Helping students connect with course material, colleagues, and instructors helps students learn. So much so that many instructors make ‘engagement’ a focus of their classroom pedagogy. But, how can instructors best engage students in remotely offered courses with synchronous class periods? The following table contains a collection of engagement strategies from Mines instructors that may be used at the beginning of a synchronous remote class, during a synchronous remote class, and with post-class learning opportunities. A PDF of the table can be accessed here.
Type of Engagement | Strategy | Strategy Provided by |
|---|---|---|
Engaging students at the start of a synchronous class session | Engaging students at the start of a synchronous class session |
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| Student-Instructor Student-Student | At the start of each “class” on Zoom, I have a shared white board open with a fun\interesting question on it (e.g. What is your favorite movie? What have you learned about yourself during the pandemic? Do you have any pets?… ). I set it so that students can annotate the board and answer the question anonymously. I’ll answer it too. I’ll have it open for 5-10 minutes before the start of class and it usually will start a little chit chat amongst all of us. | Deb Carney |
| Student-Instructor | Making time to add in fun things that humanize yourself to the students: sharing your pet or kids on video, showing your garden, showing your home work area, etc. Perhaps follow this up with asking if anyone wants to share any of their versions of these things. Kind of like big kid show and tell! | Tracy Gardner |
| Student-Instructor | Conduct start-of-class informal anonymous polls of the students with simple questions to find out how students are doing. (For example, using Poll Everywhere.) | Anonymous |
| Student-Instructor Student-Student Student-Content | Maybe start off the Zoom sessions with music until you start lectures, and/or maybe a funny video. Especially good if something about the music bears on your topic for the lecture in some way. | Anonymous |
Engaging students during a synchronous class session | Engaging students during a synchronous class session |
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| Student-Instructor Student-Content | Chat feature is great, especially since some students show their engagement by comments in the chat, and some tend to ask questions there. • Pro tip 1: in a large group, have one of your students be "chat monitor" in case you missed a question/comment put in chat, also when an attendee comes in later, they cannot see the discussion that was put in chat prior to their arrival -- the chat monitor can help copy and paste comments from previous • Pro tip 2: sometimes you share links that students need to access, but for whatever odd reason, it is not all the time these links can be copied -- though this takes prep ahead of time, create short links to this site/document/etc. that you want to share, a commonly used site to shorten links is bit.ly | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues in EDS and the Thorson First Year Honors Program) |
| Student-Instructor | Polls can be a great conversation starter, create a poll every now and again, to surprise your audience. The questions can be as simple as: what is the level of energy you have today? • Pro tip: you can set this up ahead of time, and other than the poll tool in Zoom you should try pollyeverywhere.com to launch a more sophisticated, fancy poll (including word clouds) | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues) |
| Student-Instructor | While teaching remotely, ask students to activate their camera. It is difficult to teach, or communicate otherwise, without getting feedback, and while teaching seeing students is one of the best ways to get that feedback (are they engaged, bored, puzzled, fired-up?). It also helps students focus on the class if they feel part of a group, even if that is done virtually. Therefore I ask students to activate their camera, provided they are comfortable doing so. (Be aware that students may not be comfortable sharing their home situation, but in that case they can choose a virtual background.) Some students may not have access to a camera or have an internet connection that does allow for the use of a camera. | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Instructor | Modeling healthy behavior for them such as talking about what you do to get exercise, what socially responsible activities you've done or plan to do and how (like socializing with neighbors outside and remaining 6 feet away from everyone and cleaning everything before and after, but still getting to socialize with others; after May 9, that is), sharing healthy recipes, etc. One example of modeling healthy behavior can also be to talk about your own emotions including any struggles you've had with all of this and how you've handled it. Sharing like that with students can do lots of good things - make them realize it's normal and okay to struggle, provide some possible coping mechanisms, grow the connections between you and them, etc. | Tracy Gardner |
| Student-Student | I am sure you know the awful feeling after 20 minutes of talking, it seems like crickets out there? Breakout room is your friend. • Pro tip 1: while they are in the room, make sure you give them a task/question/work on a problem -- if you think jumping in to a room will disrupt their conversations, you can opt to create a shared document where students fillout while they are having discussions (i.e. use google docs that you create ahead of time, share the link) • Pro tip 2: if you already have students in teams, have students change their screen names to the "group name - first name", so you can easily put them into their respective breakout rooms (you have to do this manually, unfortunately you cannot set this up ahead of time) • Pro tip 3: be sure to limit the time in the breakout rooms | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues) |
| Student-Content Student-Student | Make classes as interactive as possible. Students tend to be less engaged with classes that are delivered remotely than with in-person classes. This means that as teachers we need to work harder to engage students. Breaking students up in groups helps students be more engaged in in-person classes. Using the Breakout Rooms in Zoom are very effective to increase engagement while teaching remotely. Even simple activities, such asking students to respond using the yes/no buttons or the polls that can easily be set up in Zoom, fosters student’s participation and attention. | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Content | Sharing is caring -- one dynamic tool you can use in Zoom is to share your screen. I would recommend you enable share screen for everyone, but one at a time. • Pro tip: if there's audio to what you are trying to share, be sure to check the "share computer audio" box too | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues) |
| We invited people to our Zoom room to boost morale. For instance, we had Golden's Mayor Weinberg come to our class! It was for our Thorson First Year Honors Program. | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues) | |
Engaging students outside of synchronous class sessions | Engaging students outside of synchronous class sessions |
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| Student-Instructor Student-Student Student-Content | We should also consider equal accessibility for all students, this includes being considerate of those who cannot have their video on (for reasons of bandwidth issues, unable to access a camera, personal situation at the home, etc.). Robust options like discussion or asynchronous peer editing in Canvas can also be used for alternatives for engagement. Maybe complementing these activities with ones you do synchronously in Zoom will make your class a near "in-person" experience. | Mirna Mattjik (and colleagues) |
| Student-Instructor Student-Student | Organize moments of relaxation and fun. I have organized a series of brief meditations that I offer four nights per week at (http://inside.mines.edu/~rsnieder/MinesMeditations.html). One can organize Trivia sessions, play games together online (for example by using https://houseparty.com or by playing online versions of chess or scrabble). | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Instructor Student-Student | Create occasions to “meet” socially by Zoom. Many students are isolated from their peers. Help them connect by organizing a social hour where only limited time is spent on discussing work or the pandemic. I organized a weekly Happy Hour with my research group where we get together using Zoom | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Instructor | In conversations with others, encourage students/staff/faculty to take care of themselves. Getting regular time outside is good for our bodies and it helps us relax. Since the news these days make us feel powerless it helps to limit the amount of news that we take in. Eating well and sleeping well makes us feel better and are good for our health. Limit the amount of time spent in conversations on the pandemic, and make sure to focus on personal connection, friendship, and positive aspects of our lives. | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Instructor | Talk to others and ask how they are doing. Ask about concerns others may have, because concerns are often unspoken. In conversations with students also ask how their family is doing. For many students the wellbeing of their family is a deep reason for concern and worry, but they may not share such a concern without being prompted. | Roel Snieder |
| Student-Instructor | Faculty and staff are tacking on to every email a one-line personal note… anything from “how are you doing working from home” to “hope you’re enjoying this sunny day”. | Nancy Progar & MME Faculty |
| Student-Instructor | I email students and have even offered to buy them a burrito from my family’s new burrito stand if they replied. Whatever it takes! They also then shared their concerns w/me. | Nancy Progar & MME Faculty |
| Student-Content | As part of a course, you can also give students fun open-ended projects they can do where they have flexibility to create the context, content, goals, etc. themselves. I find students get really engaged with the material in a course when they are asked to use it to create something of interest to them. | Tracy Gardner |
| Student-Instructor | Hold office hours – faculty and TAs report that these are well attended and useful. | Anonymous |
| Student-Instructor | If your class is small enough, schedule 1-on-1 meetings with each student. | Anonymous |
| Student-Student Student-Content | Make some of the assignments to be done by teams. Use “breakout rooms” in Zoom for teams to meet during class time. | Anonymous |
| Student-Content Student-Instructor | Be very flexible in terms of assignments and due dates. But do give assignments. One way to identify student distress is by a change in their work quality, or if they stop submitting. | Anonymous |
| Student-Instructor | Faculty should be encouraged to share their own favorite playlists/book/tv/movie recommendations/YouTube videos. My professor once sent me a Spotify playlist as congrats for a job-well-done, and I still remember it. It made him seem approachable and 3-dimensional, rather than someone who just decided if I passed or failed. | Anonymous |