During the 2020 shutdown, Denison faculty pivoted to remote teaching. These posts show some of the strategies they used.
Many of us found the value in creating short videos to deliver content to our students this spring. Often, these asynchronous videos were assigned ahead of time in preparation of various types of synchronous class discussions.
For my upper-level psychology class, I flipped the flipped-model. Instead of creating videos to deliver content, I created videos to address students’ misconceptions on various topics.
Regular Classroom: A common practice in my classes is group discussion on the weekly reading. In the classroom, I would divide students into groups, provide prompts, then circulate as the students engaged with each other over the reading. Once students had an opportunity to flesh out some ideas, we would then reconvene as a whole class to report back and further explore the readings.
“What if we realized the best way to ensure an effective educational system is not by standardizing our curricula and tests but by standardizing the opportunities available to all students?”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
Denison is a very resource rich campus – e-classrooms, smart boards, projectors, moveable desks, invited speakers – the list goes on.
A key part of my Sex and Gender in Society course is a semester long research paper. This project is scaffolded throughout the semester and involves several rounds of in-class peer review. With transition to remote learning, I needed a new strategy to incorporate this important component.
Enter Notebowl and Google Docs
This spring, I used a combination of Notebowl posts and Google Docs to continue the peer review process in the remote setting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVCFGLVZA3w
You may be familiar with a group discussion technique known as the fishbowl. In this technique, the instructor identifies a set of students that have the same opinion on a topic.
The strategy
The students arrange their chairs in the center of the room, creating the fishbowl. The remainder of the students place their chairs on the outside of the fishbowl.
We all know the importance of office hours – creating that critical link with our students outside of the classroom. Connecting early with students is more important than ever, to create a safe space where students feel comfortable asking us questions or sharing with us if they are feeling overwhelmed or need help. Social distancing and hygiene protocols will make these connections a challenge this fall.
Theater is all about physicality and embodiment. When my classes went remote in the spring, I soon found my active, energetic students passively sitting, hunched at their keyboard. To get them ready to engage in my acting class (physically and mentally), I needed something to get them moving, improve their posture, increase their breathing, and maybe even release a few endorphins with a little laughter – enter Zoom Games
I found a number of low stakes games that helped get my students involved.
During the past spring semester, it was a challenge to continue my lab classes remotely, as my students could not be physically present in our facilities. And in planning for the fall term, additional complexities emerged with respect to maintaining social distancing in the lab, as well as developing ways to engage remote students. With these issues in mind, I plan to give students in my Genetics course the chance to understand what scientific researchers do before they even set foot in the lab.
I have never been a fan of high-stakes assessment – students cramming a huge amount of work in a short amount of time for a test or project to satisfy a grade requirement. I found that prolonged, meaningful engagement with multiple low-stakes opportunities produces better and longer lasting results.
This notion is even more critical as we look into the fall.
I have always grappled with traditional high-stakes written exams. While they can evaluate certain types of understanding, I am always looking for alternative modes to assess what my students have learned and how they can apply that knowledge in novel ways.
The opportunity to engage in remote learning enables me to examine these issues through a fresh lens.
