with each other and on their toes during class
- I’m using the Teams Class Notebook to post the agenda for the day’s lesson/activities – obvious functionality… and a skeleton for the Note Takers.
- I DO, WE DO, YOU DO: Mini lesson with example, class works an example. Groups/pairs work several examples on their own. Report back to whole class.
Rory Murphy, Chemistry and Biochemistry Department
My Aha Moment is to try something I read about in what I recall was a NYT opinion piece about increasing student engagement. The suggestion was to use more of an Oxford type model of meeting with the students individually. While I have too many to do that, what I’ve done is broken the class up into small groups of five or six and meet with them every week for at least thirty minutes over Teams. I do this instead of office hours for the students in my class. In these meetings, I have started with having the students introduce one another and talk about how to handle college. I try to get each one to do a little talking and engage a bit. It is still early, but I have hopes that it will give the students some connection to me and to each other. I suspect once we have our first test, the questions will come.
I also find it helps me to feel less isolated from the students. I’m giving HyFlex lectures, but the spread out room, masks, and other physical distancing measures limit the ability to engage the students as I would like. As I have a hearing impairment, not being able to see their faces and maintaining physical distance makes it tough for me. This way I can do more of what I used to do before and after class. Going up to the student, chatting a bit, and getting them to open up.
Bryan Pilkington, School of Health and Medical Sciences
Community Responsibility: Sharing the Burden to Avoid Second-Class Citizenship in a Hyflex Classroom
I have concerns about the pedagogical soundness of the HyFlex model. Those concerns are, in part, due to the “second class citizen” status of those who are not physically in the room. The challenges of occupying this status can be exacerbated when only a few student screens are visible on the monitor in the classroom, and when moving between the main screen, in-class students, lecture notes, and slides can keep me from noticing the usual cues. The cues I have in mind are those indications from students that indicate a question they have but don’t want to ask, a thought that should be offered but needs encouragement, or an insight – that wonderful light bulb – that should be praised and highlighted for everyone. I’ve spent 15 years teaching in different undergraduate and graduate capacities but, until this term, never employing a HyFlex model. I’ve struggled with how to hone, in just a few weeks, the kinds of sensibilities that took me a while to develop and that are essential to good teaching.
In trying to remedy this defect, two possibilities emerged. I could center my focus on the laptop screen – all the in-class students are on their computers anyway and, in essence, I could run an online class while being physically in the room. This option is not as available to me as you might think because I’m not comfortable forcing students to keep their videos turned on. It would be nice if they did, but knowing that students join the class discussions from different locations, with different resources, and with different demands on their work spaces, I know there may be reasons that they don’t have their screens on. Forcing the issue – even for some – would highlight this for all.
Instead, I embraced the idea that we’re all in this together. As corny as that may sound, it is and has been true of the kinds of classrooms I seek to be a part of. Once I reflected on this, a better answer became clear: ask all members of the classroom community to become a bit more comfortable cutting me off during a lecture and paying a bit more attention to their peers. This means that if I miss a hand raised or a line in the chat while unpacking some argument on a slide, I have 35 community partners who can unmute and draw my attention.
I doubt this will work for every classroom, and even in those I am a part of, my concerns about failing the “second class citizenry” haven’t been fully assuaged. However, I’d encourage faculty to invite students both to a greater awareness of their classroom community members, but also to jump in, even if they would be cutting you off. Briefly talking over one another is a cost I’ll happily pay for a collective awareness that might substitute, even if imperfectly, for the sensibilities that haven’t translated to HyFlex encounters.
TECH TIPS FROM THE TLTC
Cybersecurity Month Tip: Update and secure your devices.
Any device that connects to the internet should be considered vulnerable. Keep both hardware and software up to date, use anti-virus, firewalls, and ensure home Wi-Fi routers are secured.
For more tips, visit the Cybersecurity Awareness Month homepage: https://www.shu.edu/technology/cyber-security-month.cfm