If you’ve ever scheduled virtual office hours, the first time may have gone something like this:  you picked a nice time slot when you were available, you shared a meeting URL with your students, you tidied up the background of your desk area, you logged in eager to connect with your students to finally get to know some of them, and then… nobody. You may have thought, “The students will be a few minutes late. No one shows up to a party when it starts.” You answered a few quick emails, and then clicked back on the conference to see if anyone silently logged in, only to see your own face filling the screen, aging in real-time. As you dejectedly logged off, you may have wondered if you should switch to “by request only” meetings if your time is so clearly unappreciated (more on that topic later). Most online instructors have some variation on that story, leading to surprise and disappointment when they don’t get to connect with their online students and have some of the personal co...

What  makes a good question? How do you write effective answer distractors? Is feedback really used on exams? What tools can be used  to engage students with questions and answers? These questions and more were addressed in this week's Teach Talk Webinar, presented by Katrina Fogelson and Sarah Prosory .  What Makes a Good Question? We need better questions to go beyond simply assessing a student's understanding. As instructors, we should be checking a student's ability to apply the material in a meaningful way.  Starting with Bloom's Hopefully you’ve learned about objectives by now, but in brief: learning objectives help answer the question, "what do I want students to be able to do upon completion of this lesson/topic/module?" Learning objectives are one of the foundational pieces to designing and developing a learning experience. Everything in the course should tie back to them, especially assessments. So, why do we need to think about objectives when we a...

As we enter the 3rd full week of Fall 2020 classes, let’s reflect on tips we've learned for conducting successful virtual class experiences. We've gathered advice from faculty this month that will quickly turn you into an expert on the ASU Sync modality. Let's review classroom communication, screen sharing, and setting yourself up for success in ASU Sync and in-person blended classrooms.  Classroom Chatter: Zoom or Slack?  In large classes, you can  turn off ‘chat’ in Zoom , or just have messages to the instructor available. This prevents students from messaging each other in ways that don't support the course goals. Do not disable all communication entirely, as students need a way to ask questions or report issues with the class feed. There are other options outside of Zoom! Consider having students use a Slack channel for their communication during class. This is an independent application that allows for threaded replies, upvoting, and other features not available ...

As the semester is upon us, being prepared to teach on Zoom is essential. The synchronous time you spend in Zoom with your students should be reconsidered to provide the best learning experience possible. We encourage you to do so! This week we hosted our first Teach Talk webinar for the Fall 2020 semester, presented by School of Life Sciences Instructional Designers, Lenora Ott and Sarah Prosory .  We discussed the process of teaching using Zoom, by focusing more specifically on using Google Slides and its features, live captioning, as well as creating activities for students to do during the synchronous session within breakout rooms in Zoom. The key take-away is to plan for what the students need to do before , during , and after the synchronous sessions, and that will guide you in the preparation for your class meetings too.  The Process Before Class: Share on Canvas any links that students will need for the sync session. Pre-assign breakout rooms if needed, otherwise ro...

One of the beautiful things about a semester is that we are banded together in a learning experience for a specified period of time. Every class we teach has a unique makeup of students from all across the university. Many will be from different majors and all of them will have different backgrounds, cultures, and ways of seeing the world. It, therefore, becomes important to establish a community where students know their peers and are comfortable speaking to them. We also want them to see the instructors as part of this community, not just as wizened sage, but as a guide for their learning and experiences. This poses the question “How DO we establish a supportive community of learning in our courses?”. This can be largely based upon our introduction activities that pave the way for all other interactions in a course. We need to “ break the ice ”. In both online and face-to-face teaching modalities establishing community is important for creating space for discussions, as well as effec...

Aisles of freshly printed ink on large format paper are a hallmark of major scientific conferences all over the globe. Poster sessions are an arena where seasoned and budding scientists get to communicate about their work, network with peers, and determine new directions in their research. But how can we bring this icon of scientific discourse into the digital classroom? In remote and synchronous online courses, virtual poster sessions can be implemented as an assignment and exercise that allows students to practice real world skills within the community of support inside their course. Poster sessions have long been a tradition in on-ground courses, and are used to give students a taste of what scientific inquiry and discussion is like beyond the classroom. I’ve witnessed countless gatherings of excited students crowded around posters hung proudly on display in hallways at the end of term. These sessions are great practice for students who plan to go to graduate or professional schools...

Our current synchronous classroom space is Zoom, and this creates new opportunities for engagement with students. Additionally when you have a large amount of students per class, it is often recommended to break them into small groups for discussions, sharing ideas, or working on an activity together. One way we've managed this in our new classroom environment is through the use of Breakout Rooms in Zoom. We may be discouraged from group gatherings, but virtually it is encouraged! What is a Breakout Room? As the host of the Zoom meeting, you can enable a feature that allows for smaller meetings to be conducted that are connected but separate from the main meeting. The best part is that while the rooms are separate, with their own chat space, shared screens, and recording options, the host and co-hosts can move between rooms and the host can be called to join a room via the Ask for Help button.  Check out these Zoom Guides about Breakout Rooms: Getting Started with Breakou...