classroom Archives

#80: Social-Emotional Learning

by Bethanie Hansen | Podcast, Stress, Students, Teaching Online

This content was first provided at APUEdge.com.

Teaching children during a pandemic, whether face-to-face or online, can be challenging due to the heightened stress and trauma. To cope with these difficult times, children need to be taught strong social-emotional skills so they develop a foundation for self-expression, communication, creativity, and effective learning. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen interviews APU Department Chair Dr. Kathleen Tate and Assistant Professor Dr. Greg Mandalas about five ways teachers can incorporate social-emotional learning into the classroom. Learn new ideas for the classroom like creative drama activities and social stories to build empathy and help students develop relationship-building to cope with stress and conflict.

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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, everyone, to the Online Teaching Lounge. Today, I’m speaking with the Department Chair of the Teaching Program in the School of Arts, Humanities and Education, Dr. Kathleen Tate, and faculty member, Dr. Greg Mandalas, about social-emotional learning and mindfulness in the K-12 traditional and online classrooms. Just to help our listeners get to know you a little bit, let’s let you each introduce yourself, starting with Dr. Kathleen Tate. Tell us something about you.

Dr. Kathleen Tate: Sure. Hi, Bethanie. I have about 25 years ofexperience in education, with experiences in corporate, civil service, retail, and other industries. I’ve been a Department Chair in teaching for over 10 years at the university, with prior tenure-track professor experience at Auburn University, University of West Georgia. I’m a former elementary special ed teacher. I taught in an urban, low socioeconomic system, bilingual public school. I have several lifetime teachings certificates from Texas, which they do not offer any more, in pre-K through 12 special education, first through eighth grade theater arts, and first through eighth grade elementary education.

I’m a children’s book author. I have 16 years of online consulting experience at master’s and doctoral levels. And I have to say I enjoy guacamole, tennis, scrapbooking, boating, swimming, baking, going to museums, and reading whenever possible. I play drums and keyboards and am very passionate about how people of all ages, children, teens, adults learn, and also infusing arts-based and multi-modal approaches in instruction.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Thank you, Kathleen. And thank you so much for such a wonderful introduction. Our audience is in for a real treat today. And Greg, let’s have you also introduce yourself to us as well.

Dr. Greg Mandalas: Yeah,sure. Well, thanks so much for having us first of all. I’ve worked for the past 27 years in education wearing many, many hats. I spent about 18 years as a music teacher before I moved into the wild, wild West of the administration world as a school principal.

I’ve been a principal for the past nine years in two different buildings. Also, for the past 11 years, I’ve worked as an online instructor in higher education. I’m currently an assistant professor in the School of Education, and I enjoy playing golf and anything that has to do with music, as you can imagine, as I was a music teacher. And, just like Kathleen, I’m also a drummer, so maybe eventually we’ll have a drummer educational podcast down the road. Again, thanks for having us and I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Bethanie: Wonderful! I can totally relate to your music background; I was music educator for 21 years myself. I wish we would do that podcast, sounds like fun!

Bethanie: I’m glad that both of you are here with us. As I mentioned, our listeners are in for a real treat because one thing that on everyone’s mind right now is how to help children keep learning, how to function in the rough environment we’re in. At the time of this recording, we’re still experiencing the pandemic. There’s a lot of stress out there. So, why should we talk about social-emotional learning?

Kathleen: That is a great question, Bethanie. We know students are increasingly experiencing a lot of challenges, in the community, at home, within and beyond school walls. They need skills to help them successfully prepare for learning.

Dr. Shivohn Garcia recently reported that 70% of students who drop out of school do so because they lack the social-emotional skills needed to navigate challenges.

Greg: Yeah. And to back that up, when speaking with those in the field of education, like teachers and counselors and other principals, it is obvious that there is an increased need for social-emotional education. It’s a topic that keeps coming up time and time again. Teachers are consistently seeing an increase in these issues, and there’s a need to better equip our teachers in this area so they can educate the whole student like we talk about so often.

Bethanie: That makes a lot of sense. Now, just in case we have a few less-experienced teachers out there, or somebody’s wondering, can you give us a little bit of background about what social and emotional learning is?

Kathleen: Sure. The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, let’s call them CASEL, gives us a definition for social-emotional learning, which is “the process by which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage their emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”

And there are five core social and emotional competencies:

Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness
Relationship skills, and
Responsible decision-making.

These are very important for today’s K-12 students and adults to develop, and for teachers to model and support them.

Greg: Yeah, I agree with that as well. Self-awareness in particular is especially important in the K-12 classroom. While this concept is one that many students just grasp through simple informal experiences, your listeners can probably tell you that there’s a section of the population that needs direct instruction to understand exactly how their own actions affect those around them. The same is true for self-management and responsible decision-making.

For example, your listeners can probably relate to, even in the online world, a student who may become frustrated with their work, and perhaps this student has just very few skills in the area of self-awareness, and shouts out in frustration at something. That’s something I can definitely relate to as a former teacher.

And when that happens, the other students around obviously become distracted when that student acts out. But it’s possible that student who is acting out doesn’t have the tools to understand or the empathy needed for those around them. And it’s our job as teachers to meet that need of that student, too, to better equip them.

Kathleen: Greg, I’m so glad you mentioned empathy! Social awareness, empathy, that is at the heart of all of this. And it can be developed in different ways. For example, many listeners are probably familiar with William Glasser, MD and his classroom meetings, morning meetings, that help student-led conflict resolution take place in the classroom.

Getting to know students, families, and each other. This can be done in traditional classrooms or online, through autobiography- and biography-genre projects, as well school-based community projects. Through stories and readings, my favorite creative drama activities, pantomime, tableau-which are frozen pantomime pictures, improvisation, role-playing. For example, using child labor as a social studies topic that might be covered, empathy can really be developed looking through those photographs, reading the stories of people, and also taking care of classroom pets or stuffed animals.

When I was an elementary teacher, I would let the children whose parents gave them permission, take certain live animals that we had in the classroom home for the weekend and care for them, bring them back on Mondays. We also had stuffed animals the students had to take home, care for, write about in their journals, and bring back on Monday. And the students absolutely loved it, whether it was a stuffed animal or live animal, and it really taught them to care for someone or something outside of themselves.

Bethanie: You know, Kathleen, when you talk about these animals, classroom pets and stuffed animals, it just brings to mind an experience we had in our family where my son was in first grade, and that teacher had—I believe it was a hamster—it was class pet. Every weekend, it would go home with a different child. And it definitely was a source of building responsibility and some early relationship skills, like that empathy you were talking about. So, I personally just want to vouch for that as a really effective practice. So, thanks for bringing it up. Now what about other ways to build relationship skills?

Kathleen: Well, there are other relationship skills, such as communicating effectively, cooperating with and listening to others, resisting peer pressure, asking for and providing help when it’s needed, negotiating and resolving conflict.

Going back to creative drama, students can practice communication, cooperation, listening to each other, negotiating ideas, when they negotiate, plan, and carry out creative drama activities, such as skits, role-plays, pantomime, puppet shows and so on.

Students, not just children, (they might be older students) explore topics across the curriculum, in-person or online in pairs or small groups. There is really less risk through creative drama because there’s no one way to do things. There’s no one way to pantomime. There’s no one way to improv. It also helps to build self-esteem.

Children can act out verbs, historical events, story plots, things like that. Creative drama activities also help play out scenarios related to resisting peer pressure, for example, whether it’s with children or teens. This can help with thinking ahead about those common situations that may happen at or outside the school, in-person or virtually. And with such activities students can learn how to ask for help and learn to help each other.

So, it’s really practicing these skills. When listeners who are teachers use those collaborative groups, that’s a great time to give roles such as a leader, recorder, and so forth,or in literature circles in language arts, or project-based scenarios in science and social studies. This gives more opportunities for that active speaking, listening, and cooperating.

Greg: Yeah, I want to piggy-back on that a little bit. My experience has been that those social stories that Kathleen’s talking about can be especially powerful with the younger students. I’m a principal in a K-3 building, and I’ve seen it in action, with these social stories. And once the kids can relate to characters in the stories, it does help them to create that empathy we talked about earlier.

And even for older students, it could be helpful for them to actually write out the social stories and then maybe act it out in a play, like Kathleen mentions. Those are all awesome ideas that listeners can apply right away.

Bethanie: All these are fantastic and really getting us started. So, if we were going to take this a little bit further, how can our listeners as educators really address social-emotional learning whether they’re face-to-face or online?

Greg: Well, I look at it just like any other lesson plans. You have to start with the end in mind. What’s the objective or the goal?

If the goal is to teach empathy, work backwards from that. How are you going to do that? What does that student have that might be of particular interest to them that you can use during your social story time? For example, maybe the student is very into sled riding, say for example, or anything like that. You could use a story about sled riding. Two students go sled riding and work backwards from there. Maybe there’s a conflict. It can lead some conflict resolution.

And, just as you listeners know, your students change every single year. So, your focus may change from year to year, depending on your population. So, teachers have to know that, and be ready to adapt to the to the various needs that are presented to them, which I’m sure your listeners again can completely relate to.

Kathleen: Greg, I like that, focusing on the end in mind. Teachers should decide whether they want to explicitly or implicitly address social-emotional learning. And this can vary day to day, and they can do both.

Explicitly, they can introduce key words and concepts such as relationship skills, and then lead activities and discussions about using them. Or, more implicitly, embed the skills into lesson activities across the curriculum. These things can be done face-to-face or virtually. But, either way, students should work in groups. And do more creative drama activities. Just make sure the screen in Zoom, for example, focuses on pairs or groups, as they’re doing that.

Bethanie: This has been a lot of great, helpful information. If you were to think about, let’s say, five things that teachers can do right now, whether they’re teaching online or face-to-face or may be in a hybrid classroom situation, what would you suggest?

Kathleen: Bethanie, are you putting us on the spot? No, I’m just kidding.

Greg: Ha, ha, ha!

Kathleen: So first, I would say develop empathy by having students study characters, significant historical figures, current figures, current events, concepts across the curriculum through viewing photos, using created drama activities. Even virtually, students can be paired or put into a group for the skits, activities, or problem-based scenarios.

Number two, let students take care of virtual or actual stuffed animals over the weekend, or live pets, and creatively journal about them. Anything that helps them with perspective-taking can help develop empathy. If you’re not ready to try a creative drama activity, just use photos, art, poetry, songs from different eras and cultures to help evoke emotion and empathy about historical or current events. These are things listeners can do tomorrow, in-person or online.

A third take away. Make sure to structure opportunities every day for students to work together in pairs or small groups. Younger students do better in groups of 2 to 3. Older students can start to work in groups of 4 to 5. If you’re unsure about how to set up Zoom breakout sessions for virtual groups, just contact the technology teacher on campus or in the district for help with that.

But before doing any group activity, discuss expectations first, interactively. Have the students come up with expectations for working in groups and listening and sharing, and ask them what the consequences are if they don’t. How is it going to make them feel when people don’t listen to them?

Help them really think explicitly about those relationship skills of listening, cooperating, and communicating. And then co-create rubrics for group work expectations and allow the students to self and peer evaluate. These things only take a few minutes to do, and they help set the stage for success.

Greg: Okay, Kathleen came up with three, I have two more. And mine are going to focus specifically on teachers themselves and what they can do in this arena.

As you know, it’s a stressful, stressful position being a teacher, whether you’re online, face-to-face, or hybrid. We need to practice self-care as teachers. And a good way to do that, you can start by learning simple breathing exercises, and these can be done in the classroom.

Speaking from experience, I’ve led buildings where we made this a building-wide initiative, where we’ve all learned about mindfulness and applied it to the classroom. I think that helps take some of the stigma, which was still, may be there, the stigma about possibly, you know, is this mental health thing for me? It’s for everybody. We have to practice self-care. So that’s one thing they definitely can do.

And finally, teachers should meet with the organization’s counseling department to learn what resources may already be in place both for teachers and students, in person and virtually. It’s amazing what’s out there, and we may not know about it.

Kathleen: Greg, that’s a great suggestion because school counselors tend to be underutilized, I think. So that’s a good reminder.

Bethanie: Fantastic. We have a lot of great ideas for our listeners, and surely the experience you both brought to the table is really going to be helpful as listeners start to implement some of these. Any last-minute thoughts that you might have as we wrap up our podcast today?

Greg: I just know that it’s a stressful time to be an educator, and I remember when I started 27 years ago that I was told it’s a stressful time to be an educator. It’s always going to be a stressful job. And there’s a reason behind that. We are moving the needle with kids and making relationships with kids, which is, probably the most important job that you can do.

So when you do find yourself getting stressed out and anxious, and your students are having trouble with some of these mindfulness activities, just remember that. That it’s not the easiest job in the world. But it absolutely is the most fulfilling job in the world. So stick with it.

Kathleen: And I’d like to just add that I think most teachers are doing group work but if they’re not, I think that should be a priority. And creative drama may sound scary, but if you Google or buy some books, get some basics, or meet with an art teacher, perhaps, or theater teacher, you can really get simple ideas. It’s not that difficult to infuse puppetry, reader’s theater, improvisation, pantomime, virtually or in-person, and it’s really worth the time to focus on these skills and infuse activities that help develop them over time during the school year.

Bethanie: Fantastic. Thank you again for the wonderful tips and strategies on social and emotional learning. I just want to add my own suggestion for listeners, that when children do the things that you’re teaching, celebrate it. Really draw attention to it. Because it helps them repeat the behavior anytime. And we all know that not only do we need our own stress release, but so do students, right? So, we’re giving them the tools here to empower them to take charge and be okay in tough times. So, really fabulous things that you both shared with us. Thank you.

Greg: Thank you for having us.

Kathleen: Thank you for having us, Bethanie.

Bethanie: Yes! So, thank you, listeners, for being here in the Online Teaching Lounge today. We’ve been here with Dr. Greg Mandalas, a faculty member at American Public University, and also Dr. Kathleen Tate, Department Chair of the Teaching programs in the School of Arts, Humanities and Education. Thank you again for joining us, and we 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.

#67: 10 Tips for Personalizing and Engaging Welcome Messages

by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Online Education Trends, Podcast, Students, Teaching Online

This content first appeared on APUEdge.com

To learn effectively online, students need to know how to get started in class. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen shares 10 tips to help online instructors create effective welcome messages to introduce students to the course and to you as their instructor. Learn what details should be included and ways different types of students need to hear from their instructor in order to be engaged and stay committed.

Listen to the Episode:

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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.

You can avoid many of the problems your students experience in online learning and help them start your class well by sending out a welcome message before the online class begins. This kind of communication is an essential way to invite your students to get started, to anticipate how they will spend their time, and to get to know you. All of this builds momentum for the first week of your online class and it’s a strategy you cannot live without if you hope to keep all of your students engaged from the first day onward.

Because online education depends on your students showing up and getting engaged with you in the class, you already know how important it is to get students to log in and just get started. To help you out in this area, today I’m going to share with you 10 tips you can use before your next online course begins, to launch students into a successful first week through your welcome message. That’s right, these are strategies you can implement easily. And they will help you get students in the door, or more literally, logged in and looking around in your online classroom. And that’s where it all begins!

TIP #1: Reach Out to Your Students a Few Days Before the Class Begins, to Pave the Way for a Great Experience

Before the semester begins, send an outreach message to your students as an e-mail. This first tip is about timing, and about how to get connections with your students. Find out when the course enrollment is finalized, and then send your welcome message around that time. For example, if most students are registered by Wednesday before the course begins, you might send your message Thursday or Friday. Waiting until the first day of class is a missed opportunity to generate enthusiasm and provide that early guidance to draw students into the online classroom.

Tip #2: Personalize the Greeting on Your Message

As much as possible, personalize the message for each student by using their names. If you need to copy and paste the body of your welcome message into 25 or 30 separate e-mails so that you can specifically add your students’ names at the top, it’s worth the time it takes to do it. Students get a lot of formulaic communications from the university or from commercial marketing campaigns, and they don’t need generic greetings to welcome them into your class. Use their first names, and you’ll build relationships from the very first message. What you include in the rest of the message can be standard material, or your institution’s recommendations, or you can use some of the tips I’m sharing here. Either way, a thoughtful and personalized approach will get the best results early.

Tip #3: Be Clear about the Basics

Welcome your students to the class. Tell them which class you’re writing about, in case they are taking more than one course, and who you are. In this opening paragraph, provide some hope and encouragement right way by telling them you are ready to work with them, and that your message is going to help them get ready for class to begin. The basic details in your opening paragraph should let students know what the rest of your message is going to include and why they should keep reading.

Here is a sample of what this opening paragraph might sound like:

“Dear Samantha, Welcome to College 100, Introduction to college learning! My name is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, and I’m your instructor for this course, which begins on Monday this coming week. I’m excited to meet you and share my passion for college learning and a solid foundation with you. And, in this message, I’d like to give you some early guidance to help you succeed in the course.”

Tip #4: Help Students Know What They Will Learn from You

While many of your students come into their education because they want something specific such as career advancement or personal growth, they all need to know what value they will get from their time with you. The course description gave them some idea of the value proposition of the course itself—what they can expect to learn in the class. But your message is the value proposition of what you bring as their instructor, along with encouragement and steps to get started in the class. It’s both an invitation and an advertisement selling students on the journey ahead of them. And their partnership with you.

In your welcome message, introduce yourself briefly. Tell students what you bring to the subject matter. If you have any specific real-world experience that relates to the class, let them know. If you love engaging in debates through the discussion space in your course, tell them. If you want them to learn to love the subject or how to connect it to their lives and their jobs, let them know about that.

Your brief statements about yourself as the instructor can help them trust you from the very beginning and this might even make the difference between students pushing through a rigorous personal schedule or dropping the course when things get tough. Write them as if you’re writing a letter to someone you care about—not as you would like these things to appear on your professional resume. Your students won’t really care about the title of your dissertation or the many articles you might have written. But they will want to know about the fact that you have used your expertise in this area to intern at the White House or conduct a Military Band or write an ad campaign for a major corporation in the real world.

Remember, this message you send and especially the introduction about yourself is students’ first impression of you and of your class. It can set the tone for a positive experience and portray you as an approachable human being that will guide them well. It can begin building relationships immediately. And beyond these basic but important aspects, it can reassure them that you’re the right person to guide them in this journey.

Tip #5: Share Important Dates, Links, and Access Support

After greeting your students, welcoming them into the class, and introducing yourself, set aside a paragraph to remind them about key dates and details they need to get involved. For example, you can share the start and end dates of the class, provide the link to access the online classroom, and let them know how to contact classroom support if they have technology or access issues. If there are any specific technologies students will use in the course like Rosetta Stone, or an e-book resource, include these links as well. Having a short list will be a useful resource for students in the future, and especially on the first day of class.

Tip #6: Provide Your Philosophy and Set the Expectations

All students want to know what they can expect in the class. For example, if there are discussions every week, either live or asynchronous, let them know about these and how they will generally engage with others. If there are a few specific larger assignments, tell them. You might also prefer to provide a link to the syllabus or a mini version of the syllabus that outlines these basic elements.

Even if your course is asynchronous and students can decide when they would like to log in or engage, you will still need to give them some idea of the time they need to set aside to read and learn the material each week, and how much interaction they should expect to engage in throughout the course. This paragraph is also a great place to remind students that if they feel overwhelmed or fall behind, they should contact you to see how to move ahead before they decide to drop your class. You can provide support and guidance in these kinds of situations and keep your students in class when they need your support. And this will build your reputation as an instructor students want to learn from.

Tip #7: Consider what First-Time Online Students Need in Your Welcome Message

When your students are getting started in their online class, some will be taking an online class for the very first time. These students are anxious or nervous. Some are wondering if they are “cut out” for online learning at all, or if they should quit now and get their money back before it’s too late! Your welcome message for these students is reassuring.

It gives them a glimpse into a hopeful future and some degree of confidence to get started. Your tone in the message might even connect with them enough to help them feel like you’re going to be there to guide them so that they can release some of that fear and that anxiety. And these students will need you to point them in the right direction for how they can connect with classroom tech support and other departments to get connected and online successfully during that first week.

For this group of students, use a friendly and encouraging tone, and let them know how to get connected that first week of class.

Tip #8: Consider what Busy, Working Students Need in Your Welcome Message

Other students you will have are taking multiple classes at once while working full-time jobs and raising children, and they will juggle many expectations, demands, and schedules. Busy students with many obligations and classes need the basic details. These students want to know some of the basics about the course and about you so they can manage everything they have going on and successfully finish the course without losing track of the important things.

They want the basics—like when does the course start and end? What they must do to learn the material? And where all of the graded parts of the class going to come up? And of course, these students will need to know how to reach you if they have missed something during the class and need to make an adjustment.

For this group of students, include your contact details, the basic details about the class, and the best ways to plan for the needed time each week.

Tip #9: Consider what Experienced Online Learners are Looking for in Your Welcome Message

And then there are students who are experienced at taking online courses. They want to know what your specific expectations and routines will be so they can get started, and they just want to be sure that you are going to treat them fairly and be responsive when they contact you.

They are likely going to compare the way you manage things to a few other online instructors they have had in the past with whom they were successful, and they’ll compare you to those others that were not strong teachers. And they will look for good communication from you, and clear guidance. And they will want to know: What is your late policy? And how long will it take you to respond if they send you an e-mail?

Early in the class, some of these students will intuitively know whether they can complete your course and work with you, or whether they would prefer to drop this class and find another teacher.

For these experienced online students, your welcome message gives them an idea of who you are, how you’re going to approach your time with them, and whether you are someone they want to learn from. They want you to see them as human beings and be assured that you’ll be approaching them as a fellow human, not a machine. Be clear and consistent. And avoid repeating warnings about past students’ failures or inundating them with overly specific instructor expectations or preferences.

Tip #10: Ask Students for a Brief Reply to Be Sure That You’re Set Up for Effective 2-Way Communication

As you close your welcome message and give students a final word of encouragement for their upcoming class, ask them to reply to your message. Your request can be brief and simple, but it serves two important purposes. The first one is that you really do need to know if they got your message and if they read it. When they respond to it, you’ve got that box checked. But second, it gives your students an early win before the class has even started. All students want to pass the class and getting connected with their instructor before the class starts is the first step to opening that door.

In Closing

While sending a welcome message before the first day of class used to be a nice idea, or a positive option to go above and beyond to get your students excited for the first day, now it’s essential in every course you teach. Our students have many needs and expectations. Early and clear communication can meet these needs and let them know what to expect.

Beyond that, online education is regularly offered at so many institutions. If your students do not start well in your class, they can either drop it and wait or choose another instructor. Or they might leave the school completely and take their classes someplace else to get a better experience that they need.

Take the time to personalize your approach and give students a good idea of what to expect, so they’ll see the value in learning with you and remaining committed throughout the course. This will help them know that they have come to the right place for their education, and that YOU are the right person to help them learn the content in the ways that no one else can. And of course, it will help them get in the door of the online classroom, so they are ready to engage with you and to learn.

Thank you for being with me today for the Online teaching Lounge Podcast. Online teaching is a wonderful way to go, and it is an area in which we can all keep growing and developing new approaches for. Join me each week for additional tips, strategies, and ideas to help you with best practices in online education, ways to connect with your students most effectively, ways to use video and technology in your teaching, and how to have a healthy balanced life as an online educator.

And please share this podcast with other educators you know, so we can spread the word about various strategies and tips that help us all.

And if you’re looking for formal education options to dig a little deeper, consider joining us for a course in online teaching at American Public University. We offer several courses that can be taken for continuing education goals, or to complete a certificate or degree. You deserve to be confident in your online teaching, and we can help you get there.

As you work to develop your welcome messages to send students before your next online class begins, I think you will find that the time you spend will come back to you by opening up the communication channels with your online students. Best wishes this coming week as you develop new welcome messages for all of your upcoming classes.

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.

#62: Connecting with Students Through Zoom

by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Online Education Trends, Podcast, Students, Teaching Online, Technology Tools, Video

This content first appeared at APUEdge.com.

Engaging with students and building a sense of community in an online class can be very difficult. In this episode, APU professor Dr. Bethanie Hansen discusses the benefits of hosting a Zoom meeting with students. Learn the numerous options for setting up a Zoom meeting that gives students an opportunity to interact and work together. Also learn tips to help teachers prepare to host a meeting, how to use breakout rooms and other technology tools to increase student engagement, and more.

Subscribe to Online Teaching Lounge
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Pandora

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. Today, we’re going to talk about how you can connect with your students through using Zoom for video conferences. Now, there are a lot of different ways to be engaged in your online teaching. You might consider having asynchronous classes where people just participate on their own and interact separately. Perhaps you have live classes where they are conducted online already. Or maybe you’re in some kind of hybrid situation where students will go to the online class for part of their work and meet with you face-to-face in the live physical classroom.

Regardless of your format, Zoom conferences for your students can really create relationships and introduce different types of engagement than anything else you might use. So I’m going to teach you today how to basically use Zoom in a few new ways, and I’m going to also help you overcome any hesitation you have to using Zoom by giving you tips and strategies to help you in this area.

This is a great solution for connecting with students who might be less achieving, less vocal, less present. And help them get engaged in small groups and smaller conversations so that they are getting a lot more out of the experience and connecting more with you and with each other. Let’s get started.

Integrating Zoom into Online Classes

How do you start a Zoom meeting, or how do you get one going? First, there are some learning management systems where Zoom is already integrated and it’s available for you to use. If you have Zoom integrated into Brightspace, into Canvas, into some other learning management system, then you’re already set with a way to set Zoom up so that you can talk to your students.

If you don’t have access to Zoom, you can set up a free account online for up to 40 minutes for a small group or a longer duration if you’re going to just have one-on-one calls. I recommend using your educator email address because there just might be some kind of special recognition that Zoom will give you to provide an educational discount or an education account of some kind. So if you don’t already have access, definitely check out those options that might be available.

Review and Update Zoom Settings

Looking at your Zoom meeting, you can see particular settings in the Zoom settings menu if you go in through a browser. For example, you can have all of your participants need to log in with their institutional email if you’re using an account that does that.

You can have a waiting room set up so you can let participants in one at a time. You can also give people permission to mute and unmute themselves, use video, and also you can choose whether they can save the chat or not save the chat. There are so many settings that are worth your time to investigate so that you can set up your meetings in a way that really suits you best and preserves students’ privacy as well. And of course, you can record those meetings and you can share those with students who cannot attend a live session.

Use Doodle or Survey to Find a Good Meeting Time

Once you’ve set Zoom up, the best way to move forward is to provide the invitation to students ahead of time. I recommend giving this information to your students at least one week ahead, so they can put it on their calendar and look forward to the meeting time.

You might even choose an app called Doodle, that you can mark with various times that are possible for you and send it out as a poll well in advance of your Zoom call. If you do this, students can let you know of all the many times they might be available to make that Zoom call and you can choose the scheduling that will work best for all of your students or most of them, at least. So a Doodle poll can set you up for success before you ever schedule that meeting.

Send Out Repeated Meeting Reminders

Once you’ve done that, I also so recommend putting announcements in your course home page, sending announcements out in emails and messages one week before the call, a day before the call, and a couple of hours before the call. And lastly, 10 minutes before the call is about to begin.

Students get a lot of emails and a lot of messages. And if they’re taking more than one class, they also read a lot of announcements. They’re going to need reminders repeatedly to know when your live call is scheduled in Zoom and to be able to access it and join you there.

Establish a Backup Plan for Internet Connectivity

Once it’s time for the call, you can succeed in meeting your students where they’re at by being early and having your technology set up with a backup plan if your internet should fail. For example, if you have a Wi-Fi internet at home and you’re working from home, it’s good to also have a hotspot on your cell phone so that if your internet blanks out, you don’t lose your connection to the Zoom meeting. I usually have two or even three backup plans because I really don’t want to lose any of my Zoom meetings, and I have many of them that happen throughout the day and throughout the week. So think about what your backup plan will be for internet.

Assign a Student Who Can Take Notes, Continue Meeting

Secondly, you can have someone work with you. It can even be a high-achieving student who can take notes during the meeting in the chat, or who can be listed as a cohost so that if something should happen to your access, someone will still be there that can make sure the meeting continues and that the progress can be made.

Decide on Your Background

When you’re setting up for the call, check the background in the room that you’re going to be in. If you have the latest version of Zoom, you can set the background to be blurry, so it actually doesn’t matter what’s in the background, or you can choose a virtual background if you have a good solid space. Otherwise, it’s going to pixelate through that virtual background and you’re going to see part of your background and part of the virtual background. I recommend the fuzzy background because it just focuses on you being there and being very clear and it blurs everything else.

Of course, there are some fun settings in Zoom where you can also adopt caricatures and makeup and mustaches and hats and different things. And if you’re having a fun meeting or a celebration, you might consider using those with your teammates or with your class members as well.

Test Your Audio Quality

Within the platform, you can choose whether you use an external mic on your computer or a headset or some other setup. I recommend using a headset and not using the external speakers and microphone on your computer because there can often be an echo produced when you do that.

So test your system out ahead of time and make sure that your sound quality is good and your video quality is good as well. If you find that these things are not good, troubleshoot them before you meet with your students live.

Prepare a Lesson Plan for the Meeting

The more you prepare in advance of conducting a live class meeting in Zoom, the more you’re going to find success there and have a positive experience. I do recommend approaching this as if you’re teaching a live face-to-face class. In that situation, you might prepare a detailed lesson plan. You might tell students up front what to expect and what you’re going to cover during the period of the meeting.

And you might also discuss what topics you’re going to do and any activities needed. For example, if you’re planning to use breakout rooms during your virtual meeting, you want to tell students ahead of time so they have access to a microphone and can be on video.

Establish Expectations with Students

It’s also a great idea to send those expectations out to your students well in advance of the meeting. For example, you might have a dress code if you don’t want students to show up in pajamas, or you want them to be dressed like they would be attending school, and you can also suggest what kinds of places they might be, where they’re on video.

For example, if they’re going to the local McDonald’s to get the internet to be in class, there might be a lot of background noise and they might need some kind of headphones or noise-canceling tools.

Think about Level of Student Engagement

You might also think about whether or not students have to engage in the text area. Plan this ahead of time. Zoom has excellent polling features. And if you want some basic interactivity, you can either use the chat box, you can call on students directly to make verbal comments live, or you can put a poll up there and have everybody participate that way.

There are also some external things you could have students access during the Zoom call, like Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere. And there are several others as well, where they could engage in polling, they can make word clouds. They can basically each contribute their own ideas in real time and feel like they’re actually engaging in what’s being discussed rather than being a passive consumer.

So think about these things ahead of time and plan out what your approach will be as well as a brief lesson plan. Tell your students ahead of time, check your background and what you’re wearing and make sure it looks clean, clear, professional, and confident. And then host your meeting.

Tips on Hosting Strategies

When you’re hosting your meeting and having that live call, sit up tall, roll your shoulders back a little bit to give yourself an extra boost of confidence, and help yourself to connect better with your students. Even though you’re on screen and you’re not really looking directly at each one of them, you want to look towards the camera so that you feel like you’re making eye contact with them and being present.

And whatever your plan is for engaging them during the live call, definitely include lots of ways to engage. As I mentioned before, these could be typing in the text box, these could be polling features or external programs. And you could also put them in breakout rooms.

Prepare Breakout Rooms in Advance

If you use breakout rooms, I highly recommend putting the questions out in advance because once they leave the main room, they can no longer see any slides you were sharing or the questions you might have. You can also broadcast a message to all of the rooms if you put people in groups, so that they can still see what they need to see and be able to talk about it while they’re in that breakout room.

And definitely tell students if they’re going to do a breakout, how long it will be, and ask them to appoint a timekeeper in each group. Even though Zoom might time the breakout rooms for you, you want someone in that group to keep everyone aware of how little time they have left as that time is winding down. Nobody likes being jerked out of a breakout room abruptly in the middle of a comment.

Assessing Student Engagement and Community

Now, you can look around the video screen and see where students are, and sometimes you can even see their demeanor and whether they’re tracking along with the meeting or the presentation. You can also see if they’re just a name with no camera enabled, and you can engage with people anyway and call on their names or have them type in the chat.

Sometimes students are caring for little ones at home, and they’re not really able to chat on video, but they would be able to type in the chat and are still there with you, even though they don’t want to be on screen. I personally believe you should respect that because not everyone is comfortable being on screen, but also we can’t really gauge that they’re all fully present just by seeing them. We can also gauge that presence through the chat and other features that we might use.

Either way, you’re going to create a sense of community by using Zoom in your online class, so students feel more connected to you and more connected to each other. And they can also get this whole sense of community that they’re part of a big program in a university or a school that you’re teaching for.

Zoom has the potential to really take conversations deeper, especially if you use those breakouts and other tools, and help your students to feel like they’re a lot more engaged and invested. I personally have used Zoom a lot in teaching and coaching and in leading faculty meetings.

And also I have used it with one-on-one calls. Even though sometimes it can seem a little bit much for a one-on-one call, I have really enjoyed being able to see people face to face and engage with them, and they have appreciated being able to see me while they’re talking to me as well. And many have said that.

As you try Zoom in your online teaching, I encourage you to stretch in several of these ways to try the different things you can integrate and see how creative you might be, and definitely inform students ahead of time, and practice. You want to be confident and not have technical glitches while you’re carrying it out. As you do these things, you’re going to get a lot more engagement from your students, and they’re going to get trust for you and reach out to you whenever they have problems in the course. And that’s a good thing.

Best wishes to you in creating your Zoom meetings and connecting better with your students, and solving the problem of that distance we all have in online education. And best wishes in all of your teaching this coming week as well.

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.

#61: Five Creative Ways to Enhance Forum Discussions

by Bethanie Hansen | Best practices, Higher Education, Podcast, Teaching Online

This content initially appeared at https://apuedge.com/podcast-five-creative-ways-to-enhance-forum-discussions/

Discussion forums in online classes can sometimes get repetitive and stale. In this episode, APU professor Dr. Bethanie Hansen suggests five creative ways for online teachers to spice up discussion spaces to revitalize the discussion and get to know students better. Learn about role playing, technologies to create video responses and collaboration sites, and more.

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.

Have you ever struggled to engage in the discussion of your online course? For some courses we teach, it might seem that over and over we’re discussing the same topics with the same students from the same approach.

Of course, it may be a new group of students, but it seems like we’re having that same dialogue over and over again. And sometimes there might be a feeling that it’s difficult to find new questions to ask, or new ideas to share. If this sounds familiar to you, it might be time to try some creative alternatives to the traditional discussion format. And when you take a totally new approach, it can revitalize your thinking about online discussion spaces and help you engage much more with your students too.

Today, we’ll review five alternative discussion forum ideas for your next online class. And by the end of today’s podcast, you’ll walk away with something new you can try this coming week.

Role Play Can Enhance Forum Discussions

Number one, role-play. The idea of role-play in online discussions involves creativity and imagination. To be able to engage in the dialogue, students must do a little research about an individual from the past, their context and culture, and their life’s achievements. There are forum prompts like this in music appreciation courses that I teach. So I’m going to share my own experience with you on role-plays.

In the first discussion we have that involves this role-play idea, students are asked to create five questions that a media interviewer might ask prominent musicians from the 1600s. Then students create replies as if that composer might provide them. And they format and post their discussions in some ways that are also creative.

I noticed some of my students take it further, so they even introduce the entire post in character as if they are the interviewer, complete with fictitious names for the magazine or newspaper they represent, and some additional fun details.

By doing this approach, students must weigh the facts on a historical musician and find those lesser-known details that can really pique your curiosity. They also have to think in present tense, first-person voice, as if they are speaking as that composer in their responses. It can help students start to think about people from hundreds of years ago much more humanely, and understand more than just some facts and some dates that they could write about. And it elicits their creativity, so they will spend a little more time putting it together.

In the other role-playing discussion we have, we have students who write imaginary conversations that take place between three composers, which they get to choose, from the romantic era. They bring in people like Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin and Liszt, and they write the conversation as if these three people they selected really did meet at a party or a gathering. Sometimes students will write the conversation as if Beethoven has completely lost his hearing and keeps ignoring other people, asking loudly, repeatedly what they have said. And some of them portrayed Liszt as this dark emotional person, bringing in a mention of various elements from his life struggles.

We’ve been able to dive into the conversations about composers they select and explore musical issues, and the cultures the composers lived in as well. But more than that, some wider topics come in like musicians and mental health, relationships, and even challenges they face in life. And many of the students find that they understand these composers and the challenges and musicians as fellow humans, instead of just names and dates.

And some have even remarked that they contemplate the challenges that certain musicians have faced and overcome these, and they think about their own lives as well. So they liken perhaps the deafness of Beethoven and his composing symphonies anyway, to whatever life struggle they’re having. And a few students have even said they’ve been inspired to overcome their own challenges and keep moving forward because of these experiences, these stories.

Role plays can be powerful and useful if you want to help your students connect to their learning. To make discussions successful, clear and detailed instructions are needed. Step-by-step instructions can be important to help students know exactly what is expected and how the post should be written.

Create Video Discussion Forums Using Flipgrid

For this second idea you’re going to leave the learning management system completely. You’re going to get out of the LMS and go into a program called Flipgrid. Now, if you haven’t tried Flipgrid, it is definitely worth a shot. You leave, you use Flipgrid, and then you post it in the classroom.

This is a free video discussion forum tool. It builds your students’ perceptions of the connectedness in the online classrooms, so it takes discussions to a totally different place. You can use Flipgrid for video discussion forums. They’ll take the video and embed the video in the online course that students have created. And you can use it in a lot of different ways to connect yourself to your students and to connect students to each other.

Embedding a tool that brings voice, tone, and body language to the classroom really does build that sense of connection, and you can see who everybody is. You get a sense of the other students in the class and the instructor. And this raises the bar for everything happening in that discussion forum.

There’s a post on Edutopia about several different LMS strategies, and Flipgrid is one of those. They quote a high school English teacher named Kyleen Gray. And Kyleen said, “Flipgrid is a fantastic oral communication application that is easy to use.”

It’s a video-sharing platform, as I mentioned, and you can write the forum prompt to the discussion just as you always would. But instead of having students type the answer, you simply have them answer it in a short video. So this is a great tool that’s going to give you feedback in sort of an informal way. You can find out how students are doing in their learning, and you get to hear it in their own voice.

And of course, there’s been some research done on this, and it’s been found that Flipgrid actually boosts students’ feelings of being connected in the online classroom, which overcomes a lot of that sense of anonymity, and also that disconnection that is really common in online education. And it also helps them to bridge the gap between you and them, so they’re willing to ask you for help.

Of course, there are some additional fabulous ideas for using Flipgrid that you might also be interested in. Not only can your students just post videos of themselves talking and embed these in your forum discussions, but you can invite outside speakers. So there’s a guest mode in Flipgrid, and you can invite a guest speaker to participate in the online discussion asynchronously. Guests can watch the student videos and respond to them. This gives your expert a way to share knowledge from the field, and also allows them to share it at the convenient time for them.

If you’d like to have guest speakers in your online class, this is a really creative idea about how it can be done, and it can be done in a discussion, so that throughout the week everyone can engage with that guest and go back and forth.

We can also take this a little further. Flipgrid is great for sharing language acquisition if you’re teaching a world language, and, of course, you can share and celebrate work. If you celebrate completed projects, essays, assignments, and things like that in the discussion area using Flipgrid, you can have students talk about their projects and show them off at the same time. And then post that video so that each person can go through and sort of see a showcase of work. What a great alternative in a forum discussion.

Today’s third creative idea for discussions is to try Padlet. There are many lists out there on the internet available for you on creative ways to use Padlet in your online classroom. I’ll just highlight a few of these today.

First of all, if you’re wondering what Padlet is, it’s kind of like a Post-it board, so you can put notes on there and everyone else in the class can do that as well. You can use Padlet in your online classroom by installing the app on your device or opening the Padlet website. You make a board and then you have posts there that everyone can add.

There’s a lot of ways to do this. First, you can use Padlet to brainstorm topics. If students are going to be writing an essay, this might be a great way to use your discussions face for the week. They can brainstorm topics together, thesis statements, projects, ideas, and other things that they might turn in for the class. You can try this and have students just collaborate with each other, and together they just might come up with even better ideas.

You can use that same space to create a live question bank. And a live question bank would be where students ask questions about the lesson, during the lesson. You could take this further and have them design three or four questions that each of them would ask if they were the one creating the final exam. This is a wonderful way to create creative questions in a big list all at once. And it won’t take very long when you have each student contribute.

Another way to use Padlet in your discussion area is to create icebreaker activities. For example, if you really like that activity, Two Truths and One Lie, students can post something about themselves and we can all go through and guess which were true and which were not, and have fun getting to know each other the first week of class.

And of course, you can use that same space to share highlights from the semester, or things that they’d like to honor about each other. It can be a celebration space for reflection at the end of the semester in your discussions. You can also use it as a question board, so your students can go there and ask and answer questions for each other.

And the last tip I have on Padlet today is to use bubble maps, thinking maps, or brainstorming maps. Padlet is a great way to organize the ideas, move them around, and create them into various ordering systems to help students think through the way they might use the information they have learned.

And all of these ideas I’ve just shared with you here about using Padlet came from an article called “30 Creative Ways to Use Padlet For Teachers And Students,” posted by Lucie Renard in 2017. There’s a link in the podcast notes here, so be sure to check it out.

Using Jamboard for Live Collaboration

The fourth creative discussion idea is actually a synchronous one. If you teach hybrid or live synchronous online courses, or if you teach face-to-face you could even use this idea. Google has a product out there called Jamboard. It’s all one word if you’re going to search it.

It’s for sketching out ideas and using a whiteboard style collaborative space. When you use Jamboard, students can write on it at the same time and they can add their own sketches or calculations. You could use Jamboard for a lot of different things.

For example, if you have some kind of visual art class and you want students to literally sketch things, you can use Jamboard. If you’re teaching mathematics, especially if you have a real-time meeting where you’re going to collaborate and do problems together, this is a fabulous way to help students get involved. And they can also put images on there and notes and take different assets from the web or pull in documents or slides or different sheets from the Google platforms. And they can all collaborate at the same time, no matter where they are.

It’s totally free, unless you want the freestanding Jamboard to be in your physical classroom, in which case there is a cost to it. But it’s a wonderful collaborative tool for synchronous use online in your discussions.

Integrating Photography into Discussions

And we’re down to our number five example. This fifth example comes right back to the traditional discussion format. So we’re not using the external technologies, but we are using one kind of media, and that would be photography. This example is shared by Kristin Kowal in 2019. Kristin says that, “This is adding images of examples in students’ posts.”

So for this example, you’re going to have students post the image along with their written response in the discussion forum. One of the best things about this strategy is that it’s somewhat personalized. It helps students be motivated to use more than one modality in their discussion post, and it helps them connect more to each other and to the ideas.

There are a lot of visual learners. It’s something like 60% to 80% of all people are visual thinkers. So when you start adding the image to this discussion post, you have something really interesting coming out. It’s personal. It motivates students. It connects them.

Erin Ratelis, an online instructor says that, “It not only feels different for the students, but it’s also a different type of activity that will stand out for them. It leverages a different technology and photos are a great visual tool to solidify class insights. It requires students to explore class topics through a very personal lens, no pun intended.”

So in the course where Erin used this strategy, she had her students go to a retail environment in their community. So they were looking for 10 ways that a consumer marketer would influence the purchasing decisions. And she asked her students to post photos, but made it optional. Most of the students chose to include picture examples, like retail displays at Target or other stores. And students even commented directly in their posts about how much they enjoyed taking the pictures and including them.

You can draw attention to all kinds of real-life examples, no matter what course you’re teaching, by asking students to show an example in a photograph. It could be the bonus point on that forum discussion.

You can also use it if you’re asking students to take a field trip. So if you ever have an assignment where your online students need to go out of the classroom and prove that they’ve done something, such as attending a concert or going to a museum, it’s best if they also have a picture of themselves at that event.

Lastly, think about privacy concerns when you have students post photos. If they’re taking photos at work and sharing them, it might be a good idea to get permission from their employer. Think about which areas you might want to use this activity in, where it might pique the most ideas. And you might consider doing it again later in the course.

So these five creative forum discussion ideas are here to give you alternatives so you’re not just posting and writing and posting and writing and students are doing the same. That kind of repetitive approach to a forum discussion gets old. And even if you’re having a very stimulating discussion, students tend to repeat the approach that they’re using. As you stretch and try these alternative methods, I think you’ll really spice up your online class and have a lot of fun doing it. I wish you all the best this 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.

#53: Setting the Tone in the Online Classroom

by Dr. Bethanie Hansen | Podcast, Students, Video

When teaching an online class, instructors must work hard to connect with students and set expectations for the course. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks to APU Faculty Director Dr. Craig Bogar about effectively communicating with students. Learn the benefits of publishing a welcome video so instructors can virtually introduce themselves to students in the beginning of the course. Also learn tips on conveying netiquette practices to students and why it’s so important for instructors to ask Socratic questions to enhance critical thinking and promote engagement of online students.

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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.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. This is the first episode of our second year of this podcast, and you’re in for a real treat today. We’re going to be interviewing Dr. Craig Bogar from American Public University, and I’m really excited to have Craig with us today. Craig, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, so listeners can get to know you and your connection to online education?

Dr. Craig Bogar: I sure can, Bethanie, and thanks for inviting me today. I’m super happy to be here. And I was a college athletic director at two universities some years ago, and I also coached swimming and track at those institutions, and I also worked as a college recreation and intramural director at one point. And after doing those things for a number of years, I decided to go back to school and get my doctorate, and at that time, I lived in Alabama, near the United States Sports Academy, and I was accepted into their hybrid program, which was on-ground and online.

Start a degree in Education at American Public University.

And once I completed my doctorate, opportunities started to arise and I began teaching online. And I also was serving as the Dean of Student Services at the Sports Academy for a few years, and had the opportunity to teach on-ground courses in both Thailand and the Kingdom of Bahrain while I was there.

I’ve been with American Public University , for the past nine years. I taught part-time online for three years, and then I got the position as Faculty Director for the School of Health Sciences, and that’s what I currently do for the institution. I still live in Alabama, but I live now on the Gulf Coast, right here in Gulf Shores. So it’s good to be with you.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: It’s wonderful to have you as well, Craig. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your background. Sounds like you’ve had some pretty well-rounded exciting experiences there. I’m curious, how would you have thought of being online long ago before this was really a mainstream thing to do, early in your career?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Wow. That is a great question, and the world as we know it, has changed exponentially in the past couple of decades, and it’s just so hard to conceive of the type of traditional education that we used to have and a number of us went through to get our bachelor’s degrees and onward.

But I think that the key for me, as I said, was being in a hybrid program for my doctoral program, where I got a taste of online instruction and online teaching, and just fell in love with it. And it offers so many different opportunities that one doesn’t necessarily get in the on-ground format, not the least of which is that it’s so much more convenient for students, especially the non-traditional student who may be in the workforce, and might have a family and children, and so forth.

Where years ago, as you recall, if people wanted to either finish a degree or maybe get an advanced degree, they were gone X number of nights a week after they left their job, and they rarely got to see their families, or have dinner with their families, and so forth.

Now with an asynchronous type of online program, as we know, people can do their coursework really anytime, any day. And with us having so many military students, especially in my program where close to 70% of them are with American Military University, they can be students overseas. So it’s really, as I said, it’s a new culture and a new world for many things, not the least of which is higher education.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks for that. A lot of our listeners have found themselves teaching online for the first time, and of course, we also have a lot of listeners who have taught online for quite a lengthy time, many in higher ed, and in also what you might consider public school ages, primary and secondary, so just to fill you in a little bit about our listeners.

And I know that you have a lot of best practices that you use in working online, but also in working with your faculty. So what is a best practice that you’d like to share with us today to help our listeners be even more effective in their online teaching?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Okay, well, I’ve got a few things in mind, but one thing I wanted to talk about was that we now require our instructors to post a welcome video that students see when they enter a given course. And one of the reasons we’re doing this, is because the welcome video is a great opportunity to provide a personal welcome to students, and of course, meet the university requirement now, but also to acquaint students with the essentials of a course.

And what I have found over the years that I try to communicate to my faculty, is that by the nature of online education, it is remote by nature, and we have to do our very best at what I call “touching” students in every possible way. It’s by greeting students by name when we see them in the course, when they respond in the course and such, and one of the ways, as I said, is this welcome video.

And in the welcome video, there are some things that I suggest, and I’ll just go through a few of them, is one is obviously to introduce yourself to your students and to welcome them, and if there’s a number of a course or description of the course name, to tell them that, and tell the students why the course is relevant to the program. What will this course do for you? I always refer my students to the syllabus, and to make sure they read that, because it includes course materials and learning objectives, and gives students a good blueprint for what they need to do each week in a given course.

I always explain my expectations for student participation. In other words, by what date do they have to make their initial post in the discussion forum each week? How many responses to their peers do I look for? I give them that information.

I tell the students what they can expect from me, and one of the key things in the online format is timely feedback from instructors. Here at APUS, we have a deadline for faculty grading, which is five days after a given week has ended, but I tell my students that, “Hey, this is the deadline, but I’m going to do better than that. You can get your feedback from me, you can get your grades from me before that deadline each week.” So I try to set the tone that I’m going to be doing my best to exceed expectations.

Also in this welcome video, I tell them what I expect as far as plagiarism, or not to commit plagiarism, and I expect them to follow the rules of netiquette. In other words, being courteous to their peers and also being courteous to me. Again, setting the tone, and I want a professional environment in the course, and I try to communicate that to students.

Also in the welcome video, I suggest that faculty mention the degrees they’ve earned, and give a concise description of their teaching experience or their relevant professional experience, because we want our students to know that, “Hey, we are qualified to teach these courses.” Students are very interested in knowing this, for obvious reasons. They want to make sure that the people who are teaching know their stuff. So in the welcome video, this is a great way in which we can give that information to students.

There’s some optional elements. You can tell the students in your welcome video where you’re from, where you live, the institutions that granted your degrees, maybe your hobbies, what do you like to do in your spare time, and any other personal information that you’d like to share.

But knowing that and hearing that, I also suggest that faculty stick to about three minutes for their welcome video. I know that for all those things that I mentioned, it may be a challenge, but after three minutes, I personally believe that we start to lose people’s focus and attention. So that’s just a ballpark estimate of how much time they should use.

I encourage faculty to write a script, and if you’re using a built-in camera, what I do is I position my script right at the top of that window or that monitor, so it doesn’t appear that I’m looking down and reading the whole time from a script.

It’s also good to be mindful of the setting and the background, and to look professional, and wear a solid color shirt or a blouse to make sure you contrast the background that students are seeing. You want to be about an arm’s length away from your camera. You want to not be overbearing in both your physical presence and your volume, so an arm’s length is good to know. And your lighting should be really in front of you, not behind you, so you don’t have shadowy recordings. Last of all, smile when you speak. That’s always something good to do.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wow, Craig, you have given us so much detail and so much great information about these instructor welcome videos, everything from your own practice, to what you’re sharing with your faculty. And I can imagine that not all online faculty are super excited about creating a video to share with their students. So I’m curious, what do you do to help your faculty get in there and actually do this welcome video creation? What works for you?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Well, actually, I really have not had any problems or any complaints from faculty. I think the people that get into the teaching profession are already pretty versed in speaking to groups. I always am available to help folks, but I try to give our faculty as many resources as possible in my weekly communications with faculty, to let them know I’m here to assist them if they need any assistance. But, fortunately, just in our new learning management system, it’s very easy to make a recording. So knock on wood, we really haven’t had that kind of problem, per se.

I did want to go back, Bethanie, and talk a little bit about netiquette as well, and just something that I have experienced or observed over the years. And I go back to my statement before about setting the tone in the course is so important, and for people to be professional, both the instructor and the students towards each other. And I have had some faculty who have had students who have used improper or foul language in a discussion forum, and they’ve come to me and said, “Hey, what do I do about this?”

And where I’ve had an occasional problem in the past, I’ve told students that when I’ve observed that, I say, “Hey, that kind of language, number one, we want to be professional in the classroom,” but that kind of language, especially if it’s a guy to guy thing, I say, “Hey, that’s more appropriate for the locker room, but this is a public forum.

This is a place where we need to be professional. And what I’m going to do,” fill in the blank, “John, is I’m going to give you another chance to repost, to delete your post, and to post again and see if you can do a little better job in meeting my expectations.” And that has worked 100% of the time for me, and that’s the advice that I’ve given to faculty that have come to me for assistance, saying that, “Hey, we can handle these kinds of situations,” and especially for first-time online students, they may not realize that what they say, and they should, but not everybody realizes that this is an academic setting, and we can’t have improper language.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: That’s fantastic help, Craig, and I appreciate you mentioning netiquette as part of this setting the tone that you also would be doing with your instructor videos. We’re going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsor. Craig, thank you for sharing all that you’ve given us so far, your best practice of the instructor welcome video, and also you mentioned a few things about netiquette. I’m wondering, what do you really want listeners to take away from those kinds of practices?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Well, I think that what I’d like them to take away is that it’s so important to set a tone in an online course as to what you expect from students, and what students can expect from you. And one of the ways to do that is through one’s welcome video that, as I said, we post in the very first week of an online course, it’s what we call the discussion module.

And I use the term “to touch” students in the online format is so important because of the nature of remote learning, that we need to use students’ names, and to be as personable as possible with students.

I think about Dale Carnegie, going back many, many years ago, who was one of the top speakers in the country, motivational speakers, and he used to say that, “The sweetest and most important sound in our language is to hear your own name,” and I think that is still true today. And by using students’ names whenever we communicate them or interact with them in the online classroom, is something that we need to do as online instructors.

One thing that I do is when I meet students, quote, unquote, in the “first week discussion/introduction forum,” if a student has a nickname, I write that down in my little log book, and I want to make sure that I refer to that student by his or her nickname throughout the course. And I’ve even had, on occasion, students in their end of course surveys that we do at our institution say that, “Dr. Bogar referred to, fill in the blank, Mary, by her nickname the whole course, and I thought that was so cool!”

And little things like that can help build relationships with the students that we have in our classrooms. There have been studies about brain activation and how when one hears their own name, how that really stimulates a person’s interest in what they’re doing, and I think the more, as I said, the more we can do that, the better in the online course to facilitate relationships and engagement with students in our courses.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Wow, that’s really fantastic, Craig, and I couldn’t agree more. I always notice a person who calls me by my name, and I’m sure students really benefit from feeling connected, as if their instructor knows them personally, especially online. There’s such a divide there, such a disconnect when we don’t do those things. Thanks for all you shared with us so far.

I’m just wondering, are there any other tips or strategies you’d really like to share with listeners today that can help them be even more effective in their online teaching?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Sure. There’s one more area that I’d like to talk about briefly, and that is importance of asking Socratic questions of our students, which really promote engagement in a discussion, but maybe more importantly, Socratic questions enhance critical thinking, by asking these questions of students. As opposed to getting one word answers from students when we ask questions.

Socratic questions, of course, begin with words such as “why,” or “how,” or “what,” so the response tends to be more in-depth and critical. Socrates, I think it was about 2,000 or more years ago, thought that being a lecturer was not that effective, and came up with this method of questioning students. And it’s really, in my opinion, very effective in the online classroom, especially in the discussion formats that we have.

You may recall that years ago when Bethanie, you and I maybe were in on-ground classrooms, you always had students who were a little maybe intimidated by instructors asking questions, or for whatever reason, they were fairly shy in the classroom.

Well, in the online environment that is somewhat anonymous, those students who maybe were reticent about asking questions or responding to questions to instructors in an on-ground environment, they’re probably more likely to be more engaged in the online environment. And especially when instructors are asking these open-ended questions that really deserve students to think critically about a particular topic that may be discussed at one time.

Somebody came up with a quote one time, it wasn’t me, but “Our role as online instructors is really not to be the sage on the stage, but instead, the guide on the side.” And I think that when we are being guides and asking open-ended questions of our students, we’re sort of coaching them along, and we’re mentoring them to think differently about topics and think more critically about a topic at hand. So I just wanted to say that to those online instructors, consider asking these types of questions at every opportunity that presents itself.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Craig, thanks so much. That is fantastic advice, and what I really love about everything you’ve shared with our listeners today is that you’ve placed the instructor in a clear spot of forging relationships, building that academic environment, and really focusing there, instead of what we might call the checkbox behaviors of teaching online, when we’re just thinking about what must we do, what should we do? That’s really beautiful, and a place I think we want to encourage everybody to be.

Craig, thank you so much for being our speaker today, our special guest, as we kick off this second year of the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. Any closing thoughts before we wrap things up today?

Dr. Craig Bogar: Well Bethanie, thank you for inviting me. I’ve really enjoyed being here and speaking with you, and I hope the things that I spoke about are going to be helpful to any of our folks online, and this type of podcast I think is extremely valuable for people who are teaching in the online environment. Thank you again, Bethanie, and best of luck with your podcast as you continue your role here.

Dr. Bethanie Hansen: Thank you again, Craig, and to all of you who are listening today, we 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.

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#67: 10 Tips for Personalizing and Engaging Welcome Messages

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#62: Connecting with Students Through Zoom

#61: Five Creative Ways to Enhance Forum Discussions

#53: Setting the Tone in the Online Classroom

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#80: Social-Emotional Learning

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#67: 10 Tips for Personalizing and Engaging Welcome Messages

Listen to the Episode:

#62: Connecting with Students Through Zoom

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Integrating Zoom into Online Classes

Review and Update Zoom Settings

Use Doodle or Survey to Find a Good Meeting Time

Send Out Repeated Meeting Reminders

Establish a Backup Plan for Internet Connectivity

Assign a Student Who Can Take Notes, Continue Meeting

Decide on Your Background

Test Your Audio Quality

Prepare a Lesson Plan for the Meeting

Establish Expectations with Students

Think about Level of Student Engagement

Tips on Hosting Strategies

Prepare Breakout Rooms in Advance

Assessing Student Engagement and Community

#61: Five Creative Ways to Enhance Forum Discussions

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Role Play Can Enhance Forum Discussions

Create Video Discussion Forums Using Flipgrid

Using Padlet to Improve Collaboration and Sharing

Using Jamboard for Live Collaboration

Integrating Photography into Discussions

#53: Setting the Tone in the Online Classroom

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