-: Giving me the thumbs up.
So I am here today to talk to you about community building
during a pandemic in your remote online
and sometimes some folks are posting
or some folks are teaching a hybrid where some
of your students are in person and some are at home.
So the things that we're gonna discuss today
are applicable to any of those situations.
And there will be points during this hour
that you can chime in about different things
that have worked for you or not worked for you.
So we can share ideas and really delve in a little bit more
as to why community building is an important part
of the course, whichever one you might be teaching.
And so thank you for engaging in this quick activity.
Obviously this is something that you could do
with your students, or even in faculty or staff meetings.
Sometimes we have this as a bit
of a warmup before folks get going.
And so I think that's just a quick and easy thing you can do
that tool is generally available in any Team's space.
And you can easily just either verbally ask a question
or you can put it on a slide and I tend to have the prompt
on a slide as folks are coming in
so then they'll be able to see it right away
in the meeting itself.
(giggles) Nice Erica.
So today, after the completion of the workshop
these are some learning objectives that I set up for folks.
I'm hoping that you're going to be able to identify
some particular ways that you can build community
in your online, remote or in-person teaching.
We're going to have a moment to brainstorm ideas
with each other at several points.
And also there will be a link
to some additional resources that you can review.
And obviously look at those in more detail at a later time
because they will be available to you online.
So, first of all,
I'd just like to start off with this prompt of
why do you think building community is important?
Like why are we even spending an hour to talk about this
especially in this moment we're in right now.
Why is this a good use of time?
Why do you think this is something that's important?
And so I'm just gonna pause for a few moments,
have a sip of my coffee,
and we'll see what folks are thinking
about this morning related to building community.
And you can also,
if you have any experiences from last semester
about building community that worked or didn't work for you,
you can all feel free to share also in your response.
So I'm gonna mute for just a few moments
probably about one minute
while folks start putting their responses in.
So I'm just spending a moment looking
at what folks have been posting
because I think it's important if you ask people to engage
in the chat that you pause, if you can
and just spend a moment seeing what they're actually saying
and you'll notice that many of you have started
to use those little emojis that you can respond to people,
a thumbs up, a heart, a smile, or a sad face.
And I think that's a great, easy way again,
to just let students know you're looking through
what they're saying and you see that they're there
and that they're participating.
And I noticed, there's a thread here about
that connection is necessary.
We feel very isolated, a lot of us right now being home
and students, especially if they're not students
who have come to campus and are participating
in any sort of social endeavors while they're on campus.
Many of them are sitting alone at home isolated
from other students, perhaps they might be
with family members, but,
it is certainly not the same experience as being
on campus in groups together where you can just talk
to somebody next to you as you're sitting in class.
And, welcome Sarah, no problem.
We're just answering this prompt that's on the screen.
So if you have a moment and you wanna respond,
that would be awesome.
So I just think that it's really even more so
as you are all documenting here in the chat, important
to think about intentionally building
in community during your class,
and also perhaps helping students connect
with each other outside of class.
And we can talk more about what that might look like
but if you have a number of at-home students who are
in your classes, or as Erica mentioned in the chat
she had an in-person component
but many students chose not to come in person.
And so she ended up in a class where there was only
a few folks in person and many of the
other ones were remote or at home.
And so are there ways for them to engage
with each other outside of class time as well?
And how are they building any connections
with other people in the class?
One moment, might have to re-upload my slides
'cause I definitely have more than just a couple of slides.
So hold on one moment.
(giggles) Thanks Wendy.
There we go, okay.
Apologies for that.
I'm not sure what happened, perhaps inadvertently
I may have uploaded a previous version
of the sides that I had been working on.
So we're gonna move forward here.
Okay, see if this happens to all of us,
we're in this together.
Okay, so I found this article in The Chronicle
during the summer and I found it so important just
as a way to, we know community building is important
and you've all demonstrated in the chat
a lots of different reasons why.
And the thing that can be a bit tricky is
we sometimes have implicit biases as well
as assumptions that maybe we're making
as we try to build community with students.
And so I'm just going to encourage you to think
about that a little bit.
And I'm wondering, as you are thinking about,
okay, community and teaching and learning
is there a word that comes to mind for you?
And I'm gonna be talking
about some excerpts from this article
in The Chronicle that Flower Darby published.
And we're gonna be sharing a scenario that she had
in her class that was an online class.
And so, just spend one moment thinking
about community in teaching and learning.
What does that mean to you, that phrase?
Okay, so we've got, let's see,
Jen started us off with the longing
and Shelley wrote listening, Lisa says connection.
I put in group, Sarah says togetherness.
So Daya says togetherness, Bob humanity, Erica engagement.
Oh, Claire building resiliency.
And Elizabeth says mutualism.
So these are terms that as we think about them,
it's something that I feel a lot
of times in the in-person situations that we were in
in the before times, these things happened organically
a lot of the time in classes, just by being together
in a space that brought us into a community space.
And then depending on how you set up
your teaching in that space, a lot of times
it was intentional in a lot of ways
but then there were also things that just happened
because we were in a space together.
So now with this additional barrier
sometimes it can be seen as, of being remote and online
we have to be a little more creative
I think sometimes as to how we go
about building those spaces for engagement and togetherness.
So this story, some of you may have heard this story before
but it doesn't hurt to hear it one more time
and be reminded of it.
This is Flower Darby's story, which I think many
of us might be able to relate to in some aspects
where your intent was to build community
and feel like there is a togetherness that was happening
in the online course.
And being able to see each other's faces is one way
in which you can be intentional
about getting folks to know one another.
And this was an online course
and she had a student that she'll,
she's using the student in Lori.
This person, an email to explain
that she hadn't followed directions on the assignment.
And I asked why, is what she says
and I required students to submit a quick video
of themselves, but this student posted an audio
with just her photo attached.
And what the woman explained was that she had been
in a domestic abuse situation and her face was bruised.
And she didn't want anyone to see that in her video
because she didn't post a video and she only posted
the still image, her grade had been reduced.
And so obviously, this was something that horrified her,
this was not at all what she intended.
And she realized that requiring showing faces
so we could get to know one another had backfired.
So that's, again,
you think that several people asked me today, like
should we turn on our video?
And I've heard a lot of faculty talk
about how it's really difficult to be
in a remote class and you don't see people's faces.
Like I can see Jen right now, which is great.
Thanks Jen.
But I don't see everybody else.
They're little dots.
And so, but the thing is, I told everybody they had a choice
if they wanted to turn on their video or not.
And some people may be in a situation
where they just can't do that right now
but they do wanna be here
and they do wanna be engaged in the class.
So I think it's sort of a, just a fine line to think about
are there times where we can just be a little more flexible?
So what I've heard some people doing is asking students
to upload an image of themselves into Teams.
So part of this workshop is supposed to talk
about how we can use the technologies available to us
to promote community.
And so what I noticed is several of you do not have
an icon uploaded like Wendy,
I can see her little emoji icon that kind of looks like her.
And I can say, Oh yeah,
I see that picture that looks like Wendy.
But some of the rest of us do not have that.
And that's just a quick way that students
could upload a little picture of themselves.
And if they don't wanna upload a photo of themselves
it could be a pet or something else that might spark you
to think, Oh, there's Bob, he's here today
and I see his little icon instead of just those initials.
So I would encourage that as just
an easy step that you could do.
And I'm curious just to think a little more
about this scenario,
has anyone in the past couple of semesters tried
to do something to build community
where it perhaps backfired
or you had some sort of unintended consequence
and you can raise your hand or you can post in the chat.
And Erica, I see your response there.
I think, it's interesting because I totally hear
what you're sharing there about
you don't want people to just think you're sort
of self-important and I'm the only one with my camera on
and I totally think that's a valid emotion.
And I guess that's just part of how you have to figure out
as the instructor, how do you go about encouraging people
but not making them feel like they have to do it?
And I feel like sometimes I will put
on my camera at the start of a meeting
but then I'll notice that most everyone else has it off.
So I may feel sort of lonely with just my video on
so then I might turn it off
and I don't think there's a right or wrong.
It's just allowing different options for people
but I have never thought
of you as being or self-important Erica.
So I think it's totally fine
if you wanna put your camera on.
And Karen is asking how to add the photo.
So I'm imagining probably a few
of you are wondering that same thing--
-: I added the link,
just the webcam -: Oh, thank you so much, Jen.
I was going to ask that.
It's not at all intuitive, unfortunately.
And when we first started using Teams back
in March with folks,
this was the oddest thing that people kept saying,
well, I try to upload my icon in the Teams window
where I see my initials over in the upper right
and I keep getting an error.
So that, you don't actually upload it in Teams
you do it in your email and you go into mail.uvm.edu
and you'll see your same icon
in that mail, program in the browser.
And that's where you can do it.
And Jen has put that link so you can follow the steps.
And I'm not gonna mind if any of you wanna try
it right now just to test it out, that's okay.
Be advised though it may not,
yes, Jen is one step ahead of me here.
It could take a couple
of moments for your picture to come over.
So just be aware of that.
Sometimes it happens right away,
you might set it up and restart Teams and there it is
and then other times it takes several hours.
Jen has said maybe even a few days.
Totally, okay.
Did anyone have a scenario that they wanted to share
or anything they encountered as a part
of teaching in the past couple of semesters where
they had a similar story to what Flower's shared here.
Something happened that you didn't intend
and there was a lesson learned from that.
I just don't wanna squelch anybody's thoughts
if they did have some.
You could raise your hand or post it in the chat.
It's okay if nobody has anything they wanna share right now,
I like to just give a quiet pause
in case somebody's thinking
because sometimes we're not all
at the same speed of processing what is being asked.
And I do think it doesn't hurt just to take 30 seconds
to say, okay,
it doesn't look like anyone has something to say.
Sometimes just pausing those extra couple of seconds,
I noticed that someone might either post in the chat
or raise their hand.
So I do that as just part of the learning environment.
So hopefully if you feel a little uncomfortable
about the pause and the dead air,
you can just lean into that feeling
of being uncomfortable and realize it might be helping one
of your colleagues just to have that moment.
So again, we're not in the same space.
And so usually these connections
at this point will not happen just by accident.
We have to be more intentional about them.
And one thing you can do is think about ways
to ask your students to actively engage during your class
if it's a remote class or an in-person class.
And if it's an online class,
you can use tools like Flipgrid, other video tools,
Yellowdig, discussion board and Blackboard.
There's lots of interactive tools
that you can use for active engagement.
But again, you need to be planning for that
and figuring out how often you think it might be possible
for your students to do that.
Wendy, yeah, I like that, intentional air.
And Bob, thank you.
90 seconds.
I don't always wait that long, but I think you're right.
It can take people certainly that long.
And 90 seconds when you say it and you look at that,
you're like, Oh, that's not very much time,
but it can feel like it is
an eternity when you're the person who's waiting to see
if anyone's going to raise their hand.
But again, I think learning is sometimes
about being uncomfortable and that's okay.
We just lean into that feeling
and just pause a few extra moments.
And I think that can be really helpful.
So does anyone have any ideas
for the group on that you'd like to share
about how you kind of created some sort of schedule
where you were intentional about some engagement
between students during this past semester?
I'm gonna just wait for a moment to see
if anyone has some thoughts of what may have worked
for them, because I think it can help to share ideas.
Shelly, thank you for raising your hand.
You can unmute if you like, and it's up to you
if you wanna show your video.
-: Okay, so I just wanted to have a suggestion
of what not to do.
I had a professor once who was told in a teaching workshop
that you should wait at least 30 seconds to see
if someone is going to respond to a question.
And so what he would do is he would ask the question
and then he would say one, two, three,
that did not work.
So I don't recommend that.
-: (laughs) Thank you.
Oh my goodness, I've never heard
of someone doing that before, but,
I think that the failure with that practice would be that
for me anyway, as someone who likes
a little extra time to think and process,
the saying of the numbers out loud
would be very distracting to me.
So what I will do generally,
if it's like a one minute free writes sort of thing
I have my phone nearby where I will just set a quick timer
on my phone and then I get the alert
and sometimes I'll make sure I unmute.
So everyone hears the little, I use the cricket sound
on my phone and that way there's like an audio
that's an alert, like, okay, the time's up
for that pause in your free write
but it's not overly intrusive during the time
that people are supposed to be thinking.
Erica, would you be willing to unmute
and share how you kind of organize that
where the small groups would meet
in their own channel one time per class?
'Cause I'm just curious how you manage like,
when you might be lecturing and when they were told to go
into their groups and how that worked kind of with the flow.
-: Well, it was very improvisational.
I partly did it in order to take attendance.
So just, I assigned the groups randomly on Blackboard
this was an intro class with 60 students in it.
So there were 15 groups in the class.
And so they had a corresponding channel
in the Teams, in our team for our class.
And then just one time during each class period
they would know that at some point I was gonna give them
a little prompt and they would go off to their channel,
meet with their group, respond to the prompt as a group.
And then, I would call them back
to class and we would discuss what they did
or I would just say, thank you, come back.
We'll keep talking now.
So it wasn't like, I mean,
I was trying to be a little unpredictable
about it because I wanted to take attendance
at different periods during the class
so it wasn't like a student
could just be off something else.
They could come do their attendance.
And then the leave again.
Not that I think that they were doing that, but just.
-: Sure, and did you have them post
their responses somewhere, the group ones?
-: Yes, I did.
And that was one thing that I learned is that
I gave them the option to post it either like
in the chat for their channel or in the notes
for their channel or in their group on Blackboard.
And that was a nightmare when it came to keeping track
of who 'cause it was doing it for attendance.
So I had to go to all three of those places every time,
for every class, for each group.
And I don't recommend that.
So in the coming up semester, I'm just gonna say,
you have to use your Blackboard group journal
or one of those things, haven't settled on which one yet.
But I found actually, I think I had
I'm leaning towards the chat in the group channel
because using notes is good
because it's like they can all work
on the document together, but it's very hard.
Sometimes it will tell me who's contributed what
and other times it won't
and I can't figure out what's the differences.
So the clearest thing in terms
of taking attendance is just to have them write
in the chat in their group channel.
-: Yes, thank you.
I also see that there's been some comments in the chat
where using the group channel wasn't so successful
and it wasn't that the students may have felt kind
of uncomfortable doing that.
Do you wanna unmute for a moment to Daya,
and tell us a little bit more about what happened?
-: Sure, so mine was also an intro class about similar size.
And so my idea was that I would have them meet
in different groups each time to actually get
to know each other a little bit better
and get to know more people.
And I think they just felt
like strangers with these new people each time.
And so eventually I switched probably
about halfway through the class
to having them meet with the same group each time.
And they liked that a lot better 'cause now
they have their own little community where
they already knew people and felt comfortable discussing.
So I think that was a much better way to go.
I just wish I had figured that out a lot earlier.
-: Sure, sure.
And it's kind of difficult to know
when we were first trying this out.
'Cause sometimes, you probably have had
the experience of getting stuck in a group
where you feel like it's a dud
and so you wouldn't want students to do like over
and over have to be in a group where they felt that way.
So I could definitely see why you thought mixing it
up each time was worthwhile.
And I'm curious to Erica, it sounds like probably had
since you made them in Blackboard, you had the same group.
Was that throughout the whole semester.
-: Yeah, and they also did a group work project.
And I will say that in my student evals
that they were responded positively to that.
-: Great, the only thing that I can think of is that
if there is someone in a group where they're feeling
like it's not functioning well,
did either of you have something in place
where a person could speak up and say,
I'm not feeling like this works for me
and I need a different group?
-: So in one of my other classes, I did that last semester
and it was a smaller class and we told them,
if somebody either isn't contributing
or something, please come to tell us.
And nobody came to us and actually most people ended
up really liking their groups.
There was one person at the end of the class who talked
about how her group was really frantic
and it didn't work well for her
but we reminded people constantly to please come
to us if there are problems.
So I think some students just aren't gonna feel comfortable
speaking up about that no matter
how much you give them the chance to.
-: Yes, thank you.
Another thing I've used in the past to give people an avenue
to speak up is the survey tool in Blackboard
because it can be anonymous.
So you can run a simple survey, just asking like
how is your group functioning, et cetera.
And then there can be a space where
if someone wants to report that they'd like to talk
to the instructor or a TA about something happening
in a group that's not performing really well
that they can put their name
in that actual field so that you can contact them
outside of class privately about it.
So it's not like they have to come to you on their own.
It would be part of a survey that everyone else is taking.
So that's just something to think about because
if they don't put their name in the field for extra help
it's an anonymous tool where you can just gauge,
okay things are going well, or no,
a bunch of these people are reporting
that their groups aren't really functioning well
and I need to do some intervention.
So then there's gonna be the whole other layer coming up
this semester, where there is access
to the breakout rooms, functionality in Teams.
And I just wanted to say that
because many of you may be sitting there thinking, well
now we're gonna have breakout rooms
and that's something else that we can do.
And I think as far as the breakout rooms work
in our tests so far is it's perfect
for something where you want to send some students
into small groups together to discuss something
and then bring them back.
And they're not doing a ton of work like that's aimed
at a project where they're gonna be working together
long-term on a project.
It's more for like where you in class
you would do a think pair share because they're sent
into a group there's not a whole bunch
of tools that function right away really well.
And then they can be brought back
by a click of a button on your end, back to the main group.
And they don't, depending on how you've set it up,
they don't always have access to go back
to that same room over and over again.
Whereas in a channel you can have them keep going back
to like their work space, right?
And have documents there and have a chat
that lingers with the group who uses that channel.
So I really feel like
the breakout rooms will be an advantage
but a cautionary one, because you may have that feeling
that we were talking about where they don't feel connection
with the folks, if it's always someone, a different group.
And also the document sharing is a little more difficult
in the breakout groups.
And Bob, I see you posted in the chat
that you have two group activities that repeat three times
and that you use separate group assignments
for each so that they can develop to smaller communities.
Do you wanna say a little bit more about
how you manage that, that might be helpful for the group?
-: Well, those were just, they weren't the,
I think parent share activities was something
that they were basically doing online,
a extended engagement in a discussion board over a week.
And so then they come back to the same group
but there were two separate activities.
So in order to avoid the problem
of being stuck in a dud group, which does happen
because at the very beginning of the semester
I don't know the students.
So I just do a random distribution and it always turns out
that I'll get the five best students in the same group.
I mean, I don't know how that happens, but it does.
And the students who don't participate at all.
And in fact, it'll always happen
that I'll have four students drop the course
and they'll all be from the same group.
So in order to not afflict students with a problem
I mean, if it's too bad, then I can always reshuffle
but I try not to do that because then it interferes
with the community building as well.
So I just off with two separate groups.
So that's always worked out that every student gets
into at least one functioning group
from the beginning that doesn't have to be,
doesn't have to have emergency surgery.
-: Nice, and what size is the class that you're talking
about where you do this?
-: Oh, it would be a class of 40 students.
And so I'm putting them in, depending on
what a number divides most evenly
into the actual number that I ended up with
after the first week
which can be anywhere between 35 and 41.
I'll put them in a group of five to seven students.
-: Great, thank you for sharing that.
I'm wondering if anyone experimented
with having sort of drop-in time where students could relate
to you sort of like an office hour
or an informal coffee time where you,
it was not necessarily
during the regular scheduled remote course,
but there was a time,
it could be maybe 15 minutes before class,
after class or at a designated other time for office hours.
Did you experiment with anything where you created a space
and it, Oh, another thing it could have been
is like an online discussion area
where it was just kind of an open topic.
Did anyone experiment with that idea?
And I'm curious how that may have worked
and if you didn't experiment with it
are you thinking you might try something this semester?
Sarah, I see your hand.
-: Yeah, so I did not do that last semester.
One of my good friends has, Molly's class.
I think it was 40 students.
And she said at one-on-one meetings with them
during the first, like two weeks of the semester.
And I was like, that's a lot of meetings,
she thought it was really important though.
And she said sometimes it was very awkward and short
but other times she was able to kind of connect
with a student and have some, talk about things
where they had questions and they had to.
So I'm adopting her idea for this spring
which is like I have, okay.
So I have 170 students,
I'm putting them into 28 groups of six,
half of them are coming Monday,
half of them are coming Wednesday
but what I'm doing with the first week of class is Monday.
It's like, everyone will be there.
And I would like talk about how everything works
and then Wednesday, I'm gonna have everybody come
but they're gonna go into their groups.
So like there's 14 groups that have 14 names
but there's a Monday of it and a Wednesday of it.
So that when they're all there, they can,
both of the groups can be in a double group,
if that makes sense.
So yeah, basically, I wanna meet one-on-one
with two groups at a time.
So that's kind of my effort to have that like face time
and just a little getting to know you.
I'm worried about it 'cause I feel like
it can be very awkward but I'm gonna come up
with some kind of like kick-off questions and things.
That's my plan.
-: Yes, that's a good idea.
So you're gonna do that
during class time with each group or?
-: Yeah, I mean, basically, I have to also sorted out like
what are the groups doing when I'm not there, 'cause I,
but I'll give them some kind of like maybe something to read
and talk about that relates to the class and then, yeah.
-: Well, I think that's a really interesting idea
and I'm happy that you shared it.
And I liked that idea of having two smaller groups
with the same name.
So like there's an Uber group
and then they have their smaller ones
so that may promote even more community.
We'll see.
-: I mean, the reason I did it that way was I thought like,
okay, instead of having 28 channels, I only need 14 channels
'cause only half of them will be there.
And then I thought, okay, actually, I could also use
that sometimes to have these double groups.
So then maybe I'll come back around and say,
here's what not to do.
-: Maybe, but maybe it'll work really well.
Who knows, let's see.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I see someone else has their hand up.
Was that you Erica?
Yes. -: Yeah.
I was just gonna say, I did have scheduled
in the middle of the semester one week
where I canceled classes and I just set up meetings
with all of the groups that I had.
So since I had two sections, it was 30 groups
and each group had three or four students in it.
And that I think really was a good thing to do.
So Sarah, I think you have the right idea.
I mean, I don't think I could have ended up
with every single student,
but meeting with them in a small group,
they really seem to appreciate that and I did get to,
and I felt more connected to them.
-: Yeah, four classes was 18 students
so I could have done it.
I just didn't think about it at the time
but I did have one-on-one meetings with them kind of
in the middle of the semester talking
about their final projects and those were good.
And we do have, there was a lot of stuff
we had to talk about, but yeah.
And then I thought, Oh, I could have done this earlier
and actually gotten to see what they look like
and things like that, but yeah.
-: Thank you both for sharing that.
And Karen, I see that you posted
in the chat that you had drop-in office hours
and that students attended those.
Do you wanna just say a little bit
about how that went and what you did?
-: It was just a scheduled time each week that was posted
for the students who attend.
And I said that, somebody always came
and they were appreciative to talk
and get clarification on what was happening in class.
I can't say that I saw the whole class by any means,
but it worked.
-: And how big was your class Karen?
-: 50 students.
-: Okay, great.
And I think that something else I've heard
that some faculty do is perhaps just log
into the classroom meeting, maybe 15 minutes early
and then they, might have some music playing.
They might put up a prompt, as an icebreaker kind
of thing before class officially starts.
So students can kind of casually come in early
if they feel like it.
And there can be some, chit chat happening beforehand
just more informal time to connect if they liked to.
And that has worked for some people.
And it's just an option.
It's pretty easy to do if you have a chance to log in
a little early and sometimes students do as well.
And a lot of times I've noticed that in
a couple of classes I joined that students would log
in early and have their cameras on early.
And then once class officially started
they would turn them off.
But that time also before class was,
they felt more comfortable as people were coming
in to have their cameras on and kind of just chit chat
about a TV show they were watching or,
a lot of us are obsessively streaming different shows
that we like right now.
So that was something they were kind of sharing
in the chat or just verbally.
So I thought I'd just throw that out there
as an idea as well.
And I think offering that option as Karen was mentioning
like those office hours were optional that just
having that choice, some people may really like that
as a way to connect and other people it's not for them
but that theirs is an opportunity depending
on how you feel about that way of relating.
And I think it's also perfectly fine to have
a space in a Blackboard discussion board
or if you are a person who likes the Yellowdig tool,
that's another way you can have more informal conversations
as a community in like a more fully online way
not just during a remote session.
I liked this quote here that short says
in this April 2020 blog post about,
if we send out this vibe to our students
that we really feel like communication is important
and getting together and community is something we care
about, they will understand that.
And they will also feel like we care about them
as people and that we want to really help them
in their learning.
So showing that we care not only helps them feel
as Bob just posted in the chat, our shared humanity
but it also helps them with the learning
that they're trying to do in our course
because we're putting out that communication
that we really want them to succeed in class and learn.
And we care about that.
And I was talking a little bit more
about this as we were just sharing some of our ideas
but if there's ways to be flexible.
So not always in Flower Darby's story
where she wasn't very flexible,
she wanted everyone to post a video.
Sometimes that may be necessary depending
on what the assignment is.
But other times there are perhaps options
particularly if you're thinking
about how you can have students just engaging
in their small groups or in the class environment
and what those options are for cameras
or for posting their icon, posting those GIF images
as an icebreaker if they don't feel like having
their camera on or they can't because of their bandwidth.
So just thinking about what are those different options
that you can make available to students
and not always adhering all the time to,
if it's not turned in at a certain point
then you can't get any credit for it.
Are there ways that you can be a little bit more flexible?
And I know that sometimes that can backfire
students might be taking advantage of that.
So you have to be careful.
There's sort of a fine line about that.
Erica, I see your hand is up.
Do you have a comment about that?
Or you just have a legacy?
-: Actually both.
-: Okay -: If that's okay.
Because in my, I had a smaller class also,
and in that class, there were a lot of like basically
every week there was an assignment they could do
and they had to do four of them by the end of the semester.
So there was flexibility in that on that level.
But also I basically told them straight out
at the beginning of the semester
and I repeated it often throughout the semester that
because it's a pandemic and people have all kinds
of different situations and this was a hybrid class
and some were at home students that there were deadlines
on the syllabus and I take those deadlines seriously.
But at the same time, every deadline is a suggestion
except for the group project
which they had to have done at a certain date.
And so most of them did and I definitely get
what you're saying about like it can backfire
if they take advantage of it, whatever
and they can get themselves into trouble
by procrastinating and putting it off too much.
But I actually didn't have that because I did present it
as these are the deadlines, but I repeatedly said to them
if you need to be late, it's fine.
You can be late.
And some of them actually made different arrangements
with me on their own.
So I definitely support that idea.
And I'm gonna, in fact, I feel like,
for me it worked pretty well
and I may continue even after the pandemic situation.
-: Right, and did they need to let you know
they were handing it in late Erica
or how did that work?
-: No, they just had to do it as soon as they could do it.
And if there was somebody who was having like
an issue and they knew they were gonna be late
on a series of things, they talked to me about it
or I would reach out to them
if I saw that they weren't doing any of the work.
And I would just say, I'm checking in with you.
So they weren't getting penalized by it
but I was trying to keep track of it.
In a bigger class, I'm not sure I could do that.
-: Right, does anyone else have anything they'd like to share
about ways they built in some flexibility last semester
or thoughts they might be having
about doing so this semester?
And you'll notice on this slide
there's also this idea of handing out tokens.
I call them life happens tokens.
And so my students can say I'm using one
of my life happens tokens if they miss a journal entry
or they're not able to attend class for some reason.
And they don't have to tell me why,
but, they do have to say, yes
I have to take advantage of that possibility today.
Anyone else have some, wanna share some ideas
of when that has worked for them to have some flexibility?
You can also share when it has backfired
because I know that does happen.
Sarah.
-: My classes are really not very flexible
because sometimes they give out the answer sheets
or in another class, like they were supposed
to be reading this stuff for class discussions
and filling out this response form,
which, if they did it afterwards,
it was not at all the same thing
because it had all the benefit of the discussion.
So what I usually do instead is
if people miss it, well for the homeworks and stuff
I could drop the lowest grade,
but sometimes I'll give them like
an optional bonus assignment so that will,
that will replace their lowest grade
so that the students who did for whatever reason,
I don't care not do it on time, they can do this one.
And the students who did do it, don't have to do it.
I think sometimes when you have extra credit
like the good students also feel obligated to do it.
And I hate that because it's like, well
I'm not trying to pile more work on people
but when you set it up that way
it works to like rescue the ones that need help
but still holding them that like they had to do something
but also not compromising the fact
that you can't turn this stuff in late
because it's not worth the same anymore,
like it did deteriorate in terms of its value.
That's how I do it.
-: Thank you.
I like that optional sort of a rescue assignment at the end.
That's nice.
And the other thing that you said
that I think is important is sometimes
you can just build in to, your grading scheme
that you dropped the lowest quiz or you dropped,
at least you're able to have two attendance,
you miss two classes and your attendance grade
doesn't drop just because you did miss two.
So figuring out if, especially in larger classes
if that can be something that's possible
because then it just gives you
and the student a little more flexibility.
So thank you both for sharing that.
Here, I've posted a link, which we're running short
on time right now, but I'm wondering if Jen
maybe you could post this also in the chat.
And if you click on the slide, you should also
be able to open it in your browser at your computer.
And I can send this out as part of
the follow up email as well,
but there are a number of resources, thank you, Jen,
on this site that I would encourage you to take a look at
and see if any of them are of use to you
and something that you would like to try out
with your students moving forward.
So that's gonna be your tasks that you can do
on your own as a follow-up.
And finally, I know that a lot of people have experimented
with some icebreakers and I think it would be valuable
to take a minute or two and just share if there's a prompt
or something that you did that really worked for you
that you liked, and you felt like
it really helps students get to know each other
or you to get to know them better.
If there's a particular thing that you felt like worked.
I thought just taking a couple moments to share
those would be really useful.
So you can write something in the chat again
or you may raise your hand
if there's something particular that worked.
Oh, I like that one Wendy, nice.
Great Sarah.
If you were an animal, what would you be?
That's fun.
I also have tried this one,
I can also type it in the chat, but it's
if you, let's see, click on the chat here,
if you knew me well, you would know.
So that prompt, if you knew me well, you would know,
and then you give them a particular,
a chance to say something about themselves that,
I've used this in some faculty workshops.
And I just find some astounding things
about people that I would have never guessed about
perhaps, disco, they like dancing disco.
They really enjoyed gaming,
just things that you would never necessarily guess
and it's really a fun way to get
to know people like another layer.
Oh, I like that one.
What is another class you are taking
that you're excited about?
And Jen shared a link to some icebreaker questions
that might come in handy.
Oh, these are great.
Yeah, that's similar.
Something that no one else might know about you.
I think those are fun.
Well, thank you for spending that moment
to brainstorm these, they'll be in the chat.
And I wanted to remind folks
that we are here to support you in these endeavors
as you're trying to think about ways to build community.
And we are trying something new in the next couple
of weeks where we have not only the email
but also drop-in open hours
and some are happening today from one to 3:30.
So you go to our webpage, there's a button
for drop-in open hours and you can click on that button
and go to a live link where Wendy
and I and other folks will be standing by
and we'll be available to help you.
We're also going to ask that you fill
out a survey about this workshop
and I have the link on my next slide here.
But if you need to run off to another meeting,
Jen has put it in the chat and we will also,
you're welcome, Sarah.
We will also be sending this out in an email with those.
We can also put the links that we shared in the chat
to those resources in the email
and get that out to you as soon as possible.
We're trying to really get some feedback on how
these workshops were for folks during the January semester
and be able to use those to improve them.
So thank you so much for being here and participating
for this hour and our community building workshop.
I appreciate all of you.
Wendy, bring your own coffee.
I wish we could be hosting pastries
and coffee and lots of treats, but we will do that again
once we are in person.
It is good to see all of you
and I hope you have a nice rest of the day.
Thank you, Jen.
-: Okay, bye.
-: Bye.