In the first of what I hope to be a series of posts on teaching and learning in the time of online, remote, and hy-flex modalities, let's talk about communication.
We are in challenging times. The stress of uncertainty can be very unnerving. There is a lot about this pandemic that impacts our ability to focus. So, what does that mean for our students? We need to ask ourselves: How much of our students' cognitive capacity is available for learning? Uncertainty and stress is a major culprit in the loss of cognitive bandwidth. Our students are overwhelmed for a variety of reasons: increased pressures on their time to navigate unfamiliar learning models, dealing with financial and health uncertainties for themselves and their families, little or no access to their social network, and social isolation.
As faculty, we need to be mindful of this reality. Our job is to create a sense of certainty amidst uncertainty for students by maintaining consistency, patience, and understanding in all of our interactions with students. Only when they feel a sense of safety and security will they start to have bandwidth available to address learning outcomes.
We should also ask ourselves: How much of our cognitive capacity is available for teaching and learning? We are dealing with multiple meetings, publication pressures, caring for children and/or aging parents.....A LOT. To some degree, we can use our own lived experiences during this pandemic to connect with our students. Explain to them that we DO understand what they are experiencing, because we are also experiencing an unsettling of our lives. Students, whether we realize it or not, care about us as human beings. In the Internet age, students can get content from YouTube- they are in our classrooms for more than just content. They are seeking to build social networks, grow and mature, and connect with us as people. We are role models for our students, our advisees, and our communities, and modeling open communication is very important.
Applicable Classroom Strategy: Check-in
Looking for a way to forge connections with students? Do a check-in at the beginning of each class. If you are teaching in a "hy-flex" or "learn from anywhere" model (some students in a socially distanced classroom and others logging in to join remotely) or synchronous online meetings, you will likely be waiting for people who are having log-in issues, are logging in a couple of minutes late, etc... Spend the first few minutes to ask how everyone is doing. Ask them to share something that made them happy in the last week (and you can do the same). Keeping the space open for communication is arguably one of the most important things we can do to build community from afar during this time.
So, how do we communicate, concretely, with students during Fall 2020?
Remember, students might be completing a lot (if not all) of the work remotely. A student logs into the course page: What do they see? How do they know where to go? How do they contact you?
First, if you are teaching in a blended/hy-flex model, we want to begin the semester with an idea of how many students plan to be in the physical classroom and how many will be joining remotely (keep in mind, of course, that these numbers will likely fluctuate during the semester as students may need to move to remote learning or students may decide to join the physical classroom).
Applicable Classroom Strategy: Class Survey
I would recommend setting up a survey in your LMS (learning management system, like Blackboard, D2L, or Canvas) or creating a survey through Survey Monkey or another such survey creation tool. Have this be a required activity during the first couple weeks of class. This will give you a sense of the breakdown of your class dynamics, but if designed well, will also help you to think about accessibility for diverse learning circumstances.
In the survey you can ask where they will be learning from, their time zones (remember, students may be joining from across the country/world), their technological capabilities, any issues they are concerned about regarding accessing course material, and other relevant topics. If your institution has any resources for students (available technology, textbook assistance, food assistance) you might want to include this information at the end of the survey if you have not built this into your course in some other way.
Second, we need to prioritize communication and responsiveness, but also set (and keep) boundaries. When students are anxious or nervous a non-response (or what they interpret as a non-response) can feel like not caring or can feel like they are even more isolated from the learning community. Now, we know this is not the case- we are busy with our own work and life expectations, but when you are operating on limited bandwidth and experiencing degrees of stress and trauma, it can feel critical.
Applicable Classroom Strategy: Technology
You might consider implementing communication technologies like Slack, Gchat, or Microsoft Teams for your classrooms. These function like chats or texting and limited research on their use in a classroom setting suggests that they may work to increase communication between faculty and students.
Alternatively, you could consider creating a classroom Twitter account (do NOT use your personal Twitter) where you tweet updates about the class, relevant articles or videos. You could even have students tweet back at you and use it as a form of classroom participation.
These are all great options; however, they require both you AND students to download, check, and use multiple technologies and have to go to multiple places for information. To take insights from UX research, the more efficient and easy-to-navigate we make our courses the better the experience for students. In other words, do not overload them (or yourself) with multiple technologies in the same class.
Some faculty are offering more evening hours or weekend time for communicating with students. However, whether or not you are realistically able to do this depends on your schedule- if you take care of children or relatives, teach courses on multiple campuses, are trying to finish your dissertation and go on the job market- what "responsiveness" looks like can be different for each persons' circumstances. What matters here is communicating clearly to your students when you will be available.
We need to think about what our boundaries are and make them clear. And, most importantly, stick to them! It is a good idea to outline in the syllabus and then in the first lecture (and follow-up with an email, a course page announcement, and/or a video posted to your course page) what your "business hours" are. This is completely reasonable! But, we need to be very clear. Saying something like "you should expect a prompt response" is not clear. Not helpful. What "prompt" means to you may not be what it means to students (especially in a texting-driven communication society where responses are instant). Instead, you could say: "I will be checking email and the course page two [or three, or however many] times per day. I do not check email after 6pm/8pm. I do/do not work on the weekends."
Now, for those of us with the spaciousness and flexibility to relax some of our own rules- do it! But, again, if we are taking up too much of our own time on our classes and ignoring our family, our children, our other responsibilities, ourselves, this will bring burnout, animosity, and stress. People expect that you have other responsibilities- just communicate what they are and what your schedule will be.
In future posts, we will dive into specifics on course design, activities, and assessments. But, we must start the semester with creating an open and communicative learning environment.
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