I depend pretty heavily on my level of Edutainment for the first couple of weeks. I know that I'm teaching courses that students don't want to take and I know that I have enough New-Guy Sheen to get up in front of class and flap some jazz hands and get students engaged. I also know that song-and-dance won't keep the engaged for ever--but getting them on board is one of the most important parts of teaching general ed courses that they wish they didn't have to take.
I'm hoping that video will replace some of that, but it's also nice to be reminded that my presence is required throughout the six weeks.
One of things that I do (and pride myself on) is learn all of my students' names on the first day. This proves to be more difficult as the first week goes on and my list of names goes from 20 or 35 to 105, but I've found that students appreciate the effort and if I can get them to appreciate my effort that will translated to them working for me later in the semester. In fact, I just had a student in an end-of-the-semester what-I-learned letter tell me that he was still impressed that I learned their names. This will obviously be easier with 6 students than 20+, but the thing that will be more challenging will be finding a way for them to get to know each other. I rely on small group work regularly and I usually let them work with the same people all the time--I find that it's more important for them to develop a relationship or two, then to work once with everyone in the class. I know they're not always talking about the content, but that's fine--in fact, if I didn't think they'd leave the topic to never return, I'd probably encourage that. Anyway: Online that task seems a bit more daunting. I've been brainstorming activities similar to the icebreakers that I always had to do at camps or youth rallies growing up--just something for them to get to know each other a bit more, so that we can all know each other, so that we can all stay more engaged over the six weeks.
Love your comments about learning students' names and having students work in group, Luke. Learning names is a challenge for me but it's worth it. As far as groups go, I've been putting students in groups of three in my courses. They work with the same group for about a month or so, and then they get a new group. I have not done any formal data-gathering, but I'm convinced that attendance has gone up because of these groups. They know someone will miss them if they are not there. Doing this same thing online might look a little different, but it will be valuable there, too, I would think.
ReplyDeleteI like to use small groups in my classes as well, but sometimes find that students get irritated with them. Maybe it's because the activities I'm having the students work on are not meaningful enough? How do you balance this small group work with traditional lecturing? I'd love to fully "flip" my Sociology classroom, but it seems in course evaluations that there are still a majority of my students who want me to convey the information to them (at least for a good portion of the class) in the traditional lecture format.
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