by Bethanie Hansen | Higher Education, Podcast, Teaching Online, Technology Tools, Video
This content first appeared at APUEdge.com.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Video has become a staple of our everyday lives. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen provides an inside look at the best ways to use video in your online classroom.
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Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m Bethanie Hansen. And I’m wondering, have you thought about what might happen if you were able to answer your students’ questions in the online class, the very moment they needed your answer?
If you’re teaching an asynchronous class, this can be a big challenge. It’s been said though, that it’s better to be a “guide on the side than a sage on the stage,” to lead your students most effectively in their learning. In the blended asynchronous online course, when you guide students through that LMS content with a personal connection. This can be both challenging for you to take the time and make the quality that you might want, but also, it’s going to be a benefit for your students.
You might approach your teaching, creating lecture style videos that talk about the subject and teach in a more traditional style. But today, we’re going to talk all about the way you can use video to be a guide on the side all the time for your students. Because they’re going to access those videos, anytime of day, and in all kinds of places throughout your online course.
This is such a benefit to you because it builds trust with your students. It allows you to take moments when you’re not under pressure to record a brief narrative explanation or interaction and post it wherever you would like in that online classroom. Today, we’re going to talk about online video for your online course, and a few tips for you to help make quality videos and just get started. We’re going to also tailor this to something specifically you’re thinking about right now. And that class you teach the most.
Consider Videos as a Recorded Conversation
So, I’d like to propose, first of all, not creating lecture-style videos alone. Now if you want to do that, that’s a great thing to do. We all love to hear someone teaching versus just reading it. But these videos I’m talking about today are much more personable. It’s like you’re there in person having a conversation with your students. And this is going to have a lot of power, and a lot of purpose.
There’s some research out there that suggests that using your videos for welcome videos, lecture content, discussion questions, instructions for assignments, and extra help in the areas of the content where students might have questions or tough topics are covered, all of these things are good.
Creating Videos Can Help Students Learn More and Enjoy the Class
In some research that I reviewed, students gave some feedback on instructor videos and 78% of them said that it helped them better understand the material when their instructor was there on video explaining it. 86% of the students said it contributed to their satisfaction in the course, that’s a pretty high number. 92.7% even said it helped them understand more about their instructor and feel more connected. And 91.5% of the students said they wanted more instructor generated videos.
Now you might not fancy yourself a videographer or a person who wants to be on a lot of video. But trust me, your students don’t need you to be perfect or a polished professional media person or personality. They really just want you just like you would show up in the classroom, with your stories, your comments, your explanations. It can increase your students’ grades to have videos where you’re there, in your presence and also talking about the course; 3.2% increase in grades were measured in the study I looked at. And there was also a 5.8% increase in the comments that the instructor was an effective teacher. And who wouldn’t want to be a more effective teacher? So, this is a really helpful thing, video.
Consider Where Students Can Benefit Most from Your Videos
It’s going to bring a lot of positive things; it’s going to bring a lot of positive results for you and for your students. So again, I’m going to list all those places you might consider adding video. Welcome video, which could go in your announcements or on the course homepage. Your weekly lecture, which is the lesson area of the course.
In discussion questions, you could have your video in the prompt, or you could have it in your posts, there are a lot of options there. Instructions for assignments, that could be in whatever section you introduce the assignment, and it could also be in the announcements where you refer to the assignment. And, as needed for complex topics, which could be in all areas of your course.
Now I’m not suggesting you saturate the course. At first just try a few places and see what happens. We’re going to cover how to create explainer videos or interesting videos of various kinds.
There are some examples I can talk about, and then also how to consider where you might put those videos in your course. And what you’re going to look at to decide, are they working for you, are they getting you the results with your students that you’re hoping to see.
Try A Few Tips for Strong Video Creation
The first thing I’d like to suggest is what a video must be. And all of us come to this idea with different assumptions and different understandings. But a video can be short and concise, it does not have to be five or 10 minutes. In fact, we lose our students’ attention spans when we have our videos too long.
A good video is short and concise, and it describes something or tells what it is, what it isn’t and how to do it, or why it’s important. It can be simple or complex.
It can be on a variety of platforms. In fact, I saw a session at a recent conference, that was about making TikTok videos, that’s not something I’ve ever considered. I haven’t even been on the platform TikTok. But if you have, you can see why it might be interesting to students to have a short Tiktok video. You can use TechSmith, Snagit, or Camtasia, or Canva, or Kaltura. There are a lot of things you can use to make your video.
All you need is some kind of program on your computer with a camera, and a video capacity or a cell phone that records video and audio. And it can be with or without animation or captions or headings or graphics or whatever you’d like to include. Now, when you’re including a video in an online course, of course, we need to think about compliance for all kinds of learners. And captions are important to include. But the initial video recording software may or may not have captioning capacity; there are a lot of ways to get captions added after the fact. So don’t let that hold you back.
Try It Out for Your Own Course
Now I want you to think about one specific situation. Think about one assignment on which your students struggle the most in that class you teach the most often. When you think about this assignment, what’s the main objective? What are the typical challenges and problems?
What is needed most for students to do well on that assignment? Now, we’re not just talking about formatting or APA or MLA or Chicago citation style. What I’m talking about is, what do they need to be able to talk about, write about, demonstrate, show knowledge around? What is really needed from your students in that space? And what actions do students need to take to do a great job?
As you’re thinking about this, I’ll suggest three things you can do to get their attention, keep their attention and call them to act in some way. That first area, getting their attention. In the video, you’re going to think about what is most difficult for them?
In media, we call that pain points. What do they really struggle with? If they were to write a question in the question section of your class to you, what would they be telling you or asking you?
What do you notice when you’re grading their papers or their assignments? What typical problems do they face? And what might they miss, that maybe it’s even a pet peeve you have of that assignment or that topic? What is it that students routinely struggle with?
At the very beginning of your video, get their attention by talking about it. Let them know directly, just talk to them in a conversational manner. And let them know. An example might be something like this, “Hey, I’ve noticed a lot of my students writing great things about the music they’re listening to. And they’re not using the music terms we teach in our class. So, it’s a big problem on the essay due Friday, when you’re writing it, to not use the music terminology. That’s one of the areas we’re trying to master in this class. So, I’m going to coach you today on this short video to help you use music terms more appropriately in your writing.”
Now, that’s my way of getting their attention. What’s your way?
Think about that assignment you’re worried about, and discover what you can say to them to get their attention. And you want to do this in your own personality style. My personality, I like to be a little up and down with my dynamics, my volume and my energy. And I really like to get excited about things. You can be different than this. You could be more focused; you can be more serious. You can be more consistent across your tone and your dynamics. Whatever is normal for you in daily conversation, that’s what you should do to get their attention in the video. Don’t try to be someone else, or pretend to be someone you’re not. Be natural.
Secondly, keep their attention. One of the ways to keep their attention is to build trust and credibility with your students in the video. You do this by talking about specific details, mentioning specific things that you know, as an expert in that academic area. Tell them how you’re going to help them meet the goal in the video and what happens when students submit their work without watching the video, what the consequences are, if they’re not solving this problem. And that could be something like they’re gonna miss an important piece of learning that’s part of the class. They’re not going to be able to talk about the subject matter intelligently, they’re not going to be able to demonstrate the work they’ve put in, something like that.
And lastly, in your video, call them to action, tell them what they can do. Now that they’ve watched this video, tell them what to do next. Give them some specific action they can do right now on that assignment or that topic, or whatever it is you focused on. Give them some specific details of when to do it and how to do it. So, for example, if the assignment’s due on the weekend, you can tell them, “Even if you’re not doing the assignment right now, take five minutes to stop and write down your ideas in preparation for that assignment.” Give them some details to wrap up whatever it is you’re talking about, and a sense of urgency like now’s the time to put the effort in. To get that done.
I really encourage this framework of three pieces and three major details in your video. We don’t want to overwhelm students and we want to keep it short. Adapt your assignments to the needs of your unique learners. As you’re talking about it in that video, if it’s about an assignment, you can do that by chunking the content into specific topics.
And these might even be separate videos. In my case, maybe I’m going to make a short video about how to use music terminology in the video. And maybe I’m going to make another short video about how to format and turn in the assignment, and those can be separate.
You might also focus on the course objectives and learning objectives, and tie everything you’re talking about to why they need to do it; especially adult learners need to know why so they can engage properly and really value what you’re asking them to do.
In any video, use everyday language, I would suggest eighth grade language, avoiding jargon as much as possible, unless you have academic terms you’re focusing on. In that case, define your academic terms, and then use them regularly and refer back to them.
And one way to make a great video without having to read a script and sound really planned and not conversational, one way is to build a bubble map. Just write it out with a focus, some key points and a few details. This will help you avoid word for word reading on your videos and help you be a little more natural and sound like yourself. Your students will like that, and they’ll engage more, too.
Keep your videos short. I recommend either a one-minute video, a two-minute video, or on the longer side the five-to-seven-minute video. And you need some captions before you post it in your course. You can investigate your captioning possibilities in the program you decide to use. You can also look in the LMS; a lot of learning management systems now have caption possibilities when you upload a video. And you could also talk to your classroom support at your institution to ask for help.
And think about your background. Always have a clean background. If you can’t have a clean background, consider putting up a sheet or a green screen behind you. Or at the very least, you could just go into Zoom and use the blur setting and record your video right there with a blurry background.
Have some good lighting, where you have your face lit pretty well and excellent sound quality. Now you don’t have to go out and buy a new microphone, most cell phones have great sound quality. You want clean audio that doesn’t have noises going on in the background. If you have a family member that’s making dinner, that might not be the best time to make your video. If you have a barking dog, take the dog outside, whatever it takes to get those noises reduced. They’ll be able to hear your voice better on the video and the quality will improve a lot.
Now think about where you’re going to place the video, you could put them in the spot where your students most likely have challenges with their assignment. Think about those places they’re going to be when they’re studying, and when they’re in the middle of that work. As you’re thinking about where you want to put your videos, remember that students really do have places they most often visit in your course. And they need some help at certain places as well. What are the typical student gaps and learning patterns in your online class? And where do these emerge in the course content? This might be the best place to put your videos, whatever you’re going to focus on.
Now lastly, there’s some data you might want to use to determine whether your videos are useful. You could put the videos in any place you want to, and if there’s a way to measure click rates or the amount of content students have viewed, you’ll be able to know if students are actually consuming your video content or viewing your videos at all.
One thing you could look at for a general understanding of how students are consuming your videos would be end of course surveys. An end of course survey is not a direct measure, but students might write some comments about your videos to let you know whether they enjoyed them, whether they found them useful, and whether they liked them.
You can take a look at your average assignment grades from before you started using videos to after, you can also look at the average course grades your students are achieving to see if the content you’re posting is helping them to perform better in the course and on the assignments.
There is another metric that we use in our university called UFWI rates, and this will be drops, unsatisfactory grades earned, like D’s and F’s, withdrawals and incompletes. If you have that kind of data, you can take a look at before you started using the videos and then after, and do some comparisons.
You can of course also look at the percentage of the content viewed or completed. And you can send informal surveys to ask students, what are they getting out of these videos? Are they helpful? And do they have any suggestions for additional videos?
If you’re going to use an external video platform like Vimeo, there’s additional statistics outside your LMS that could be used. And then if there’s another way to measure the watch time, like if they actually watched the entire video, then you’ll know not only did you get their attention, but did you keep their attention long enough for them to watch the entire thing?
As I wrap up this podcast with you today, I just want to encourage you to view video as a personalized approach to talk like you’re having a conversation with individual students. Just use your natural speaking pattern and be yourself. If you make an error, finish the video and share it anyway. Students love to see you as a human being, not something perfect off a shelf. Try some public speaking tips for clear messages like getting their attention, speaking to pain points, keeping their attention by sharing trust and credibility in there. And also giving them some direct actions, they can take at the end of the video. Remember to avoid perfection, aim for basic bare minimum videos.
They don’t have to be stellar or incredibly perfect. B-minus level work on your part is enough. Students will love it and they’ll love seeing you in these videos.
And lastly, take a look at your own content and decide does it actually look and sound like you? Does it seem authentic and real? If the answer is yes, chances are your videos are going to be wonderful to use with your students. I hope you’ll try some of these strategies and give it a real good effort to add some video content throughout your courses. And also, just try short, relaxed, simple videos. They don’t have to be very sophisticated at all just you talking to your students with your real personality and your real presence showing up. I hope that you’ll enjoy doing that and look forward to hearing back from some of our listeners using the form at BethanieHansen.com/request to share how this is working for you. Best wishes in your online teaching this coming week.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge Podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit BethanieHansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Podcast
This content was first posted on APUEdge.Com. Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education Discussion spaces are one of the most beneficial components in the online classroom. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen highlights some of the primary and secondary benefits of online discussions, including teaching students how to interact by following a netiquette guide as well as teaching skills like conflict resolution in the discussion forums.
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Read the Transcript:
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. This is Bethanie Hansen, and I’m happy to be with you here today talking about discussions in online education. Discussion spaces could be anything. We might have a discussion forum inside the classroom. We might have a discussion wiki. Or, we might have a blog that students are posting. We might even have real time video meetings, where students are typing in the comment section as we go. Whatever your method of hosting a discussion online, some kind of interaction is always needed to help our learners think through the content, try it out and test out their knowledge on each other. They’re going to expand that knowledge as they go, when they’re asking questions, you’re asking questions, and everybody’s checking in with each other. And they’ll come out of this discussion with some additional understanding as a result of all of that talking that has taken place. Today, we’re going to talk about a few tips to help you get the most bang for your buck, as they say, in the discussion, or rather the most benefit from the time you spend there. We’ll also talk about some of the side benefits students are gaining through that discussion, and how we as educators can more intentionally cultivate those benefits.
Discussion Spaces: Understanding the Macro View
The first thing I’d like to touch on is the macro view of your discussion space. When you’re approaching your online class, it can be really helpful to think about what you assume students should know in order to be able to engage in that discussion most effectively.
Develop a Netiquette Guide for Online Discussions
One workshop I engaged in about 10 years ago, it was about managing difficult online students. In this workshop, I learned how to make a netiquette guide. Up until that point, I had never heard of a netiquette guide before; this was something totally new to me. You probably have heard of this, but if you haven’t, a netiquette guide is a little document or a set of rules that you put in either your syllabus, your week one announcement, the week one discussion, or maybe even all of those places. And in this little document or set of rules, you give students guidelines by which you expect them to participate in the discussion. These guidelines could include things like asking them to use one consistent font throughout their posts. Or maybe you want them to use academic language and always support their key points with sources from the classroom, or the textbook, or the internet or whatever you want to choose. Perhaps you want to ask them to avoid profanity or political references, if it’s a class totally unrelated to politics. There are a lot of things you might consider appropriate for your subject matter and for an academic conversation in the first place. Those things can be very professionally said in this netiquette document. And then you can present it to your students before they ever participate, and it will help a lot. That netiquette guide is going to help your students anticipate what kind of work they need to do to participate in the discussion. Then they can better plan how they’re going to read or think about the subject before they start posting there. You will solve a lot of problems up front by giving your students this netiquette guide. I used to spend a lot of time correcting students, teaching them what was appropriate in an academic conversation or grading them where they were missing things and then they would figure it out over a few weeks. But a netiquette guide can help prevent all of those things. Students will know in advance what you’re looking for. And they can do a much better job of giving it to you and to each other, and they will be more satisfied because they know what to expect. So, stating these expectations up front is a little bit like when you hire someone for a job, and you give them clear job expectations then they can perform the work. So, I highly recommend a netiquette guide from this macro view of training people how to participate in the dialogue.
What Are Your Goals for the Discussion Space?
Another macro view tip would be to think about your own goals for that conversational space. Do you really want to engage with students just by posting occasional high fives and saying nice job, good work? Or do you want to ask them questions? Do you want to give them additional examples throughout the week that come from your own life experience or your own professional knowledge? Do you want to engage in all kinds of ways? What kind of goal do you have for your discussion space? As you think about the length of time you’ll be engaging in that discussion, and the goals that you have personally for your students over that time, you can more intentionally plan the discussions that unfold. And you can plan your behavioral goal for how much you’ll post in those discussions and how that will look. Once the semester starts, or once the session starts, you’ll be very busy. And it will be difficult to think on the fly about how to participate in the discussion. Sometimes your life will be so busy that you’ll have to pause, post in your discussion a few times and get back to something else and it will be easier if you have planned ahead what that’s going to look like for you. I highly recommend planning out an approach to how you want to mentor, guide, or coach your students in that discussion, and then put it on your calendar. That way, you have an automated habit. And it’s not a choice you have to face every day. It’ll be a lot easier to fill that promise to yourself and be consistent in the approach you give your students. Students are looking for us to have consistency, by the way. Every time we approach them in a deliberate, consistent way, they gain trust for us. They feel like they get to know us, and they love it. And when they have a concern, they’ll come directly to us so we can resolve the concern with them. If we don’t pave the way through those consistent, deliberate behaviors, then when our students have a concern, they’re going to go to someone else. Maybe it’s the principal, the dean, the president of the university. It could be anyone, but it won’t be us and we won’t be as effective in resolving it if they feel like they can’t trust us enough to talk to us. So, thinking about your discussion space from this macro view of setting up a netiquette guide, and planning ahead for your own engagement and your approach to that engagement can go a long way to help you set up a very professional and academic space that is rewarding for everybody. There are some things that come along with discussions that are not really overt, obvious benefits. But some of those things are that students can learn conflict-resolution strategies in those conversations. There are also a lot of excellent life skills most people would expect from a college graduate, or a high school graduate, whatever space you’re in, where you’re teaching. Decision making is another one of those beautiful outcomes that comes from the discussion space, and prioritizing. And judgment, learning how to state your opinion and support it with facts and evidence and create a constructive argument. All of these things can be beautiful goals for the discussion space no matter what subject matter you’re teaching. Many of you know I teach music appreciation online. I talk about that a lot in this podcast. And even when we’re talking about music, I expect my students to come with sources, evidence and facts to back up their claim. They might have an opinion about a song or a composer, and they need to listen to that music and come back into the space and talk about it and explain: Why do they think this composer was the best one in that period of time? Why do they think a certain song is not enjoyable to listen to? Any kind of supporting through facts, evidence and details gives them the life skills to support their claim in other areas of their lives, and in their professional pursuits as well. This is a win for everybody. These kinds of goals might be called institutional-learning outcomes, if you’re in a university setting. They might be called core-life skills, if you’re teaching in a public-school setting. Wherever you are, thinking about the big picture goals of what that education is all about will really help you draw those things out and intentionally promote them in the discussion.
Practicing Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution is one of my favorite things to talk about in a discussion. And I think a lot about how students and faculty all have differing opinions. The facts may be the same, but the approach to interpreting them and the way we choose to argue that point might be vastly different from one person to the next. In life, many of us may be totally comfortable with conflict, and many of us may be very averse to conflict. In fact, I know a lot of adults who are super agreeable and would rather say “yes,” go along with it or say nothing at all, than engage in a conflict. A discussion space is a perfect opportunity to practice conflict resolution. If you’re really comfortable with this already, you can set that up in the very beginning in your netiquette guide and actually introduce the concept of conflict, conflicting opinions, how to voice a dissenting opinion in a professional and academic way that is supported by argument, ideas and facts, and you can guide people through the process of disagreeing throughout the course. Perhaps you even have a debate that you’re going to include in your online teaching space. Conflict resolution is particularly useful whenever we’re working on things that do have obvious sides to choose, or opinions that can come out. It’s helpful as an educator, ahead of time before that discussion takes place, it’s helpful to be thinking about where students might have differing opinions. Perhaps, in the prompt to that discussion, or in our initial posts as the educator, we can even draw out the conflicts that we anticipate seeing. And we can guide students in their approach to those discussions so the conflict and the resolution of these things in students’ posts is clear. And they can gain some comfort recognizing that conflicting opinions does not mean we cannot work together, we can totally get along. In fact, we can win when we bring together a lot of diversity and opposite thinking, to shed light on our own thoughts, and help us find blind spots in our thinking, and fully develop our thought, cognition, argument and all of those other things that we might have going on in our in our direction. So, conflict resolution skills are a great goal in discussion spaces. And as you develop all of these things with your students and think ahead about what they’re going to bring to that discussion, what perspectives they might have that could differ, and where they could develop more decision-making skills, more conflict-resolution skills, and overall life skills, the more you can plan for that, and then bring in examples and guide them even further.
Teaching Students How to Think and Formulate Opinions in Online Discussions
One of the best goals of education is to teach people how to think and support what they think, not necessarily what to think. We’re all going to have our own viewpoints. But discussion spaces are a great spot to work through those viewpoints and learn how to get along with all kinds of different people that think all kinds of different things. Closing out this episode today, I want to encourage you to think about the macro view of why you use discussions in your online class, what you’d like to tell students up front, and how you’d like to plan your own involvement, as well as the micro view where you’re thinking about specific topics, skills and approaches students will bring and might need to bring. And how you’d like to moderate that and include a lot of diversity of opinion to really develop a robust discussion and help students develop their life skills along the way as well. Thank you for being here with me in this discussion about discussions, and I wish you all the best this coming week in your online teaching. This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge Podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit BethanieHansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Energy, Healthy Habits, Life, Personal Growth, Podcast, Stress, Students, Teaching Online
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Have you ever felt attacked or offended by a student’s feedback about your teaching? It’s hard not to take it personally. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen discusses the concept of radical depersonalization and strategies to help teachers listen differently to feedback and criticism. Learn how radical depersonalization can help teachers better understand the needs of students and even help teachers get to know their students better.
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Read the Transcript:
Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge, I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. I’m your host, Bethanie Hansen. I’m very happy to speak with you today about one way we can reach our students even better. There are so many opportunities to connect with the people we are working with in online education. And one group that we seek to connect with the most is our students.
Our students need us. They really need to feel a sense of our presence. They also want to know who we are. They want to know that they are in safe hands, that they have someone who knows a lot about the subject matter and is capable of helping them get where they need to go. One of the things that makes this really hard—to be responsive to students, to connect with students, and to really help them feel that sense of safety—is when we take things personally.
There’s a lot that happens in that online classroom. And for various reasons, we might get the experience of an angry student coming at us. Or we might feel over time like because we’re working online, that we don’t get seen, we’re not valued or appreciated by enough people. Maybe we really crave some kind of appreciation or attention and it’s really difficult to find that when we’re teaching online exclusively.
If that’s been your experience, I know where you’re at; a lot of us have gone through those feelings of being insignificant or disconnected in our online work. But that is not how we have to continue. In fact, your students may be having a much better experience with you than you realize.
They might be leaving your class feeling like they know you. They love you, they want to learn from you more, they want to come to you for letters of recommendation. Pretty soon, you’re going to hear of these things and wonder what led to that, how did they know you so well? Well, it’s in the way you show up in your classroom, the way you write things to them, or the videos you create, or whatever you’re doing to put yourself more personally in that online education space.
And even though your students don’t tell you directly, they’re getting a lot from you. They’re benefiting so much from what you have to offer, especially when you bring what you’re best at. Whatever makes you uniquely you. Whatever really is your special flair for teaching, or your special passion about your subject matter, that is helping your students connect with you, even if you don’t know it.
There are some ways you can find this out, but what I want to talk about more specifically today is how to stay in the best space possible. And the best space possible would be your best teacher self. Your best educator space. Your most responsive, feel-good place where you’re motivated to do really great work in your online teaching and share a lot, really openly about the subject matter, about yourself. About whatever will help your students connect and learn what you’re hoping to teach them. In my experience, that is difficult to do when you’re online and you don’t always get responses that you hope for.
If you ask questions in a discussion, for example, and students don’t respond back, you can feel pretty invisible. I’ve played with that myself a little bit, to ask questions in different ways, to try different kinds of responses that might provoke more engagement. And some things work better than others. Truly, you can get some of the results you want if you want a lot in return. But today’s focus is more about how you can show up, your best self as a teacher anyway, even if you’re not always getting that payoff that you’re hoping for.
What is Radical Depersonalization
The concept I’d like to share with you today is called “radical depersonalization.” I know that’s a bit of a mouthful, but when you’re feeling especially isolated or ineffective, you’re not really sure you’re making a difference, and it’s really hard to get motivated to get in there and do your teaching again, or it’s hard to be motivated to do a lot of grading. Whatever it is you’re struggling with today or this week, radical depersonalization can help you detach enough to see it in a new light, come back at it fresh, and engage with your students again. After all, when you connect with your students, that’s one of the best things about being an educator and it’s the best way to know what they’re getting out of this experience.
The more you can connect with your students and get some insight back from them, the more you’ll be motivated on this journey. I’ll show the steps for radical depersonalization and talk a little bit about each one.
Reassessing Other People’s Statements About You
The first step for radical depersonalization, and this is about the way we see what other people are doing or not doing—it’s not about disconnecting on purpose from other people. So, the first step in radical depersonalization is to see the other person as a separate being and realize that what they’re saying is about them. You may have a colleague or a supervisor or a student criticize something that you’re doing or say something that seems like a character attack, when really, it’s just them voicing their need for what they need to see in the classroom.
People will say all kinds of things about us. Not all of it is true. If we take it personally and accept it as fact immediately when it is said, it’s going to be debilitating. It will make it difficult for us to enjoy our work every day and really hard to consider that feedback, even if we do need to change. So, that first step to radical depersonalization is to remember that people will say all kinds of things about me, my leadership, and my decisions, and to remember that what they say isn’t about me, even if it sounds like it is.
Listen Differently to Hear What Other People Need
The second step to radical depersonalization is to now tune into listening to the other person. If someone feels like attacking or criticizing, that is the hardest thing to do. It’s difficult to want to get closer to someone who seems abrasive or who seems to be pushing us away. However, when we can remember that what they’re saying is really about them and their needs, and turn towards them and listen more, we’re going to hear what they really care about. We’re going to hear what they really need from us, and we’re in a better position to help meet those needs.
It’s especially useful when we depersonalize the comments and say, it’s not about me, it’s about what they need. They’re trying to tell me something. And then when we keep listening, we’re able to hear an entire story unfold.
We can even cultivate a lot of compassion and empathy for the other person when we’re turning towards them, we’re listening more, and we’re hearing what they care about. Now we can consider from that space, what does that person really need?
If it’s a student complaint, or a student concern, and they’re being somewhat aggressive or even seem attacking in the way they share it with you, and if you turn towards that person to get more insight, to listen more, and to seek out more meaning from what they’re saying, you will have all kinds of ideas come into your mind.
For example, if a student criticizes the way you have graded their assignment, if you turn towards them and get more curious and learn about what they really need, you might find that actually, your feedback was good, but it didn’t land because the student needed you to bridge the gap a little bit more between what you were trying to say, and where their current understanding is.
They might have no idea what you were referring to in your comments, it might really seem difficult for them to digest. So, if you can break it down a little bit more, give them examples and scaffold the path from where they are to where you need them to be, they will take it personally less, and you will take it personally less as well. They’ll also be more teachable. So, turning towards the other person that might seem difficult, will give you all of the information you need, as long as you keep listening.
The third idea, just to review, the first thing is to remember it’s not about you, it’s about them and what they need. Secondly, is to get closer to that person and keep listening and really find out what they need through listening.
Radical Depersonalization Can Bring You Closer to People
The third idea is that radical depersonalization can bring you closer to other people in a way that trying to intentionally be personal with them will not. I’ll say what I mean here just to explain that a little bit.
When we’re intentionally trying to get closer to other people and get to know them, sometimes we have automatic thoughts that come into our mind that are assumptions or judgments that make it difficult to actually get to know them openly. But when we’re depersonalizing, or we’re doing this radical depersonalization approach to remember it’s not about us, we’re more likely to be objective and ask questions about things we would have assumed before or taken for granted before.
Now we’re going to be thinking about what they might mean in a certain phrase, what their understanding of a certain concept is. Whereas before, we assumed that we both were on the same page. So, radical depersonalization can allow us to get curious in ways we might miss otherwise.
The Benefits of Radical Depersonalization
The win in the end is ultimately that we’re going to be able to hear our students more, our colleagues more, our bosses more. We’re going to be capable of coming up with fresh new ideas to help meet their needs and we’re also going to learn more about them. And we’re going to get to know them in ways we otherwise would not.
I hope that thinking about this interesting concept of radical depersonalization allows you to get a little bit of distance in the future, in a situation where you might feel like something’s very personal, or very confronting or attacking. Get some distance and be able to come back at it more resourcefully, and using the gifts, talents and abilities you have, to really build instead of being distant and fearing the encounter with that other person.
Especially if that’s a student, that’s a win-win for both of you, because you’ll be helping yourself overcome a challenging scenario a little easier while building that student’s ability to come back and keep learning as well. So, you’ve helped two people in one situation through this process.
Thanks for being here in the Online Teaching Lounge to learn this one strategy for connecting better with students and avoid taking things personally. I wish you all the best in trying it out this coming week and in your online teaching.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge Podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit BethanieHansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Career, Online Education Trends, Podcast, Professional Development, Teaching Online
This post initially appeared at https://apuedge.com/how-to-navigate-a-career-change-in-online-education/.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Is it time for you to change jobs or start a new career? In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares tips to help with the transition. Learn why it’s important to craft a strong narrative about your career, build a strong network and be prepared to negotiate.
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Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. This is Bethanie Hansen, your host, and I’m really happy to talk with you today about the potential for changing careers in your online teaching journey. Now, a career change could be a minor thing. It could be, you’re just changing jobs, perhaps you work at one school, and you’d like to work at another. Or maybe the career change is actually in a new direction. Perhaps you’ve been teaching in a face-to-face classroom, and then you’ve had an adjunct role teaching one class at a time online, but maybe you want to just expand that.
Maybe you want to go full time in an online capacity. That does feel like quite a bit of a change, doesn’t it? Maybe you want to leave teaching altogether and go into higher education leadership, or educational administration in the K-12 system. Perhaps you’re leaving the standard classroom and you’re becoming a virtual coach, trainer or consultant.
Whatever type of career change you are contemplating, changing careers can be a challenge. I have changed careers myself several times. And these changes have been interesting, they have been difficult, and in my experience, they have also involved a little bit of identity consideration. For example, when I made my first career change, I was leaving a role of, where I thought, I was a band director.
My job title was band teacher. But we in the band-directing field, when we’re running the entire program, we’re doing a lot of fundraising, we have parent groups and all of those things along the way, we would call that more of band director role versus just teaching. So, I was leaving this role of being a band director, and becoming a 100% online teacher in higher education. That role change involved an identity shift in my mind. I had to stop calling myself a band director, and I had to stop referring to myself as a band director. And a lot of people who knew me did not understand what online teaching was all about, or what I did for a living.
In fact, they kind of didn’t ask about it at all once I told them what I was doing, because they just didn’t understand it. They didn’t relate to that. Now that online education has been around a while, and it has developed into something that is spoken of in the general population, the general public, a career in online education is not as far of a reach if you’re telling someone else about it. Either way, I’m going to give you some steps today that will help you out if you’re thinking about changing careers, either into or out of online education.
Considerations When You’re Changing Careers
The first thing to consider when you’re changing careers is your narrative. The narrative of your career change is really the story behind that career change. One place where we tell that story is a profile network like LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a virtual platform where you have almost a virtual version of a resume. You have a space where you have some paragraphs that summarize who you are, what you’re all about. You also have your jobs listed, what some of the key things were you did in those jobs, what dates they were, where you worked. And you can also provide links to any articles you’ve written, presentations you’ve made, podcasts you’ve hosted, and more. You can add a lot of those things and share them with a network of people that you’re hoping to connect with more fully.
LinkedIn does have jobs posted, and many companies are doing this now, many educational entities also are. So, when you post yourself on LinkedIn, and you really work on your story behind your career change there, and the story of where you’re headed, this can be a helpful place to go.
Develop a Narrative about Your Career Change
One thing to think about in your narrative is why you’re changing careers. You can say it succinctly and diplomatically. That story of why you’re changing careers really never includes the negative judgments you might have made about a prior boss or a prior situation or employer. When you’re telling this story, succinctly and diplomatically as I mentioned, one thing would be to talk about the direction you are growing. The experiences you’ve had in the past and how you’ve learned from them, and now you’re pivoting in a new direction. And what some of those common threads are.
In literature, we call that the “red thread” of your story. So, in my band-directing career, I was helping people grow and develop and transform into adulthood. They were learning musical skills, leadership skills, self-management, all kinds of things. And as I moved into higher education, I was still working on those very same core things. And in my part-time coaching work with people, I also work on helping them develop and change and transform in their direction. So, that thread for me is very consistent, even though the subject matter or the way I played it out has changed over time.
Another thing that you can include in your narrative of your career change would be what transformative skills you bring that are relevant to a new role you’re seeking. For example, if you have primarily taught face to face, and you’re actually just hoping to move into full time online work, you can talk about all of the different methods you have used to communicate with your stakeholders in that face-to-face environment.
If you have led, or attended or developed webinars for people, or presented live, synchronous classes through a virtual mode, like Zoom or something like that, those would be skills that you can bring that are relevant to the new role you’re seeking of being online.
And then, of course, there are past paid and unpaid experiences that might directly relate to the new role you’re hoping to get. And you can talk about those, write about those, list them on your LinkedIn profile and on your resume, and include those in your narrative.
What are the Positive Aspects of Your Career Change?
Something else to consider is how change is positive for you and your fulfillment. In the direction you’re hoping to go, think about what positive aspects of that change will bring into your life. What is good about that change? What are the benefits you’re seeking and hoping for? And how have you been preparing for those very benefits and positives, and seeking them out now and not just waiting for the future change?
For example, if one of the reasons you want to teach online 100% of the time is that you love to travel and you love the flexibility, you could be thinking about how you’ve already been using some flexibility in your current work schedule to fulfill your travel desires, and not just how you’re waiting for the future to play out. So, how is the change is going to be positive for you, and how are you already seeking it and getting some of that?
Omit Details that Don’t Contribute to Your New Direction
Leave out extra details that don’t help you in the direction you’re trying to go. I’ve seen some people write 50-page vitas or resumes that document every job they’ve ever had, every class they’ve ever taught, everywhere they’ve ever been. And a new employer hoping to hire you doesn’t know how to navigate that narrative on their own. So, include the things that tell the story that is important for your career change, and summarize those things that are not, or leave them out altogether. It’s okay to not include every single job you’ve ever had. But you definitely want to include the ones that are relevant and that do pave the way for the direction you’re headed.
You can think about this as a story arc. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end to your professional story. And the way you introduce it could be something that you’ve done or thought about or learned about or experienced in your life that ignited your passion for where you’re headed right now. And places along the way where you got a little bit more experience or insight or direction. And, in the future, you’re going to have that good resolution of being able to fulfill that direction you’re hoping to go.
I would like to recommend also imagining beyond open opportunities. The world we live in has a lot of career options available that are literally invented around a candidate. Not every job exists right now that you could be qualified for, and it’s possible you’ll be able to negotiate something that will build your dream job in the future.
So, that first part of changing careers is to think about the narrative and the story that you’re telling about your professional direction and your past, and all the skills you’re bringing with you. The second tip today about navigating your online career change is to build a network.
Build a Strong Network
Networking is sort of a buzzword in job seeking. Networking is connecting with other people and offering them something while you’re gaining something from them as well. It’s sort of like mutual relationship building. If you have an opportunity to connect with people in your field, you can always ask for advice and receive advice and give advice. It builds trust with other people when you share what you know and what you think, within reason.
Realize what you don’t know. Think about that future online job or that future job away from online, if that’s the direction you’re moving, and what role you would like to fill, what functions it might include and the industry in which that role takes place. And when you realize what you don’t know about that, now you have some questions to ask others.
Learn about how you can fill those knowledge gaps. Are you going to learn something through an online class or workshop? Will you go to a conference or join an organization? Whatever direction you go, you want to dive in. Really get to know people in that space and participate fully so those knowledge gaps will get filled. And you’ll build a new network along the way.
You can explore what the new role would really ask of you day in and day out, and that can happen by talking to those people in the industry, or in the role, and develop your narrative skills. You’ll be talking a lot when you try to build your network. And you’ll talk about where you’ve been, why you want to change, what you’re working on right now to move you in that new direction. And you’ll build a lot of opportunity to talk about your story, your career-change story.
Get Specific about What You Want to Do in Your Career Change
The third tip for navigating your career change will be to narrow, get specific about what you really want to do. For example, at one time, I was thinking about how I did a lot of recruiting and retention as a band director, and in online education, as a leader, we talk a lot about recruiting and retention, so I’m thinking about it a lot.
And in the future where I want to continue to support, strengthen, and develop educators, I would say something like, “I’m looking to do teacher retention work in higher education. I’m going to draw on my skills in coaching, managing and leading others. And the wellbeing training I gained as a coach to help manage and lead online faculty forward in better ways. I want to help people stay in this profession. And I want people to grow in this profession, so I’m prepared to do that.”
So, if I’m getting super specific about what I want to do, I would be saying that I’m looking to do teacher retention work in higher education. And I can give all those details that I just mentioned along the way.
Be Prepared to Negotiate and Compromise
The fourth step in your career change story would be to negotiate. You might have to compromise to achieve the career direction change that you want. If it’s a big change, that might mean accepting a lower salary than the current role you’re filling, until you’re able to gain new skills and move back up. You might lose seniority that you have in your current organization. You might also lose some of the flexibility you currently like. And, especially, if you’re working online right now and you’re moving into a not online position, definitely the flexibility will be something to be thinking about.
Or maybe there are other perks. Perhaps your employer supports you attending conferences and doing a lot of travel, and you won’t be able to do that in the future. That’s a perk you might lose. You can’t keep all the same benefits and perks if you’re changing industries, making a major change, like from K-12 education to higher education or from the higher education to the business industry, or something like that. You won’t have the tested skills that someone who’s been in that field their entire career has.
So, you will need to be a little bit more realistic about the value you’re going to create early in the path, as well as your potential to grow and develop and eventually demonstrate solid skills as an expert in that direction. Can you set aside money now, to make up the difference if you have to have a salary reduction? Can you move up to regain the title and direction you’re going in right now eventually in the new direction? Are there some perks you can let go of right now that you can live without for the rest of your career? Or can you get these perks some other way? Is there something else that will lead to what you want?
If you cannot make that career change right now, anything that you can do to change your existing role to enhance it or bring in more of what you’re looking for, will help you through the process of job crafting. Or you may also be able to gain more fulfillment from hobbies, a side gig, or some volunteer work.
If you’re really intentional about your career change, a thoughtful planning period and a lot of research and some careful narrative crafting of your actual experience, as well as building your network and being realistic about a potential change will bring you the most fulfillment. It’s going to bring you more purpose, and better engagement throughout the process.
I’ve been through several career changes myself, and I know you can have a really positive outcome when you put the time in that it takes to be diligent in your efforts and also think about where you really want to go. I wish you all the best in that pursuit, it can be a tough one. But, again, you can find that fulfillment throughout the future, as you are looking for what you really want, and doing the work it takes to make that change and get there.
And, ultimately, as I’ve said before, if you’re not able to make that change right now, you can consider job crafting your current role, or gaining additional fulfillment from outside activities. Thanks for being here in the Online Teaching Lounge today as we’re talking about navigating an online career change. And I wish you all the best in the next step on that journey, if that’s where you’re headed.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge Podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit BethanieHansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Healthy Habits, Personal Growth, Podcast, Stress
This post first appeared at https://apuedge.com/gratitude-and-its-role-in-online-learning/,
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (Interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen delves into the many facets of gratitude and how to reach and teach online learners about gratitude.
Listen to the Episode:
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Read the Transcript:
Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents, who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen. And I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the podcast and thank you for taking this time out of your busy day to listen. The topics in our podcast focus on online education best practices, strategies to reach and teach online learners, video and media in your online class, and work-life balance while teaching online. Today, we look squarely at gratitude.
Gratitude is a best practice, and it is also a great way to reach and teach online learners. When someone approaches us with gratitude, we feel invited into their world. Gratitude is also a key element in work-life balance, in so many ways. Today we will look at what gratitude does for us and for others, and how to express appreciation in the online world.
What Does Gratitude Do?
Gratitude is an attitude or feeling of appreciation. It can be an affective trait, which is the general characteristic of having a grateful disposition. It can also be a mood, where gratitude is generally felt throughout the day. And, it can be an emotion, which comes from receiving what others offer to us.
When we feel gratitude, we view other people or circumstances in a positive light. We appreciate an opportunity, a sacrifice made, generosity, time, kindness, gifts, and help. And this appreciation may lead us to thank others for what we experience.
Feeling gratitude can improve self-esteem, reduce stress, and enhance relationships. It can go far to promote positive effects because it consciously turns attention away from what is missing toward something that is going well. Gratitude is a healing element that inspires us to bring our energy to a relationship or situation and let go of resistance and defensiveness.
In online education, where we might often feel alone, disconnected, or distant, gratitude connects us. Gratitude might look like thanks or recognition, and it can also come through respecting others and being responsive. When others express gratitude for our actions or characteristics, we might even feel that our impact is greater than we otherwise might believe. Gratitude helps the receiver to know they are making a difference. That they matter.
When we give gratitude to others and express appreciation, we build relationships and rapport. We enhance others’ experience and let them know that they make a difference for us. Gratitude has this wonderful way of taking perspective about the daily work and routines and bringing a different perspective to everything. When gratitude comes through showing respect and being responsive, it is a habit of making connection a priority and building trust.
According to the Dali Lama, “When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.”
The field of positive psychology tells us that gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.
How Can We Express Appreciation in the Online World?
Feeling gratitude lifts us and improves our sense of wellbeing, and it is a feeling that invites us to share with others. You might be wondering what effective ways might be to express gratitude online, especially when you know a co-worker or a student virtually and have no other connection outside of that space.
One way to express gratitude is to say or write the words. This might be through a note or a letter. It might be through a creative expression of some kind. Another expression might be by giving a gratitude gift. Some people express gratitude with a face-to-face visit or by sincerely asking about others and listening. These are universal ways to thank others in any setting.
In the book “101 Ways to Say Thank You,” by Kelly Brown, we learn several ways to say thank you and appreciate others online. First, Brown states that e-mail is the least preferred way to send formal thank-you notes and that in today’s tech-savvy world, a handwritten note is always greatly appreciated because it makes an impact and has a lasting personal impression. I’ll start with a few tips for handwritten notes and then follow with some tips for e-mails.
First, regardless of whether you’re writing or e-mailing, send a thank-you message immediately so that you don’t forget. If someone has done you a favor or sent a gift, a thank you message should be sent within two weeks of the event or the gift. If you have received a message from the other person connected with whatever you’re grateful or appreciative of, you might set it on your desk or print it and tape it to the mirror to avoid forgetting to send the thank-you message. Another option would be to add a reminder to your electronic calendar or mobile device that will help you send the note in a prompt timeline. According to Brown, even if you offer appreciation with a phone call, a follow-up message is still important to send with your written message.
Second, write out the date. For example, if it is December 1st, you should write the whole word “December,” then the 1, a comma, and the four-digit year. After the date, write a salutation or greeting. It’s ok to begin with the word “dear” on this if you like.
Third, write the body of your thank-you message. And Brown advocates the use of glowing superlatives and energetic adjectives. These are words like amazing, extraordinary, marvelous, outstanding, and splendid. And last, write a closing. This might be something like “sincerely,” or “gratefully,” followed by your signature.
The most effective and personal way to write a handwritten thank-you note is to do it in your own handwriting. This might take a bit of practice if you’re used to typing all day in your online work and do not spend much time writing or using cursive. It might even be helpful to write a draft before putting it onto the note or onto the card you’re sending.
If you cannot send a handwritten note and plan to use e-mail, Brown tells us that this is a good method when thanking someone in casual business and casual personal communications. For example, if someone shares something online, in an e-mail, or even in the online classroom, a thank you note sent electronically works well. While this is true, I’ve received hand-written thank you notes from others with whom I work online, and I have found them to be memorable and meaningful because that person took the time to consider a note away from the computer. It made a huge impression on me.
Sending an e-mail thank-you note is simple and doesn’t have to be formatted as formally as a hand-written note. After you’re sure that you have the right e-mail address, include a few words in the subject line to let the person receiving it know what your message will be about. Then, in the body of the message, begin with a salutation like “dear,” or you could even begin with “good morning” or “good afternoon.”
In an e-mail, the body of your message can look a lot like what you might write in a handwritten, classic thank-you note. Be brief, check spelling and grammar, avoid acronyms and profanity, and end with a closure and your name, even though it’s an e-mail. If it’s less formal, emojis and GIFs might be fun to add, with exclamation marks and lots of expressive words like brilliant, excellent, generous, fabulous, surprising, unbelievable, and vibrant. It can also add depth to your e-mail when you include an image related to the appreciation and mention it in the message so the person you’re thanking doesn’t miss it.
The main idea today is the incredible power of gratitude and expressing appreciation. It can bring positivity and connection in your online work. In my own experience, I’ve received a few handwritten cards from colleagues that I’ve mostly worked with at a distance through the online university where I teach. This kind of note surprised me and made me feel seen and valued. And one single message like that lasts a long, long time.
So, who would you like to appreciate today? It could be a course developer who spent countless hours getting your online class set up just so. Or an online leader who regularly cultivates an inviting, caring culture at your institution. Perhaps there is someone you regularly work with who you have not yet had a moment to stop and appreciate. Today’s the day. Thank you for being with me for this episode of The Online Teaching Lounge, and for the part you play in our online education profession. I’m grateful for the incredible colleagues I’ve worked with over time, the students who choose this type of learning, and the amazing miracle that we are all able to connect anytime, anywhere—all over the world. And with gratitude, we at American Public University wish you all the best this coming season.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast
This content first appeared at APUEdge.Com.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (Interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Educators must constantly evaluate their teaching style to ensure students are learning. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen discusses the strategies of great teachers based on the book “What the Best College Teachers Do.” Learn what questions teachers should ask themselves when planning their next course and other tips to be effective in the online classroom.
Listen to the Episode:
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Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Pandora
Read the Transcript:
Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents, who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen. And I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. Thanks for joining me today to talk about online teaching in today’s world. We’re going to just touch on “What the Best College Teachers Do.” This is a book by Ken Bane, and I highly recommend it. This book was based on a study of 100 educators. And the question asked (in the inner flap of this book) is, “What makes a teacher great?”
Have you thought of this? I’ve wondered this too. Are there certain characteristics that great teachers share? Well, the answers are kind of surprising. It’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. According to Ken Bane, it’s not about the lesson plan or lecture notes, it’s about the special way teachers comprehend the subject, and the way they value human learning.
It doesn’t really matter whether the best teachers are historians, or physicists, or English teachers, or band teachers. And it doesn’t really matter where they’re located. The best teachers know their subjects inside and out. But they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, according to Bain, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters, and that students can learn.
Now, interestingly enough, I’ve talked to a lot of online educators about their philosophy of education. And it’s interesting that we can have a philosophy of teaching in the live face-to-face classroom. And for some reason, it feels a little fuzzier when we’re teaching online. And it’s not, it’s still just as effective, and can be even more wonderful in a lot of ways depending on what we choose to do, and how we approach it. I’d like to just share some ideas today about that belief that students can learn.
Develop a Belief that All Students Can Learn
Imagine what it can do for us, when we think about all students being able to learn. There are sometimes occasions where we have a challenging student in our class, and we might think that person is there, not really interested in learning. Or maybe they’re not capable of learning what we’re teaching.
For some reason, there’s some resistance on the part of that student that we’re sensing from them. Or maybe we’re even experiencing it, like there’s a little pushback.
Or, another way that might show up is an online student might just disappear. They might appear invisible. Their name is there on the roster, you don’t see them in the discussion, and they kind of hit or miss in turning in assignments. Maybe they have fallen off in their activity completely. And there are a lot of reasons why those things happen.
But this belief that all students can learn will invite us to reach out to that student to connect to that student, and try to bring them back in. To figure out what has made them disengage? What could help them get more interested or overcome a personal setback in their life? What could help bridge the gap between whatever’s going on with them right now, and that online class that they signed up for with all the good intentions of completing it?
Try Creative Approaches to Reach All Students
That idea that all students can learn in the online setting also invites us to do a lot of different things. Maybe we’re going to create some kind of learning asset, a handout, a guide, a screencast, or a screen share where we walk them through things.
If we start to notice a lot of poor scores showing up on assignments across the board for many of our students, maybe we’re going to refilm that presentation we put in there, or try a totally different approach to get the content through where the students can learn it. Sometimes things don’t always translate in the online space.
We might try the common lecture-style video in a class just replicating a face-to-face setting and find that that isn’t as engaging, and it doesn’t work as well to describe the subject or engage students in the subject matter. So maybe we’ll have to replace that video lecture with something else, something more interactive, something that invites students to click, or engage with that content, or apply it in some way.
So that idea that all students can learn and just assuming that that’s the case, can really energize us. It can push us to be more creative, and it can invite our best efforts to re-engage any disengaged student.
Act With Compassion for Students
In terms of the stories that you’ll read about in this book, “What the Best College Teachers Do,” you’re going to see some great examples of compassion on these educators’ part. There’s a lot of compassion coming through from the great teachers, and compassion goes a long ways towards bridging the gap between where you want students to be and where they’re starting out, or where they could be, and where they’re starting out.
So, that idea that students can learn is where the compassion can best be applied. I’ve heard a lot of folks in my institution refer to this as empathy. Compassion and empathy are very similar things, seeing the other person’s perspective, understanding what our students are facing, where they are starting out, and kind of meeting them there. Asking a lot of questions when we’re not really sure what’s going on.
That compassion and that empathy can go a long way to invite our students in, to help them really get excited about what’s going on, or even just get started. So, that’s the first tip that we’re taking away from this book today, is understanding that students can learn and bringing empathy and compassion in the approach we use.
Believe that Teaching Matters
The second thing is that teaching matters. And the understanding that teaching matters invites us to use our ingenuity, our creativity, some interesting strategies, some insights, some inspiration, and some ideas that others may do that maybe are new to us. This can work for us whether we’re in our very first year teaching online or we’ve been doing this for 10 or 20 years.
Either way, we need some kind of approach to reach people better if it’s not working for us. And if it is, maybe we can tweak it a little bit to make it interesting across the board and keep staying interesting. After all, we want our teaching and the quality of our teaching to be enjoyable for our students and to convey what is needed, but also to keep us happy while we’re engaging in that online space day after day.
In writing this book, “What the Best College Teachers Do,” the author looked for, or in the study they looked for faculty members who can make something great out of very little, basically, who help their students do far better than anyone might expect. They also looked at what students were learning. Now, they say this was tricky because it involved judgments about a variety of disciplines. Of course, the great teachers are not just in one field, they’re in many fields, right?
Learn What Highly Successful Teachers Do
Most of the highly successful teachers in this study actually broke traditional definitions of courses. And they convinced the researchers that success, helping their students learn even some core material, benefits from the teacher’s willingness to recognize that human learning is a complex process. So, they had to apply a sweeping sense of educational worth that stemmed not just from one discipline, but from a broad tradition that values the liberal arts, including natural sciences, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, curiosity, concern with ethical issues, and a breadth and depth of specific knowledge, and of various methodologies and standards of evidence used to create the knowledge.
So this study had teachers who showed strong evidence of helping and encouraging students to learn in ways that would usually win praise and respect from both disciplinary colleagues and the broader academic community. And they also included educators who were operating on the fringes of current norms, like they were defining learning wealth in important new ways. So, they studied some people who were highly successful with some classes, and less with others. And some teachers achieved wonderful results with large or small classes, advanced or beginning classes, but not both. So, it was interesting for them to make some comparisons between what worked and what did not.
And in studying those teachers who had a sustained influence on their students, they found a lot of interesting evidence that shared some of those brilliant strategies about believing students can learn, and that teaching is important.
Take What Highly Successful Teachers Do into Online Education
I’d like to share some of the specific takeaways of the study that are just presented in this book about great college teachers. And I’d like to invite you to think about how this is done in the online setting.
So, the first point was that these great educators all knew their subject matter extremely well. And that’s, of course, not surprising, because you need to know your subject matter to teach it very well. But the second point was about how they prepared to teach it. And I’m just going to read a little bit to you from this book.
“Exceptional teachers treat their lectures, discussion sections, problem-based sections and other elements of teaching as serious intellectual endeavors as intellectually demanding and as important as their research or scholarship. That attitude is probably most apparent in the answers the subjects gave to the simple question: What do you ask yourself when you prepare to teach?”
That’s a great question that we can think about as we’re preparing our online courses, even if they are standardized online courses and we didn’t write them.
Consider these questions in planning your next course:
What do we ask ourselves when we prepare to teach them?What do we really want to think about?What matters to us in teaching that course?What do we expect of our students?
The best teachers in this study expected more, they wanted to really get more depth, more engagement, and more from their students.
And what do we do when we teach? Well, there’s some interesting stuff shared here about challenging but supportive conditions of teaching, collaboration, interesting methods, and a variety of methods. Maybe there’s a lecture, a discussion, a case study, other learning opportunities that build a truly cognitively rich environment.
Consider these additional questions in planning to teach online:
And how can we do that online?What kind of strategies are working for you to create a deep, rich, applied and rewarding experience?What kind of assumptions are we bringing into that space?And how do we treat our students?What do we do that helps our students engage, come out and think about things in a realistic way, and really dive into and grapple with the subject matter?How do we check our students’ progress and evaluate their efforts? This is an important question that all the great teachers are thinking about.
Try a Systematic Approach with Strategy and Reflection
And lastly, there are some takeaways from the study that we can consider in our own online teaching. Basically, there’s a reason to be systematic about our teaching, to take it seriously, and be reflective about the teaching approaches and the strategies we use in our online teaching.
Consider these reflective questions to look back on past online teaching experiences:
Why do some things work?Why do we choose certain activities?What evidence about how our students learn is driving the way we teach?What can we do to help them engage even more fully, and be more interested in it?Are we doing the things that we’re doing online simply because others have done them, or because they actually work in engaging our students?
These and many other questions are going to drive us to the more innovative, more creative, resourceful and compassionate approaches that the best college teachers are using. And it can all be done in online education, too. I hope that you’ll think about these ideas and check out the book “What the Best College Teachers Do,” by Ken Bain. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Online Education Trends, Podcast, Students, Technology Tools
This content initially appeared at APUEdge.com.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (Interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Student engagement is a critical part of learning. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen discusses how to improve student engagement in the online classroom using available metrics and data. Learn how educators can use that information to adjust assignments to help improve student engagement.
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Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents, who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen. And I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m here to talk with you a little bit about student engagement in online education. The word “engagement” is commonly known when you’re in love with someone, you’re thinking about marrying them. And engagement means you’re connected; you have a goal of doing something together. It also means maybe a military encounter between two different forces.
Now, something that engages people online is sort of along those lines: We’re coming together, we’re interacting, we have plans of doing something together, and we want it to be meaningful. The online education definition of engagement isn’t really the formal agreement to get married, or just an arrangement to do something, or go somewhere at a certain time. It’s not even a battle plan. Really, engagement in online education is about the ways in which students and faculty members engage with—or interact with—the content, each other, and the ideas.
There can be student engagement with the textbook, the videos that you put in your online class. There can be student engagement with each other; so, there’s some kind of dialogue or maybe there’s even live chat happening or live video happening.
There could be student-to-faculty engagement, or faculty to student. So, we’ve got messaging, we’ve got discussion areas, we’ve got live video or live chat. All of these different things fall into the category of engagement in online education. Engagement really is kind of this buzzword that we use a lot in online education because we need some way of talking about people showing up.
In a live class, in a face-to-face setting, you can walk into the room and see people there. You can also look at the gradebook and see whether students have submitted work, what their scoring is. You can find out how often or how much the faculty member has lectured or taught in that class. And all of those would be live engagement in a face-to-face setting.
Using Metrics and Data to Assess Student Engagement
Online education is a little bit different because we can look at metrics, we can actually look at login data, we can look at the number of times people have accessed particular content. We can look at how many times, how frequently, and how substantially they have posted in that discussion forum. All of those things help us to know about the engagement in online learning.
Now, in online learning, student engagement is all about figuring out what’s working, whether people are learning, and whether they’re really being taught and transformed in that experience. There are some kinds of engagement statistics online educators should know about. And if you’re teaching online right now, these could be very interesting to take a look at. On the very basic level, something in your learning management system will track or measure the days and the length of time that your students have logged into the platform.
If they’re going to read things offline, like if they have a physical textbook, of course, you can’t track that, you don’t know exactly how much time they’re spending in that content. But you can see when they’re in the classroom, how many times they’ve clicked into the classroom, during the week, and how many minutes they have spent.
Some learning management systems will also let you know which parts of the content students have accessed. So, maybe you can see, did they open the lesson? Did they open the test? Did they go into a quiz? Did they go into the discussion? Did they reply first and then post that initial response or post the initial response and then come back? A lot of this information, as an online educator, helps you get a sense of where your students really are spending their time, and how engaged they are in the class itself.
As you look at these trends of students clicking in and spending time, you can get a sense for what’s working, what kind of content you’ve put into that class, and whether or not something might need to be modified. Or maybe there needs to be more material added or too much material.
Looking at those on a very basic level just helps you understand the quality of the course and the quality of your teaching at kind of at a basic level. Now, as students start to engage in the discussion or interact in the discussion space, reading what they’ve written, you can also see things like what they’re understanding, the degree to which they can use some of the terms in the course, you can notice those things in the discussion. And notice how they’re using the words and start to know whether or not they’re really understanding the concepts.
How as this helps you? As an online faculty member, you can look at what students have posted in that discussion and start to ask a lot of questions. You can give some additional guidance or examples. And if you really participate throughout the week and read what they’re writing, they’ll come back, and they’ll respond to you again and again.
So, it helps to notice the real time or asynchronous, somewhat real-time engagement, throughout the week and see what’s happening in that discussion and be part of it and respond to it and interact with it. This will help students engage with each other a lot more, engage with the content more, and engage with you. And they’ll even get to know you a little bit, which will help them to trust you, and feel confident turning in those assignments.
How Understanding Engagement Levels Can Help with Course Design
Now, another thing that you can do to look at engagement in an online course, is to look at the way they’re filling out their assignments and submitting them. Sometimes you’ll get a student who really is off the mark on their assignment. And then looking at that first type of engagement, just how much they’re in the course, what they’re accessing, what they’re reading, you can kind of tell, have they gone through the parts of the course where they should have learned that? Have they spent the time there?
Some students will just misinterpret instructions and some will find helpful things on the internet, and just scoop those up and translate them into their assignments without really processing them. So, it’s helpful to notice the pattern of how they participated in the class, and then what’s going on in their assignments.
Some of the engagement in assignments will give you a lot of insight about what could be altered in your course. And also, what’s working in your course. I know one of my approaches in a class was to really zero in on the academic vocabulary. So, as I was teaching the students, I teach music appreciation, so as I’m teaching them the music terms, I’m looking for the way they use those terms in that discussion. And then the feedback I’m giving them is specifically about the kind of way they’re using the terms. How they’re using them in a sentence, what they’re describing in the music, whether it’s true, whether it’s accurate, whether they’re using those terms knowingly or just kind of throwing them all into a sentence together without any examples.
So, as I look at assignments, I also look at those terms and how they’ve engaged with the concepts. Are they able to demonstrate what they know? Are they able to talk about it in an intelligent or informed way? Online student engagement can be demonstrated in a lot of different ways. There are indicators in the quality of their responses, the frequency of their responses, and their access to the course. And, also, the depth of cognitive presence that they’re demonstrating.
Whatever metrics are available for you in your learning management system, I encourage you to take a look at those and to review them and determine which of these metrics helps you to fully understand what students are actually doing in the class, and which seem related to their performance on the actual assignments and in the discussions.
Once you’ve done that, the next place you can look to see after the fact how students have engaged or how they experienced this, is in their end-of-course evaluations. That little bit of data might have some free response answers. I know in my case, I used to use end-of-course survey data to evaluate my own teaching. And sometimes students would give me suggestions about modifying an assignment, or comments about whether or not they liked particular assignments. And I would look at those scores and comments, and then look at my class and find interesting and creative ways to make modifications for future sections.
Over time, that allowed me to create a group project. And as that group project played out, session after session, I would change little things about it based on student feedback, to see them engage even more and engage better and interact with each other better. For example, their end-of-course survey comments prompted me to intentionally design the groups in certain ways.
I would choose to make sure there was someone in the group that knew something about music coming into it, so they could kind of support the others, and that there was a diversity of student voices represented. In my university, there are a lot of military students and not as many civilian students. And so, I would kind of group those accordingly. I would have a little mixture in each group so we had some diversity of thought and diversity of experiences, so they could also learn from each other.
I also tried this with random groupings. And I got a lot of feedback from students about that, too. It seemed like the intentional grouping was the way to go. So, noticing their feedback, and then looking in on how they actually participated in the group project was a really helpful way to modify what I was doing as the faculty member.
In your own work, I encourage you to look at end-of-course survey feedback if you have that available. If you don’t, get those responses and if the institution you work at does survey students, perhaps there’s someone you can ask, maybe an assessment department or a data department that can share it with you. Your end-of-course survey feedback is going to give you a lot of insight into the way students engage and also what they loved and what they learned from, and what they didn’t love and didn’t learn from in your class.
All of these different pieces of data, the logins, the performance on assessments, just the observations in the discussion space, and the way they use terminology, and also your end-of-course surveys, all of these are data points for you as a faculty member, to help you refine your teaching and understand your students even better and connect to them better.
And lastly, I want to just encourage you to add a few metacognitive questions throughout your course that help you gather even more insights from your students. One that I really like to use is just a question of “how does this apply to your life or work right now? How might it apply to your life or work in the future?” It’s a fairly generic question but it can yield a lot of insight where students can find ways to connect with their learning right now with what they’re doing today or will do in the future. That can really help students engage more fully more deeply in the content and find connections to what they want to do or are doing.
Perhaps you have some ideas about ways to enhance student engagement, ways you can look at metrics to see what it is, or ways that you might measure it. I’d love to hear from you. Stop by my website, BethanieHansen.com/request, and let us know what’s working for you, what you’ve tried, what we should add to this list of student engagement information. And I hope that you’ll try something new in terms of looking around and seeing what students are doing, and how they’re interacting. Maybe a new space you haven’t explored like a piece of data, or revisit those end-of-course surveys. Thank you for considering student engagement with me today here on the Online Teaching Lounge. I wish you all the best in your online teaching this coming week.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Podcast
This Content first appeared at APUEdge.Com.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (Interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Being sedentary and not moving your body can have major health impacts and also result in lower energy and lower productivity. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares strategies to incorporate more activity into your work day like using timers to remind you to get up and move around as well as habit stacking, which helps you build more healthy habits into your existing routine.
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Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents, who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen and I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Teaching online is a more sedentary occupation than teaching face to face. And because of this, today we focus on how to be physically active while teaching online.
What does it mean to be sedentary? Being sedentary means that we have a way of working or a way of life characterized by much sitting and little physical exercise. If you used to teach standing up all the time and now you’re sitting down in front of a computer doing it online, that is a great example of why in online teaching we’re so much more sedentary.
Much of the adult population across the United States is sedentary, not just online educators. Recent statistics have indicated that about half of us really don’t really exercise. A few years ago, 13.3% of civilian jobs were classified as sedentary. However, now with so many people working from home, and so much teaching being done online, that sedentary population has really increased.
If you find yourself facing more sitting, sedentary behavior, not feeling like there’s time to get moving or get outside or be physically active, you’re not alone in online careers and an online education roles. The Surgeon General tells us that more than 60% of U.S. adults do not engage in the recommended amount of activity, and about 25% of U.S. adults are not active at all.
Being Sedentary Has Significant Health Impacts
Let’s talk about the pain of being sedentary. What does it do to you? What is the problem? First of all, being sedentary means that you’re sitting quite a bit. If you sit for long periods of time without moving, you end up having a lower level of energy. Your mood is lower, and you have a lower emotional affect. This means that you might notice feeling fewer positive emotions. You can get fuzzy thinking from all of this sitting and sedentary behavior. As these things increase, it seems like the harder you work, the less you accomplish long-term.
Sedentary lifestyles can cause major health impacts. According to the Center for Disease Control at cdc.gov, sedentary behavior is a risk factor for chronic health conditions like coronary heart disease, hypertension, colon cancer and diabetes. It is also known to cause weight gain, especially around your middle section, your thighs and your hips. These are significant health impacts. The more you sit, the less energetic you feel, the more you want to sit.
Long term, sitting all day without exercising can lower your quality of life because your energy levels are going down and you’re doing less. This can also really hurt your job satisfaction. And it’s going to have an impact in your effectiveness of your online teaching. Sitting with no physical activity as an online educator will negatively impact your physical health and increase your stress levels.
How does this impact your students? If you’re sitting all day and experience low energy levels and lower emotional moods and affect, you will be less responsive and less emotionally connected to your students. It’s possible that this won’t happen; being sedentary doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be less effective in your teaching. Maybe you are the kind of person that is going to be energetic and connected even without movement in the day. While that could happen, the statistics tell us it’s unlikely and instead long term as your health is impacted, it is going to take a toll on the quality of your work. And today we are making the connection between that quality of work estimate and the potential negative impact on your students in the future.
There are a lot of things that we can do to reverse the situation of sedentary work. The first step might not be to motivate ourselves with all these negative outcomes that come from being sedentary, and instead think about some of the positive benefits. These ideas can be motivating, and if you have 30 minutes of physical activity during your day, this is believed to fully counteract one full day of sitting. If you can reduce the negative effects of sitting all day with just 30 minutes of activity, that’s a great thing.
Adding that physical activity in the middle of the work day can give your brain a break and help you disconnect from patterns of stress you may experience and come back fresh, ready to approach the next task. We also know that the brain state where our subconscious thinking works on creating, problem-solving, and processing is taking place while we are busy distracting our conscious mind through exercise, walking, talking to a friend, and other activities that takes us away from the work we’re doing. This is another good reason why taking a physical activity break can make the work easier and help us lift our moods and feel fresh again.
After a season of sitting, it can feel very difficult just getting started. I know, I’ve been there. One way to think about adding physical activity into your online teaching day would be to reframe the goal into a positive. Instead of preventing negative health impacts and negative performance, reframing means we are setting the goal of promoting positive outcomes, like building energy, creating a better mood, dealing with stress in such a healthy way, that pretty soon that stress is not as big of a big deal. The more we look at the positive outcomes, instead of preventing the negative outcomes, the more motivated we’re truly going to be. I’ve experienced it myself—that most of the motivation doesn’t come until you’re actually starting the activity.
If you want to get more physically active, you’re probably not going to feel like doing it until you’re doing it. And then a few minutes in, you might start to feel like doing it. But that motivation just might not come until the activity has begun.
Create Exercise Learning Goals
Creating a learning goal instead of a performance goal could be another helpful way to reframe. For example, you might say, “I would like to run for 25 minutes,” or “I’d like to do 20 sit ups,” or “I’d like to be able to do pull ups for however long or how many.” These are examples of performance goals.
Instead, to set learning goals, I suggest thinking about learning to be a more resilient exercise or learning to be more consistent during the routine itself. Performance goals can be problematic because when setting a number or achievement as the goal, the first time you miss that number goal of 25 minutes or 15 sit ups it begins to feel much more difficult to go back to it next time. Instead, if you increase your quality, you will be thinking about the way you engage in the activity, not just getting to the end. This will help you think like a person who will keep improving their game like a champion instead of using it as a means to the end, suffering through it.
If you’re thinking about your own personal motivation for becoming less sedentary and more physically active, I’ll share a few that have some to mind for me. I used to think about external goals like looking better or fitting more comfortably in a chair. I might have thought about clothing I wanted to enjoy wearing and the way I wanted that to look. It’s true that we might look even better when becoming more physically active, but all of these ideas are external.
A reframe for this would be to think about feeling better, no matter what size or shape you’re in. After all, when you feel good, you look good. You radiate light and energy. People want to be around you when you feel energetic. And it really doesn’t matter what your size or shape is when that kind of confidence is your life experience.
In addition to reframing the way we think about being physically active and finding positive motivation to get started, there are additional strategies we can use to make it part of the work day.
Now, I’m not sure what your experience has been, but I’ve noticed that at times an entire day has passed when I set a goal to stand up in between my online meetings, or set a timer to remind me to get up between the tasks with a goal and have that goal to get up and walk for five minutes, and instead my thoughts took over and steered me in another direction contrary to my goal.
For example, the time would come for the meeting to end. I might run and grab a drink of water sit down and just keep working. At the time, my brain said, “You don’t have time to walk yet.” Or I might have thought, “I can’t quite do that right now, the meeting went over by a five minutes, and I need to just sit down and get going again.” A few more papers, send a few more emails. Pretty soon the whole day is gone and I haven’t gone for a walk at all.
Working online there can be a drive to be productive to get everything done. And yet, it’s possible that the work is never done, there will always be more you can do when you’re working online. If you’ve experienced something like this, going through hours and hours of being in your online teaching and not being able to fit in the exercise, I’m going to give you a few strategies I’ve used with coaching clients, learned from other faculty who also teach online, or just created for my own routine. I hope one or more of these will help you begin balancing physical fitness and online teaching more effectively.
Strategies for Incorporating Exercise into your Work Day
The first strategy is to move at least every 90 minutes on the longer end of a time commitment. If you schedule just a few minutes to get up and move around, walk around the house, walk outside and get the mail, and do one of those things every 90 minutes, it will break up your day and help you get a fresh perspective.
The second strategy is to purchase a sit-and-stand desk. This kind of desk can be raised up while you’re working at your computer so you can be standing for a while. And it can be lowered again when you’re sitting. I have this kind of desk, and it’s about 2.5 feet deep and 48″ wide, with an electronic switch that moves it up and down electronically. On days when I stand at this desk instead of sitting, I feel much better physically and enjoy my work also. At first, I thought it would be difficult to work standing up at the computer, but I’ve found that it’s not difficult at all. If that’s interesting to you, I recommend it and attest to the positive side of working at a stand-up desk.
The third strategy is to schedule time on your calendar where a little alarm goes off, or some kind of trigger happens to remind you to go outside for five minutes, at least once during your workday. Even if the sun is not shining, the air from the outdoors can be refreshing and will help break up your mental patterns. This could also be achieved using the Pomodoro method.
The Pomodoro method is a time management method that uses a timer, whether it’s a physical timer or an online tool. Pomodoro means tomato, and you might have seen analog timers shaped like a tomato for the kitchen. The Pomodoro method was a concept computer engineers used when they needed to work in a very focused way. They were having a hard time staying focused, without letting go to think of other things. When they gave themselves 25 minutes of total focus and let the timer go off, they could have five or 10 minutes of freedom to think about something else, walk around, socialize in the office, or do something else. After either two or four of these rounds of Pomodoro sessions, a larger break of 20 or 30 minutes is added, and then you start over.
Here is an idea of how this might work in online teaching. Set the timer for 20 or 25 minutes and just respond to students in discussion forums that long. When the timer goes off, get up and walk around for the five-minute break, then you’ve got your physical activity in there. You’ve also got some boundaries over the time you’re spending in that particular classroom.
Then the next 25 minutes you’re going to spend could be grading some papers, and then you’re going to do another round of five minutes of physical activity. Once you try this kind of pattern, you might find that you actually get a lot more focused work done, and you’re more physically active as well, which makes the quality of your work much, much better.
The fourth strategy is to create a morning exercise habit. I have done this myself for long periods of time, adding exercise two or three mornings a week. My favorite is a 1988 strength training workout video called ”The Firm: Volume 2.” I’ve also walked on my treadmill, which is in my office. And walking has been a great one to insert in the morng, or later in the day if you’re on a meeting and don’t have to be on video. Or if a meeting ends early and you have five minutes, you could take those five minutes and walk on your treadmill to break up the day.
If morning physical activity is your preference, I’ve found that setting my exercise shoes, socks, and clothes on the bathroom counter the night before helps me keep my commitment in the morning. Waking up and seeing those exercise clothes there tells me that I need to keep my commitment even if I only walk a short time.
Bringing this all together now, considering the negative impacts of sedentary work and reframing thoughts about physical activity into the positive rewards can get us started. And strategies like moving every 90 minutes, using a sit-and-stand desk, setting timers that remind us to move during the day, and planning to exercise in the morning are just a few ways to bring physical activity into the online teaching workday and reduce sitting time.
I’d like to end our podcast today with the concept of habit stacking, from James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits.” Habit stacking is built with a sentence frame. And it goes like this: “After blank, I will blank.” And the first blank, you’re going to fill in a habit you currently have. For example, if you have the habit of drinking a cup of coffee every morning, or drinking a glass of water every morning, then you’re going to stack the new habit right after the one you already accomplish.
Maybe my new habit is to walk around the house for five minutes. So, I drink a glass of water right when I get out of bed, here’s how my sentence might go: “After I drink a glass of water in the morning, I will walk around the house for five minutes.” I’ve tried this with coaching clients who have built habits around bathroom breaks with a lot of success. For example, one person decided that after leaving the desk to go use the bathroom, before sitting down again she would do five push-ups.
Habit stacking is a simple way to take something that is already working well for you and pairing it with the new thing you want to start doing. In thinking about this, it’s important not to overwhelm the habit stack with a lot of things at once, when trying to change habits. To make it work, only add one habit. After several weeks if it is working, then you can add another.
Habit stacking works well if you make that existing good habit obvious. Choose something you do every day. Then, make it attractive. That means you’re pairing the action you want to do with something that you need to do or enjoy doing, or a community that you enjoy. When you’re practicing habit stacking to become more physically active, keep it simple and easy to accomplish.
Some great examples of this are just starting with like two minutes of exercise, or two pushups. Small habits are so much easier than giant ones. In fact, if you make it small, it’s almost harder not to do it. You’ll think it’s silly to skip it, why wouldn’t I walk for two minutes? I could walk for two minutes. Now 20 minutes, that’s a lot longer. But two minutes, you can do that. And then maybe a week later, you could just add one minute, and you’re walking for three minutes. By the end of the semester, or the end of your class, your teaching, you probably will have worked up to 20 or 30 minutes. So, make it obvious, attractive, simple, and easy. With this kind of approach, you’re making the new habit satisfying. You might even consider giving yourself some kind of reinforcement, like a reward after practicing the habit over time. Whatever it is, habit stacking with these intentional strategies will help you get a new habit in motion.
Ultimately, we know that working online and teaching online make us more sedentary and it’s so easy to get into a habit of working for hours and hours and hours without moving. Pretty soon, we’ve gone through the whole day this way. After a long time, pretty soon we don’t want to be active because we feel sluggish and fatigued. I know this is true because I’ve been there. I have sedentary habits and must consciously think about physical activity. Early in my online teaching career, I began changing it and a lot of weight. I’m still working on regular habits, and I believe these take time to establish. I don’t suggest anyone jump into them all at once, but instead start small, make it easy, and be kind to yourself along the way.
Thank you for joining me today for our time together thinking about physical activity and online teaching. It’s an ongoing quest to move from a sedentary workday, sitting at a computer all day, to including more physical activity. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to review it using your favorite app. We particularly appreciate reviews in Apple Podcasts and remember to share it with someone you know who does the important work of teaching online. Best wishes in your online teaching this coming week!
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best switches this coming week in your online teaching journey.
by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Grading and Evaluation, Podcast, Teaching Online
This content initially appeared at APUEdge.com.
Podcast with Dr. Bethanie L. Hansen, Associate Dean (Interim), School of Arts, Humanities and Education
Providing students with choices in assignments can add excitement and increase student creativity. In this episode, APU’s Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks about ways teachers can add more choices in the online classroom.
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Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics, and parents, who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging and fun! Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen. And I’ll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics, and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Welcome to the podcast, today. I want to talk all about choices and the choices I’d like to share with you are especially for online students. You know, when we have choices, there’s something about that that’s just tantalizing and exciting. In fact, it makes it a little bit more fun. Now, I’m going to give you a little bit of an analogy. But, before I do, I want to encourage you to open your mind and think about choices in your own online teaching.
And we’re going to introduce this with this analogy. So, I have the Fitbit app, and I wear a Fitbit wrist device that measures my steps. I’ve worn this device for many years. And for the longest time, I have weekly challenges with my sister.
I have had these challenges with my sister, oh, for at least five years, almost every single week. And we used to do this thing called the workweek hustle. You can set your Fitbit device to measure your steps every day for the five days of the workweek. And then, you’re competing against one or more other people; you can invite a whole group of people. And it’s kind of fun because every day when you upload your steps, or you sync your device, you can see where you stand compared to the other person or the other people.
As you do this, the main idea is that it’s going to encourage you to get out and be active. And being active is definitely something we as online educators need to consciously think about, because we sit around a lot. Now, that’s not the point of this story, of course, the analogy is a lot about choice.
Now, I have a choice of what kind of activities I’m going to do to win the workweek hustle. And the more I do the workweek hustle, the more I want to win it. Well, once in a while, it gets a little boring because all I’m doing is counting my steps for five days at a time. And, if I’m doing this every week, year in year out, once in a while I’m going to skip it. It might get old, it might get boring, and maybe I’m not very active that week so I don’t really want to participate.
But, introduce the premiere version of this app. So, in the premiere version, there are different kinds of challenges that make it so much more fun. When I discovered this using a trial version of the premiere version of Fitbit, I discovered that we could play bingo. Now when we’re playing bingo, we’re trying to complete a certain pattern, instead of just a certain number of steps during the week. Now we’ve got active minutes, numbers of miles and numbers of steps. And we compete using these different things.
There’s a little bit of strategy to it. It takes some critical thinking. And as I’m planning out what I’m going to do for the day to be active, I might be thinking about maybe I want to make sure I hit that two mile mark so I can check that box on my bingo sheet. Or maybe I want to spend 60 minutes or 35 minutes or whatever it is that I need to fill in on my bingo page. I have choice in terms of what I’m looking for and what I’m doing and that makes it all the more exciting.
But it gets even better. Because when I click certain squares on the bingo sheet, it gives me fun options. Like it’s going to cut one of my little tokens in half, or it’s going to give me a bonus number of steps that adds to my total, or it’s going to give me a free flip. So, I have all of these different options available when I’m playing the bingo game. Now, I want to liken this to our online students’ experience in our classes.
Our online students come into our classes knowing they’re going to learn something about the subject matter. They probably have the assumption we’re going to have some discussion forums, we’re going to have some major assignments, we’re going to have some readings. And, in general, most online classes are designed with these basic structural elements. And, of course, there are some kinds of assignments in the end that demonstrate their learning.
But what about when students are presented with a choice? There are several kinds of choices we can include in our online classes. But that element of choice takes the whole thing up a level, it becomes less mundane, less boring and less routine, and much more engaging for our students just like that premiere version of the Fitbit app makes me want to play. It makes me want to get out and be active and to be active in more creative ways, even using the strategies to win the bingo game.
Offer Discussion Choices
Our students want to have a better experience also. One of the things we can give them choice with is the discussion area. If we have a discussion area in our online class, we might offer several different choices of prompts to which they can answer and engage with the class. So maybe I have two or three different choices. And you can do this in several different ways. You can have entirely separate discussion spaces, where students can read the different prompts and only see and engage in that discussion.
Or you can have a single discussion that lists the three prompts all within that one introduction. And they just choose one for their initial posts, but they can engage on any of those topics throughout the week. I like the second option, where all of the choices are presented at once. Because then the students are more likely to engage in a variety of discussions; they’re going to get more of a picture of the subject matter. And they’re going to get a little deeper in some of those areas they care more about. We’re going to expose them to more of the topic and generate a richer cognitive discussion. I love that option of giving students choices.
And when you go to grade this, how hard is it to grade those choices? Well, if you have a fairly generic rubric that you use to grade your forum discussions, content can be a percentage of it. And then whenever the content changes, it’s not a very big deal, you’re still grading on the same type of criteria. If you don’t have a single rubric, I would encourage you to build one. That way, you’re able to always look at the discussion posts for certain types of things. Maybe 60% of it is the content. The other 40% would be peer replies, formatting, grammar, timeliness, or whatever you’re going to grade on. So, whenever you’re doing your choices with your students, think about what’s going to give them variety, in terms of what they’re most interested in.
Offer Assignment Choices
The assignment space is a second area where you might offer students an element of choice. One university where I used to teach part time, five or more years ago, this university always had choices between three different assignments. These were graduate classes, and the students were in the education degree program. And when the choices were presented, they were typically all looking to achieve the same end result, that the student would demonstrate a certain type of knowledge. But the method of demonstrating it was widely varied.
For example, in one choice, a student could write a traditional essay, informative or persuasive, about the subject matter. In another, the student could design a speech and deliver the speech and record it. And then in the third one, the student could create some kind of a Prezi, where there are slides, there’s a little narration, and there’s some movement in between. So, we’ve got totally different presentation modalities, but a very similar outcome. We’re able to measure what the student knows, and what the student can do with the information.
In terms of grading these kinds of choices, again, you could have a fairly generic rubric that has the formatting, the grammar, the structure, the citations, and all those things as different parts of your grading. And then the content itself could be either broken down into the pieces you need, or a more general category of a certain percentage. So, your grading rubric does not have to be different for each of these modalities. You could create one that works for all three of the modalities. So, modality choices are one way to give assignment options to your students, but what about completely different assignments?
Let’s think about, say, music history class, because that’s my specialty area. I’m kind of thinking about demonstrating that we have a mastery of who the composers are and what period they lived in, and what their musical genres were. As we’re thinking about these kinds of things, one thing that comes to mind that I love to do is the Knovio project. I like to have my students do a composer biography, highlight a few pieces of music that are exemplars of that composer, that would be music that a lot of people have heard maybe they’re commonly known in movies, or they’re used in a lot of popular media. And then there are some YouTube links in the slides that they’re going to include. And it’s a traditional presentation uploaded into Knovio and then narrated on video by the student. So, it’s both a slideshow and a spoken presentation.
Another thing I could do is have the student write a mini screenplay, maybe a story of a day in the life of that composer that weaves in some of these same elements to show that the student understands who this person is, and what their impact was in society and in music.
And then, a last thing could be they’re going to stage an interview. And they’re going to do this mock interview where two different people could be sitting down having the conversation, and one of them is the composer telling all about their life and capturing it on video. Now all three of these types of assignments are very different. But all three of them could be equally interesting ways to demonstrate one’s learning. These kinds of choices, just like the Fitbit bingo game, make learning so much more fun for our students.
They help our students to get creative, to think about how they could really apply the knowledge and think through what they would like to demonstrate best in that final assignment. As we create options for our students, what comes to mind for you, what kind of games or gamified situations would really light up your students, when you think about your subject matter? What kinds of demonstrated ways of knowing are common in your field?
Of course, as I’ve shared my examples, something might come to mind for you. But maybe other things would work better. For example, if you’re in a science class or something more applied, you might have an experiment students are going to carry out. Perhaps they have to go out into the community and document the adventure and their learnings throughout that experience. Maybe there’s some kind of reflection at the end and that could be one opportunity.
And perhaps there’s a choice of doing a whole different kind, maybe it’s a review of presentations other people have given in the past, or reviews of websites. Or maybe you even want them to write a Wikipedia article using all the information that’s out there about the subject, but rewriting it based on scholarly sources and actually submitting it to Wikipedia to revise an entry there.
There are so many options you could choose, all the way from the essay to the purely applied project-based learning. Offering your students choice brings excitement and zest to your online classroom. And finding a way to evaluate these with some kind of a rubric that can loosely be applied to all of the choices will make your job easier in the long run as you’re helping your students enjoy their learning. I want to encourage you today to think about offering choice and how much fun it’s going to be for your students online to try something new, and not all have to do the exact same project. I wish you all the best trying out these elements of choice either in your discussions, or your assignments or both this coming week.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit bethaniehansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.
