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Issue 16 How can teachers balance virtual learning with being available to their students? There are some tips and tricks on how to use various online classroom tools to better support your students.
Tip 3: Remote Learning Tips - Ways to Support Your Students Set available hours For professors who only spend 1-2 hours a week with students, this is critical. When you switch to remote classes, students can’t raise their hands to ask questions, especially if the lesson is recorded and then shared. To counteract this, set aside “available hours” – a time where students can email questions and expect a response in a reasonable amount of time. By making yourself available to students during this timeframe, you can easily clear up any misunderstandings without being physically present. Pro tip: Set expectations by telling students to expect a response within 48 hours and to only follow-up if 48 hours have passed. This way, they don’t flood your email and you have plenty of time to answer questions. Virtual office hours Outside of regular class hours, host virtual office hours. Similar to regular office hours, this is dedicated time for answering questions. You can choose to livestream office hours using Zoom or Google Hangouts and use the built-in chat or Q&A function to facilitate questions. If you’d prefer to have a record of questions, use Poll Everywhere’s Q&A activity type and receive an executive summary of every response at the end. Students can also upvote the most important questions, making office hours even more efficient. Online forums Professors are only one person, they can’t be available 24/7. One way to provide support for your students is to create an online forum where students can ask questions and other students or teaching assistants can provide answers. Platforms like Piazza allow anonymous posting and teacher moderation. A few advantages of an online forum include:
Direct message platform A more casual alternative to the online forum is the online messaging platform. Messaging apps, like Slack and Troop Messenger are great places to answer questions, create quick assignments, or encourage discussions. This is also a great platform to keep students up-to-date on due dates and other announcements. Pro tip: Install Poll Everywhere’s Slack integration to create polls and collect immediate feedback directly in Slack. Participants reply directly in Slack and you can access your results in your Poll Everywhere account. Student engagement doesn’t have to fall by the wayside due to remote learning. |
