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flex-hybrid

Aug 31 2020

How I Use Jamboard in My Flex-Hybrid Courses: A How-To Interview with Professor Kerry Noonan

Sample Jamboard image showing Kerry Noonan's "sticky note" technique for small group discussions

By Betsy Allen-Pennebaker

How did you use Jamboard in your class this summer? 

“When I’m teaching in person I do a lot of work on the whiteboard, especially if I’m teaching in one of those CCM classrooms that has whiteboards all around the room. I wanted to see if I could recreate that whiteboard technique virtually when I was teaching this summer. Jamboard ended up being really great for that.

“I used Jamboard to help students work in small groups to analyze and discuss readings. I also used it when I wanted students to apply a big-picture theoretical framework to a particular reading. 

“What I did was create one Jamboard for the entire summer session, that I wiped clean before each class meeting — I did this to make it easier for the students, since it was the same stable link for the Jamboard for every class meeting. I had one ‘frame’ [page] on the board for each breakout group. Then, depending on the length or complexity of the reading or the ideas I wanted the students to work with, I put up sticky notes on each frame either with the titles of the various headings and sub-headings in the reading, or with some of the most important topics or big ideas I wanted them to focus on, from the reading. I then asked students to talk together in breakout groups to pull out what intrigued them most, or what they questioned, or what they thought were the most important ideas from each section of the article, or to capture what their group said in their discussion about the reading in terms of the most important ideas or topics I’d identified. Then they would add their own sticky notes on the appropriate group page, near the ones I had already posted.

“Then, when we came back together into the large meeting, I shared my screen with the meeting, and opened the JamBoard, so we were all looking at it. I would ask each group to pull out a couple of the ideas they had captured on the JamBoard from their discussion, and talk to the class about them. Each group would present some of their ideas, and I would also chime in as necessary.

“Another way I sometimes used Jamboard was to have a single frame for the entire class (or maybe use two frames, and put, say, two groups together on each frame) and assign each small group a specific color for their sticky notes – that way, I could still see who was adding what and when we debriefed as a class, we could compare and contrast what the different groups said. Rather than doing this in breakout rooms, the students would only communicate through the sticky notes on the JamBoard — but they were in a larger subgroup (i.e., Groups 1 & 2 on one frame, and Groups 3 & 4 on another frame). This particular technique was especially good for making connections between a specific reading and a broader theory – I would put sticky notes with the main concepts of the framework on the jamboard and then students would add their own notes explaining how the reading connected to the theory, or come up with real-life examples for the theory.

How well did Jamboard work for this?

“It was great! It came quite close to replicating the whiteboard experience. There were a lot of things I liked about it.

“First, it held students accountable for doing the work in their small groups, even when it was a little harder for me to supervise them than it would have been in a regular classroom. 

“Second, it helped me manage breakout groups much more easily. I was using Meet to do breakout groups, which meant that I had to set up several concurrent Meets and then keep them all open on my screen and jump around between them as students were working. This was hard because, among other things, you have to make sure you mute all the groups except for the one that you’re interacting with, otherwise the students can hear all the background noise on your computer from all the other groups. It was just a lot of fiddling to manage all that. 

“With Jamboard, though, I didn’t have to actually intrude into the breakout groups all the time – I could see what they were doing in real time by watching what they were adding to the different frames on the Jamboard. I could also add my own sticky notes to the frames of groups that seemed to be having trouble to help them out. Sometimes I would also post notifications about when it was time to go back to the main Meet.

“Sometimes, too, I would ask students to go and look at the work that other groups were doing simply by clicking through to those groups’ frames the way I was doing, since we were all on the same JamBoard. This was helpful if a particular group seemed to be struggling and I wanted to give them some inspiration.

“Then, after we all came back together, we would review the Jamboard to see what everyone had added to it. I’d ask each group to present what they’d talked about and then we’d discuss what people had posted.

Any tips or tricks you learned that would be helpful for your colleagues to know if they try to use this technique?

“One trick I learned was that if I was running multiple Meets but recording only the main Meet, what would show up on the full-class Meet while students were in the breakout groups was simply me with an intense expression on my face, clicking around, listening and talking to other groups. This was not the most interesting content for the students if they ever came back to the main Meet while the breakout groups were meeting, or if they were watching the recorded version. After a while, I learned to do “present screen” and show the Jamboard instead of my face on the main Meet while the breakout groups were meeting.

“I would ask students to elaborate on the things they’d posted to the board on their stickies. I learned that I could not only just point to a particular sticky note, but also drag the corner of it to make it bigger and to make it clear to students which sticky note I was referring to. 

“I also learned that when you use Jamboard to facilitate small groups you can still get a sense of who has done the work to prepare for class and who has not, just like you can in an in-person classroom. This is especially true if you do occasionally drop in and out of the groups in person. And, just like in an in-person classroom, you can assign the students roles to make them engage in the work. For example, you ask a student who hasn’t prepared for class to write the sticky notes, or you can call on them to report out on what was said in a particular sticky note by the group. 

What did you do with the Jamboard after each class was over?

“If students missed class, I shared the recording of the class and the Jamboard. Sharing the Jamboard wasn’t hard, because it was the same one for the whole summer session, and I gave the students the link at the start of the course. The Jamboard would stay the same for a full week until I wiped it clean in preparation for the next class session. 

What pedagogical considerations did you have to be aware of when you were using Jamboard?

“My initial experience with Jamboard this summer made me think a lot about how I put people together in groups. I decided that in a virtual environment, which is new to everyone, it would be more important to have people stay in the same groups for consistency and to build community as much as possible. So, I not only kept students in the same groups all summer long for Jamboard discussions, but also for small-group discussion forums. Basically, I erred on the side of stability. 

“I am not sure I would do that again quite so strictly for the fall semester course because, first of all the fall semester is longer, and also, if you have negative group dynamics, they can get locked in and that’s not good for the students in the groups that aren’t working. I think I’m going to switch things up more.

At this point, as all teachers do whenever they’re talking about teaching, our conversation turned into a shared “riff” on teaching ideas, and especially about making the synchronous and asynchronous elements of a flex-hybrid course feel coherent and building connections between remote and in-person students. Here are some ideas that came out of that part of our discussion:

Kerry mentioned that she had learned over the summer to require students to end their discussion forum posts with a question to provide other students with an opening to respond in a meaningful way and not just with a perfunctory, “Great idea, Joe! I like it!”. We got to thinking that discussion posts that end with questions could also be used as a springboard for Jamboard discussions – perhaps by posting some of the questions on Jamboard frames on sticky notes, or simply by requiring each group to go back and look at the discussion forum for the week and respond to some aspect of it.

We also got to thinking that although Kerry was teaching in a fully-remote environment over the summer, a Jamboard could be a great way to connect remote and in-person students in a hybrid course – regardless of location, students can post pretty easily to their group’s Jamboard frame and participate in the discussion on an equal footing. They’d really only need to be connected via audio for that.

Finally, we also were thinking about ways that Jamboard could be used to enable students to make up missed synchronous class sessions. For example, it’s easy to save a Jamboard as an image or PDF. This could be shared with students who miss a class and, if you want, you could even ask them to “participate in the discussion” by elaborating in writing on one or more of the sticky notes.

Thanks so much to Kerry for sharing her experience and her great ideas!

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Educational Technology, Flex-Hybrid Teaching, GSuite Teaching Tips · Tagged: brainstorming, breakout groups, collaboration, flex-hybrid, G-Suite, Jamboard, Kerry Noonan, small groups, whiteboard

Jul 22 2020

Building Community in a Flex-Hybrid Course – Series Overview

There are many definitions of “community”, but most encompass notions of trust, belonging, “feeling at home”, connectedness, interactivity, shared expectations, and shared conversations.

One useful way of thinking about community is to break it into three components:

  • Community as physical space
  • Community as a “communication process”
  • Community as shared values and interests

In common usage we often use the word “community” to refer to physical spaces – even if people in those spaces don’t know one another well, such as in a “bedroom community”. Because of this, it can be easy to feel that creating a classroom community in a virtual space is difficult or even impossible. 

The good news is that Gen Z already knows that this isn’t true! For our students, some online communities have become more vibrant and engaging than many communities that exist “IRL”. Research on class communities in online courses backs this up (1).

In fact, all of the aspects of community listed above can be (even more) successfully created in a flex-hybrid course with a little creativity – and doing so only rarely requires more work than for fully in-person classes. (Really!)

Below we’ve outlined some ideas for each of the aspects of community, and there are plenty of links to take you to “deeper dives” into the topics that interest you the most.

Near the end of this overview, you’ll also find some links to posts about some specific techniques for building community before, during, and after synchronous class sessions.

Space

Your flex-hybrid course does take place in a “space” – it’s just a virtual space instead of (or in addition to) a physical one. With a little effort, you can make that virtual space (Canvas, Google Meet, etc.) as comfortable and conducive to learning as your physical classroom.

Here are some basic principles for making your virtual classroom space comfortable and conducive to learning:

  • Make it safe and inclusive.
  • Make it welcoming – that it’s got good “curb appeal”. 
  • Design the space to account for your students’ physical responses to working on a computer.
  • The less your students have to think, the better (yes, we know this seems paradoxical, but it isn’t!)

Read more about how to make your virtual course “space” welcoming and comfortable.

Shared Communication Processes

When designing a flex-hybrid course, you should make sure that everyone understands what communication channels you will use and how, and how often, you will use them.

However, online communication can easily end up feeling like a “firehose” of information. Thus, it’s important to streamline communication by limiting the channels of communication you use with your students. Also, using the Canvas Template and the Canvas “due date” feature is extremely important to keep things simple.

Keeping things simple will help students feel comfortable – and make them more likely to stay engaged with your course.

In other words, “less is more”! Learn more about how to streamline and simplify communication in your flex-hybrid course.

Shared Values and Interests

Agreeing upon and articulating shared values and interests is essential in all class communities.

The fundamental challenges of negotiating classroom values so are the same in both in-person and virtual learning spaces: 

  • Balancing freedom and openness with inclusivity and safety.
  • Making sure everyone is able to participate in class discussions and projects – and feels comfortable doing so.

Fortunately, flex-hybrid classes offer many options for navigating these challenges – and in some cases, may offer tools that make it easier to do so. Here is a description of some of these tools and how you can use them.

Building Community Before, During, and After Synchronous Class Sessions

These posts offer specific techniques for using your synchronous class meetings to create connections with, and among, your students.

  • Building Community on the First Day of a Flex-Hybrid Course (and Before!)
  • Thoughtful and Creative Starts to Synchronous Class Meetings Encourage Community
  • Fun, Simple Ways to Foster Community During Synchronous Class Sessions
  • Supporting the Informal and Impromptu Conversations that Build Community
  • Developing Community with Breakout Discussion Groups and Other Group Work 

How Do I Choose Which Tools to Use?

As you will see as you read the posts in this series, the real question when it comes to creating community in a flex-hybrid course is not whether it’s possible, but how to choose from all the multiplicity of tools available for doing so: Canvas, Google Meet, Zoom, chat, Docs, Jamboard, and more.

Three questions can help you choose the tools that are right for you:

  • What’s your desired outcome? A good discussion? collaboration among students?  reflection? sharing? getting help? Then, pick the tool that is most appropriate for your goals. This is known as “backwards design” – you start with the end in mind.
  • Is the tool easily accessible to your students, in terms of cost, learning curve, and technical requirements (bandwidth, hardware)?
  • Are you personally comfortable using the tool – or learning how to use it?

Remember that the Center for Learning and Teaching is always available to help you find a tool for your needs and to help you get up to speed with it!

(1) https://www.ideaedu.org/idea-notes-on-instruction/formed-teams-or-discussion-groups-to-facilitate-learning/; see also Garrison, D.R., & Vaughan, N.D. (2008). Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(2)  See https://library.gwu.edu/utlc/teaching/building-community-and-interaction-online; see also https://clt.champlain.edu/fall-2020/course-design-principles/.

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Flex-Hybrid Classroom Community · Tagged: classroom community, Covid-19, fall 2020 prep, flex-hybrid, virtual community

Jul 22 2020

“Don’t Make Me Think!”: Minimizing Your Students’ Extraneous Cognitive Load

Web usability experts sometimes use the mantra “don’t make me think”* to describe the ideal for clear, clutter-free web design and navigation. 

While this may sound simplistic or lazy, it’s actually just a catchy summation of one of the fundamental principles of “cognitive load theory”. 

In broad terms, cognitive load theory breaks the types of thinking needed for a college course into two types:

  • Intrinsic cognitive load. This is the thinking required to master the actual course content.
  • Extraneous cognitive load. This is the thinking required to manage the learning process (parsing texts and examples, finding important content and references, figuring out where assignments are, and so on). 

While as instructors we cannot change the “intrinsic” cognitive load required to learn our subject, we have a great deal of control over the “extraneous” cognitive load that is imposed by our course design.

Thus, “don’t make me think” might be more appropriately expressed as “don’t make me think about the nonessential stuff so that I can think better about the stuff that really matters in this course”.

That’s why the Center for Learning and Teaching has developed the Canvas Template. The Template is designed to ensure that all Canvas courses use the same basic navigation and organization system. 

Importing and using the Canvas Template is one of the best ways to reduce your students’ extraneous cognitive load. Here’s how.

Once you’ve loaded your content in the Canvas Template, a good way to test the usability of your course is to look at your course in “student view”. This is easy to do – simply go to the homepage of the course and click the button marked “Student View” on the top right. (Here are the full instructions for getting into student view.)

If you want to get fancy, recruit someone in your household who isn’t familiar with Canvas to take your course for a test-drive in student view and adjust it based on their feedback.

* Don’t Make Me Think is the title of one of the classics of website usability design, first published in 2000 by Steve Krug. Here’s a PDF of an updated version that was published in 2014.

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Flex-Hybrid Classroom Community, Uncategorized · Tagged: classroom community, cognition, Covid-19, fall 2020 prep, flex-hybrid, remote instruction, virtual community

Jul 22 2020

Reducing “Zoom Fatigue”

Meme of a cat with eyes half closed resting its chin on a keyboard. Caption reads: me attending a Zoom meeting at 8:30 in the morning.

“Zoom fatigue” is a real thing – it comes from the additional cognitive load imposed by trying to parse interpersonal interactions in a space where you can’t see a person’s full body and other physical cues that you get during in-person meetings. (1)

Here are some simple but effective ways to minimize Zoom fatigue:

  • Change your settings so that you can’t see yourself (because really, you don’t look like the Emperor from Star Wars and it’s stressful to feel like you do).
  • Shut down other apps and browser tabs so that you’re not tempted to multitask
  • Build breaks into your schedule so that you can get up and move around.
  • Set up your camera so that it shows more than just your face, and ask others on the call to do the same. The more of your body is viewable, the more interpersonal signals others will be able to see. 
  • Switch to audio periodically, and allow your students to do so as well whenever they need to.
  • Make yourself a “Loomie” – an animated “avatar” that looks like you and tracks your face and eye movements during meetings so that other people in the meeting or class feel like they’re interacting with a human being, but allows you to turn your camera off to take a break. Again, you can encourage your students to do the same.

If you’re worried that allowing students to participate by audio only will make them “check out” of class, you can always use active-learning techniques like polls or chat to keep them engaged.

(Allowing students to move to audio as needed also protects their privacy and dignity if they’re in a place they don’t feel comfortable sharing on screen.)

Likewise, moving to audio makes it possible for you and your students to get up and move around if they want to. This seems trivial, but it isn’t! Too little physical movement has been an unpleasant side effect of the pandemic for many and is leading to health problems.

As a plus, along with the health benefits of moving around, “walking meetings”, even if they’re just walking around everyone’s respective home offices, can be better for fostering connection than face-to-face seated meetings. (2)

(1) See https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/05/11/zoom-fatigue-is-real-heres-why-youre-feeling-it-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/, https://www.forbes.com/sites/yolarobert1/2020/04/30/heres-why-youre-feeling-zoom-fatigue/#2cbab1bf2ac6, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens/#closehttps://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting

(2) See https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/walking-helps-us-think; https://hbr.org/2015/08/how-to-do-walking-meetings-right

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Flex-Hybrid Classroom Community · Tagged: accessibility, classroom community, Covid-19, fall 2020 prep, flex-hybrid, remote instruction, virtual community

Jul 21 2020

Fun, Simple Ways to Foster Community During Synchronous Class Sessions

There are tons – here are just a few!

  • Chat. Some instructors dislike the “chat” function and dismiss it as a distraction. However, it can become a lively forum for side conversations and comments. It’s also a great way for quiet students, or students who are struggling, to participate. Some instructors have found such “backchannel chat” to be a transformative element in their classrooms.*
  • Google Meet “Nod” Chrome Extension. This Chrome extension allows students to post emojis to indicate their reactions to things others are saying. You can download the Nod extension here. Note that people will have to leave the Meet and come back for the extension to work if they install it during a Meet. 
  • Games. Games can be a great way to build community among students – or at any meeting. (C’mon, we’ve all played Collaborative Bingo.) In one such game, “the rock”, a secret code word related to the class content is chosen by the students. Every time the word is mentioned during class, the students do a coordinated move, like scratching their heads or high-fiving the side of the screen (or contributing something specific to the chat if the student is on audio). The goal is for the instructor to figure out what the code word is. A nice bonus of this game is that you can use it to assess engagement – if students respond to the code word, you know they’re paying attention to the discussion.

Of course, don’t forget to wrap up the semester on a high note by bringing your classroom community together to tie together all that you’ve learned.

* Chat is getting a lot of attention these days for its community-building and introvert-supporting capacities. See https://www.edutopia.org/blog/backchannel-student-voice-blended-classroom-beth-holland and https://community.chronicle.com/news/2367-turns-out-you-can-build-community-in-a-zoom-classroom?cid=VTEVPMSED1.

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Flex-Hybrid Classroom Community · Tagged: classroom community, Covid-19, fall 2020 prep, flex-hybrid, remote instruction, virtual community

Jul 21 2020

Thoughtful and Creative Starts to Synchronous Class Meetings Encourage Community

“Soft starts” to your synchronous meetings – i.e. opening the meeting about ten minutes before class officially begins – encourage community in a number of ways:

  • They can be used to work out tech problems before class starts so that students can participate fully. 
  • They can be used to “warm up” the class by encouraging students to comment in the chat about an interesting photo, question, or other graphic that you share on your screen.
  • They can be used to create a welcoming atmosphere by playing fun music (Zoom has a specific function for sharing audio).

To bring the “soft start” time to an end and segue to the regular class meeting, you can spend a few minutes doing some sort of check-in to see how everyone is doing. Reaching out to students with warmth and humanity is more important these days than ever, and it is an essential ingredient in creating community in a flex-hybrid course.

The start of each class might also be a great time for a little “how to be successful this week” pep talk. Let students know what you expect in the assignments they’re doing. Explain some common mistakes and provide clear examples of what success might look like.

Staying in contact with students via Announcements on Canvas was, I believe, pivotal to the overall success and continued student engagement with course work, as was a little TLC ‘pep talk’ at the beginning of each class session. This personalised the student experience and created a relaxed atmosphere in what was, undoubtedly, a challenging time for everyone.

Caroline Elbay

I used my synchronous meetings primarily to re-connect and re-create at each meeting our shared learning community. Major concept development and content learning was mostly left to the asynchronous discussion posts, individual or group tasks. What that means is that I tried to make our time online in zoom or google hangout meeting be more about human connection than content.

John Stroup

Written by Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker · Categorized: Flex-Hybrid Classroom Community · Tagged: classroom community, Covid-19, fall 2020 prep, flex-hybrid, remote instruction, virtual community

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