Readers responded with a number of helpful suggestions. Several made use of the chat feature in their videoconferencing platform.
Jennifer Simms wrote that she encourages students in her larger Zoom courses — who often opt to keep their cameras off — to use the chat, so she can mention or respond to their remarks. Occasionally, added Simms, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, students “use a late-90s version of emojis like :-) >.< ^^^^ etc. As a member of the AIM generation, that always makes me smile.”
Shelley Harms also uses the chat feature as one way to check in with students. Sometimes, wrote Harms, an instructor in kinesiology and recreation management at the University of Manitoba, “I’ll just pose simple, one-word-answer questions to get them to respond in the chat box.”
Another quick way to use the chat came from Ruth E. Walton, an instructor in the social-sciences division of the University of the Ozarks, who wrote: “At the end of a ‘task’ or ‘activity’ or even ‘class,’ I ask the students to rate it on a scale of 1-5 in the chat.”
Polls are another common strategy. Andrea Sanders, a professor of English and humanities at Chattanooga State Community College’s Kimball Site, wrote that she uses a service called Mentimeter to “create polls with fun animated gifs, word clouds, open-ended comments,” often featuring Kermit the Frog. Students, Sanders wrote, can respond anonymously by laptop or phone. “It’s a great way to check their understanding, check where they stand on assignments, or just see how they’re feeling that day,” she wrote. The polls have been so helpful, Sanders added, that she plans to continue to use them when she resumes teaching in person.
Gwendolyn Torges offered a spin on polling: generating word clouds. Torges, an associate professor of political science and the pre-law program’s director at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, uses Poll Everywhere, but cautions that the free version can collect only 40 responses per poll. “Fortunately,” she wrote, “most of my classes have fewer than 40 students. The word cloud takes only seconds to create, and then students respond with their phones. You can watch the cloud be created in real time, and I use Zoom sharescreen so that my students can watch it too.”
Thanks to everyone who wrote in with ideas.
What Changes Are Worth Keeping?
The pandemic has forced all kinds of changes in college teaching. Some of them may no longer be needed whenever the pandemic is over, but others are worth sustaining.
We’d like to hear from you: Which pandemic-inspired teaching changes should colleges keep? Your ideas don’t have to be classroom-specific — we’re interested in responses about academic support, technology, and curricula, too. Use this form to share your thoughts. Thanks!
Punching Down
I was struck by a recent Twitter thread from Candice Majewski, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Sheffield, in England. Majewski urged professors to “please think twice before tweeting publicly about the ‘annoying things students do’” and instead “quietly explain” to a student the problem with any action that’s both “incorrect” and “important enough to mention.”
Majewski then engaged in a back-and-forth with a number of people who responded — not all of whom agreed. The thread speaks, I think, to a deeper debate about the kind of relationship professors should have with their students.
The conversation reminded me of this pre-pandemic story, in which I wrote that “such mundane-seeming matters as enforcing attendance policies and requesting that students purchase a stapler can spark impassioned debates among instructors on social media” because “the matter of how involved they ought to get in students’ lives is in flux.”
Pandemic teaching certainly hasn’t settled that question. But I wonder: Have you noticed any changes in how you or professors generally have regarded students this past year? Share your thoughts with me, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and they may appear in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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