Good morning! Welcome to the webinar on
synchronous teaching. We're going to talk
today about
teaching live with a class session,
as you've been encouraged to do by the
provost. First I want to start by
thanking everyone
here the faculty for working so hard
this summer
and last spring, and then continuing that
hard work throughout the fall
to find a way to accommodate the
students needs the best way you possibly
can.
We know that your goal was to
teach in the format that your students
wanted, to the extent that you could
in a healthy manner and unfortunately
this move to
fully online teaching has kind of caught
us all off guard,
but we knew all summer to be thinking
about having synchronous meetings with
our
students, in either a hybrid or a form
or an online format and so we want to
just kind of
underscore the importance of doing that
now that we have moved into the fully
online format. The provost as I said has been strongly
encouraging us to
include synchronous live meetings as
part of our teaching this semester
and we want to talk today about how to
do that in full class sessions where
possible.
Synchronous instruction we know benefits
the students by giving them the
important feeling of being engaged in a
community of scholars
and and not feeling as isolated as they
otherwise might if they're all just
working on their own
in their own space throughout the
semester. The benefit of course has to be
balanced with
issues of distraction and fatigue
sometimes called zoom fatigue
that can occur when we engage for hour
after hour in a video conferencing
platform and so we'll talk a little bit
about that today too.
The question of when we should provide
synchronous meetings has been posed to
us
frequently, you should really think
about trying to hold your synchronous
meetings during your class times; that's
when your students have
told you that they would be available by
signing up for the class in the first
place
and so that's when you want to offer
synchronous meetings if you can.
We're not at all requiring and neither
is the provost that you
meet for the full time of your courses,
you know the full three hours per week
at the exact same times that you
normally would, we'll you'll see some
examples today where
the students can do some work ahead of
time and then they can come and
engage with you briefly or
over a long period to have that sense of
community
with their classmates and to get to know
you better as well.
You could also offer additional meetings
during office hours but
we know that students may or may not be
available then so we don't want to rely
on those entirely.
We expect at FACET that the the students
at towson will benefit very
significantly from the earnest
faculty work that has been happening in
best practices so that
you know you've already been
great teachers this is what Towson
University faculty are known for,
but that you've worked so hard over the
summer to
to get even more skilled at a
handling this new environment really is
going to be beneficial to the students
and we know that and we
are really grateful to you for being
here today to talk with us about how we
can support you,
as you build your cadre of synchronous
approaches. I'm going to hand off now to
one of our colleagues, Dominique.
So go ahead and take over Dominique. All
right!
Great, thanks Trish, so if you're
new to hosting synchronous sessions you
might be wondering what
platform should I use where where
should I
be hosting these meetings and one of the
things that we've discussed at FACET is
possibly using blackboard collaborate
ultra,
if you're new to this just because it's
easy for the students to get in and out
of it,
and it also has a lot of interactive
features
that allow you to sort of get and gather
a response
from the students as you would in a
traditional face-to-face class, right.
So they can sort of raise their hands,
they can
give you a little bit of feedback, thumbs
up thumbs down, that sort of thing.
If you're new to blackboard
collaborate I just wanted to point out a
few things that
you might want to use with your students
during a synchronous session,
so as you see here in the image if you
were to click
on the little icon at the bottom of the
screen that you're looking at with the sort of person icon on it or
it's your profile picture, if you click
that there's a suite of
options for students to give you
feedback and they range.
Right, so you can indicate that you're
happy, you can indicate that you're sad,
faster, slower, also quick polling,
agree or disagree, is something that that
really works
and then also if a student has to
let's say take a bathroom break get
some water they can
indicate that they're away okay and so
these are all things that you can use to
sort of pull the students
in to you know help them be engaged
not only with you but with their
classmates as well.
Other features that are available of
course the microphone what i'm using
right now
as well as the webcam and then we can
also sort of raise our hands,
and then we can lower them as well so
those are some really good features that you and the students can use
it's built in,
okay. Other options that we have
available
include the chat, okay; so for
some people maybe there's a time in
which they want to
ask a question but maybe someone's
speaking they can pop that into
the chat on the right side of the window,
they can
see who else is in the session with them
their classmates
but they can also change their
notification settings as well so
sometimes we might have pop-ups or sounds that
are
happening as we are in the live session
and so maybe you want to alert students
to
the settings button if you know they
just want to turn those notifications
off so that it can really focus in
on the content being delivered, so those
are some of the
options for interactions available in
blackboard collaborate and i'm going to
turn it over,
to Carla.
Good morning, I know Trish mentioned a
couple of these benefits but I want to
talk just a little bit more about the
benefits of doing
this synchronous kind of teaching, so
first of all
engagement, students can connect with you
real time when you're teaching
synchronously
and they can also engage with one
another, depending on the kinds of
activities that you give them they can
talk with one another
and engage that way, there's a number of
different tools
as Dominique just mentioned, there's chat
they can talk using their microphones if
they have them,
they can see one another if they're
showing their camera screens, they can
see one another
there are other platforms other than
collaborate if you choose to
use something different there's zoom and
there's also a Webex that can do some
of the
the same sorts of things in terms of
engagement and collaboration.
Students can also get an increase in
interactivity when using synchronous
teaching,
so you can ask questions polls as
Dominique mentioned
or there are virtual whiteboards in both
zoom and collaborate
that students can show their answers on
or solve a problem
on, so they can can get more interactive
with the things that you're teaching.
Immediate feedback, this is one of my
favorite things
immediate feedback is better for
learning, so teaching synchronously you
can question, you compose a challenge, and you can
get immediate feedback
from them so some of the little
options that Dominique was pointing out
in terms of
you know do you understand this, you 
could say yes
you can say no just with the little hand
raise or the actual symbol
for saying yes or no. You can also use
polling
to to check on things and get feedback
on them so you could create a multiple
choice question that
assesses understanding of some content
that you
might have just talked about or maybe
they've read about before class and
they can indicate via a poll, so you can
get immediate feedback and they can get
immediate feedback
on one of their understanding the
content.
They can also ask questions and get
answers in real time not have to wait
you know until whenever you
get the chance to answer an email
question,
and finally collaborate students can
collaborate
more easily in synchronous classes so
they can work on learning activities
they can work on projects they can work
on,
like in my classes they're going to be
working on case studies together,
and they can do those things in breakout
rooms both zoom collaborate
and i'm not sure about webex but I
think it offers breakout rooms as
well.
So our task today is to it'll just kind
of give you a number
of fairly easy to implement sorts
of activities that you could you know
more or less almost got to pop into your
classes so doing
a synchronous lecture and you've got
some powerpoints
one of the ways to do some of this
engagement
immediate feedback and interactivity is
to just
pop a multiple choice question in there,
you can do it as as a poll
or if you don't want to get that
complicated you can just simply include
it as a slide and you can have students
you know
answer via one of the feedback options a
raised hand, a yes
no, something like that; so
these sorts of things that I have pulled
out here as
examples over the next couple of slides
are things that
work a little bit towards the
mid upper levels of bloom's taxonomy
that we can
you know do some things that are
checking understanding checking ability
to apply or is in this one you know
checking an ability to interpret
something, so it could be a graph, could
be a chart, could be a series of data
points,
could be a picture if you were you know
teaching art, or
if it was a recording you could do a
music and have someone answer a question
about a piece of music.
A case or scenario multiple choice
question is another way to do some kind
of
an interactive piece in a synchronous
class so
this is just a little example you know
of just a little case, so cases can be
you know fairly simple, cases can be much
more complicated
in terms of they can even have multiple
slides that sort of build the different
pieces of a case, so
someone's arrived at the emergency room
they have these symptoms
and what's the first thing that you
would do, okay you've done that
and gotten some test results what's the
next you could do? So you can even have
them
more complicated where they build on
each other.
This is also one of my favorite ways of
making multiple choice questions that
are towards the upper levels of this
bloom's taxonomy
so lower levels are things that check
their ability to remember or understand
that's where the interpretation one kind
of fell in
upper level ones would be moving on into
the more sophisticated pieces of this
taxonomy
so one of the ones that you can do is to
simply take the verbs
that kind of fit with each of these
different levels
and I kind of picked a series that go
from lower to upper levels of bloom's
taxonomy so different
summarize applies kind of moving up and
then we kind of go all the way up to the
top with
problem solving synthesizing information
or justifying decisions.
So what you do with this very the verb
multiple choice question
is that you take one of those verbs and
you turn it into a noun
and then you bury it and so you put it
in the sentence, so the sentences that
you might put it in would be
say you know, which is the best
definition
for this concept we just talked
which is the best interpretation
or the most accurate interpretation and
then you give them some choices to choose from, or you know identify
a correctly constructed sentence
or correctly programmed piece of
computer programming. So that's what
burying the verb is.
All right, I am going to turn it back to
Dominique.
Hey, okay, so I'm going to go over a
couple of things that you can
do with your students during the session
as well
we'll start with something called
advanced organizers or organizers for
short,
and we'll go over two types of
organizers the KWL chart
and the pro-con grid, all right.
So the
KWL chart, so KWL if you haven't heard of
it before
stands for: know, want to know,
and learn; so you
essentially give students this organizer
or this chart the KWL chart and what it will help them do is
connect the unfamiliar
with the failure, so they come to your
classes
already having known or experienced
certain things,
so you can probe them and ask them well
what do you already know about this
right and what are some things that
you would like to know about it,
and that just sort of helps pull them in
and then as you're giving your
lecture what you can do
is have them sort of think through what
is it that they're learning,
right, so we're connecting what we
already know
with what you as the professor is
introducing as
new content right. So the KWL chart you
could give this to your students um
during the session, some people give
it before,
right they'll have the students fill out
maybe the first two columns
and then during class they'll finish
working on the third one,
but you can give it to the students
during your live session
and you can place your students into
breakout groups and have them complete
the first two columns here
right, so let's say I was
doing a cooking class right and
we were working our way up to making a
nice pasta marinara or something like
that,
maybe I would want to know what in your
experience what has
cooking pasta been like for you what's
been your experience with this that's
just sort of helping generate discussion,
so
in their breakout groups you can have
them think through what they
what they already know and other
questions that they have
and once they've completed those two
columns you can bring them back into the
main room
with the entire class and they get to
share out what they put into these
columns okay,
and as they're sharing out you can
encourage the students to take
more notes, whether they're typing them
or they printed this out and they're
just
jotting it down, but what we want to do
is to have them think about
okay here's what we sort of already are
thinking or how we're approaching this
topic
before we give you content about it, okay.
So
you bring them back into the main room
you've gone over what they already know
and then now is the
time for you to deliver some new content,
so
as you are delivering your lecture you
are also encouraging students to
complete this third column which is
well what am I learning, what new
information am I gathering based on the
content that's being presented,
and then I would say leave a few
minutes at the end of your session,
maybe 10-15 minutes to have the students
share
out what they populated in that third
column,
and that is a great way to sort of check
for understanding
and make sure that people are on the
same page, if they're not on the same
page what are those
sort of fuzzy points that we need to clarify, okay. So that's the KWL chart
and this one it really does work to
sort of like
help them see that I already have some
background knowledge here and
maybe that helps them sort of see okay I
know this and then here's the new
information that I'm gathering.
The other organizer is the pro-con grid
and this is great for comparing
and contrasting ideas, now I would say
that
using this chart it works really really
well if students
already have sort of a basic
understanding of the concept
and now they're moving on to sort of
weigh the options or waive complications
or the nuances
of the current issue, so what you could
do is
give this sort of organizer to your
students during the session
and then you could basically do small
group breakouts
and in those breakouts the students are
supposed to come up
with maybe three bullet points for the
pros and three bullet points for the
cons,
and they talk among themselves and
then you can pull them back into the
main class
right, and as I'm sure you are thinking
right,
now is the time for us to share out what
folks came up with
and so you can do things like have a
group lead or group
spokesperson who is going to share out
one pro and one con or however you want
to do that,
but they'll come back together and share
out what they put and it's great
because not everyone thinks the same way
so they might actually have overlooked
something
and now they can sort of add it to their
list
or their grid here right, to compare
those ideas, all right.
And as you might imagine this really
does once you sort of establish
like what the pros and cons are that
naturally leads to discussion and so I
would imagine that a good portion of this activity would
lead to some really good discussion
okay. And then
in terms of how you make these things,
pretty simple
right, so you can create your handout
I use microsoft word or you can use
powerpoint, choose something that's
comfortable for you
but essentially all you need to do is
add a table
and you'll add three by two, that's three
columns and two rows for a KWL
or a simple t-chart is just two columns
and two rows
and then you can upload that to
blackboard and I would also say
to introduce it to your students
right so you can pull it up on the
screen
and talk to them about the what and the
why behind why you're doing organizer,
what you would like for them to get out
of it
and during class the students are
filling
out and that's what I love about it is
that they're sort of gathering their
notes together and they'll have
something
to walk away from the class with and
then
after they've had a chance to sort of
work with that organizer,
you can share out, you can discuss and
you can review it;
okay. All right, so let's move on to
some other types of things that you can
do these are called guided notes.
Two types of guiding notes include the
fill in the blank outlines as well as
the
close notes, so the fill in the blank
outline
is a really great handout
because what it does is it frames the
lecture for them so you take sort of a
basic outline structure with roman
numerals or
however you want to organize it and then
you populate that with
main ideas and supporting ideas from
your lecture
but what you're going to do is take out
certain essential words or
really important concepts that you want
the students to
really digest and and memorize,
and so as you see here this is an
example of the link outline
and I think for a lot of the
freshmen and sophomore this will help
them sort of think
in terms of organization what
information is being delivered to them
it organizes it
for them almost, okay and then
we have this close notes activity which
I love.
Now the difference between filling the
blank outlines and closed notes
is just about structure right, so notice
that
the example before is structured as a
typical outline and I think that
is, yeah for reinstalling that idea of a
hierarchy or
a sort of process right that needs to be
ordered,
but if the structure doesn't matter to
you
closed notes allow you to basically type
up passages
and you remove the essential words that
you want the students to pick up
okay, so you give them either the fill in
the blank outline
or the closed notes and you deliver your
lecture
and the point is for them to be
listening so that
they don't miss those blanks right, they
want to be able to fill it in
and by the end of the lecture they
should have most of this filled out
sometimes students might get distracted
and they might miss one so I always
encourage professors to circle back
and leave time at the end of your
session to say, "okay
we've got you know 10-15 minutes let's
see what you populated into the
film in the blanks", and that just sort of
sort of
helps level the playing field and
establish is like here is the right
answer here's the not right answer
and they can walk away from that
session
knowing that they have those points that
you sort of
put together they had to work to get the
answers.
So last but not least,
I wanted to let you know that one of my
favorite things about doing guided notes
is that you can use them to shape
other exercises right, so let's say that
you already have put together some
guided notes
you can turn those guided notes into
poll questions that help,
again check for understanding so I took
one this is a definition from a textbook
on rhetoric,
so it says, "blank the study of how
language is used to communicate",
right so I might put that on the guided
notes and we might go over that for one
synchronous session right,
and then when we return for the next
session
I actually might pop this into the poll
right to see if they recall
what we had went over in the previous
session so
there are so many ways that you can
use these things you can use them to
guide your test construction quiz
construction
all those sorts of things, or even just
like simple knowledge checks that you
might assign to students,
but essentially all you need to do is
look back at your guided notes and then
try to think about ways that you can
reframe
the statement as a question or you can
sort of borrow from
Carla's example about burying the verb,
but there are so many different ways
that you can use these activities that
you create.
All right, and if you're wondering how to
make guided notes
all you need to do you need to select
your content whether that's a powerpoint textbook
is really good if you if
for vocab sorts of things or if you have
some lecture notes already
you can turn that into your guided notes
but essentially you create a handout in
word or whatever word processing
software is
preferable to you, and you
are going to put your blanks in there
and then
you upload that to blackboard, make it
available to the students and then
introduce it to them so that they know
what it's about and what they're
expected to do
and you can have them complete that
during class, and again
share review and discuss at the
end; and it's really nice to see the
students being like okay I think I've
got it, because
without the guided notes it's hard
sometimes to tell what's essential
information
and then what are some of the things
that might not be as essential right now
and so this is what helps sort of
scaffold it for them and it promotes
really
nice note taking for them as well.
All right, so I'm going to turn it back
over, this concludes
my portion of activities.
Here's the support slide.
