Supporting students in the pandemic classroom: Two practical tips
By Mia Tarau - Materials Writer
The pandemic has changed the classroom fundamentally, and things have not yet settled. We are entering the third year of emergency teaching, with remote learning still here and things changing with little notice in the blink of an eye. This has placed significant strain on us as teachers, but also on our students. So how can we support them in the online classroom in ways that would promote both learning and student well-being? Below I offer two practical tips that I have been employing in my practice since the very first emergency online class in March 2020.
1. PROMOTING STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN THE ONLINE CLASSROOM
Anxiety, depression, feelings of loneliness and isolation: we all know that our students have been experiencing these, often resulting in online classrooms dominated by black Zoom screens and muted microphones.
How I overcame this challenge:
In my very first undergraduate Zoom tutorial I asked my students to choose weekly themes that would make them keen to show up, cameras on, mics unmuted – something fun that would take 5 minutes at the start of each class, with the goal of getting everyone to talk to each other. And boy, what a fun ride the rest of the semester was! The two most engaging themes that semester were:
“show and tell’ week, pet edition – all cameras were on, and for the first five minutes of the tutorial all my students were chatting, introducing and cuddling their pets; they also remembered each other’s pets’ names, and continued to ask about them and bond over this throughout the semester – such a win!
“quarantine fashions”: the absolute winner, most voted-for and talked-about outfit was the ‘duvet tent’ – yes, it means exactly what you think it means, it’s all in the name!
This ice breaker can easily be adapted to suit any group, depending on your student’s age and interests, so let your students take the lead in the beginning: they WILL show up!
2. PROMOTING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN THE ONLINE CLASSROOM
Learning online, and especially alone, can be super demotivating – all teachers have had to confront this reality over the past two years. My two cents: the less engaged our students are from us as teachers and from each other, the less they will engage in learning. This can only have a negative impact on their overall learning performance and achievements, which is the last thing we want for them.
How I overcame this challenge:
I have always encouraged my students to form study groups and actively participate in them throughout the semester. The pandemic has not changed that aspect of my teaching practice: on the contrary, I believe technology has afforded even richer opportunities for my students to learn together. Once I got my students to bond through those student-led ice breakers, I encouraged them to create virtual study groups to attend weekly. However, we didn’t stop there: I also encouraged them to ‘visit’ other study groups once every couple of weeks, since it was so easy to do so online, to check in with each other, help each other with tougher concepts, share insights on their learning journey, and discuss challenges that come with studying online. While monitoring this was more difficult for me for obvious reasons (for example, time constraints, both mine and my students’ and the extent to which they wanted to share this with me), I was happy to hear that many did follow these suggestions and felt that virtual study groups were extremely helpful, diminishing their feelings of isolation from their peers and from learning. This was also strongly reflected in their performance on their assessments throughout the semesters.
What are some of the strategies YOU have been using to support your students in the pandemic classroom?