Category: Educational Technologies

H. Naomie Nyanungo

Polling tools, sometimes referred to as classroom or student response systems, are great for engaging students in virtual or face-to-face learning environments. Polling tools such as Poll Everywhere, Vevox, Mentimeter and others can help faculty to assess how well students are grasping new concepts. Used effectively, classroom polling activities can create opportunities for students to provide feedback, pose questions and share reflections during class. Teachers also use classroom polls to facilitate collaborative learning. In this blog, we share strategies for effectively using classroom polling activities to enhance active learning and student engagement.

• Plan for execution and follow-up: It is important to have a plan for what happens before and after each polling activity. The plan should include details on what will happen (e.g., lecture, class activity) before the poll is administered, how student poll responses will be used (e.g., to identify learning gaps), and if student participation will be graded. Also think about how you will follow up (e.g. give feedback or address questions) and integrate the polling activity with other activities in the classes.
• Communicate with students: It is a good idea to communicate the purpose and plan for classroom polling to students so that they understand how this is contributing to their learning. Articulate expectations for participation in polling activities. Doing a few practice polling activities is a good way to get everyone familiar with the tool and process. Be sure to check if all your students have access to the technology required to participate, and offer alternative ways for participation for those that may not have access. 
• Consider your learning goals when writing questions: Polling can be used to achieve a variety of learning goals, such as recall of foundational concepts or application of concepts. It is good practice to write polling questions that support specific learning goals. Types of polling questions include those that ask students about content, application, individual perspective and progress on specific learning activities. You can read more about different types of polling questions targeting different learning goals.
• Vary the types of polling activities: Take advantage of the versatility of polling tools by using different polling activities throughout the semester. This will go a long way toward sustaining student engagement and avoid monotony. There is a wide range of polling activities to pick from such as active lecturing, peer instruction, group work, and learning assessments. Look through this list of descriptions and examples of polling activities for inspiration. Feel free to adapt these activities to your specific context.

We hope that these strategies will help you to effectively use polling to increase student understanding and engagement with you, their peers and course content. Should you need any support, the team of consultants at the CAT is here to help. Please visit our website to book an appointment with a consultant or visit our virtual and on-site educational technology labs.

Happy polling!

References

• Beatty, I. D., Gerace, W. J., Leonard, W. J., & Dufresne, R. J. (2006). Designing effective questions for classroom response system teaching. American Journal of Physics, 74(1), 31–39. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2121753
• Best Practices for Using Polling. (n.d.). Center for Teaching and Learning. https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/best-practices-for-using-polling/
• Classroom Response Systems (“Clickers”). (n.d.). Vanderbilt University. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/clickers/
• Kinds of Polling Questions. (n.d.). Center for Teaching and Learning. https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/kinds-of-polling-questions/
• Student Response Systems | Kent State University. (n.d.). https://www.kent.edu/ctl/student-response-systems

H. Naomie Nyanungo is Director of Educational Technology at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Kyle Vitale & Jeff Rients

The question of whether or not to require that students keep their Zoom cameras on during synchronous online classes can be fraught. On the one hand, we use faces to help gauge participation, presence, and even the flow of conversation. On the other hand, a variety of legitimate concerns can keep students from turning their cameras on. As we enter a new semester, here are some ideas and strategies for crafting a course policy that respects your students’ needs while ensuring effective and rigorous class participation.

Let’s start by acknowledging that students have a lot of good reasons for turning off their cameras. These reasons can range from social (anxiety over being constantly seen by the rest of the class) to familial (sharing a small room with other zoomers) to technical (Zoom optimizes bandwidth, so turning off the camera may be the only thing keeping them in class when using a subpar internet connection). It is better to assume good faith on the part of the students. They logged into the Zoom room, after all, so let’s find ways to honor that decision.

Zoom is a communication tool and we recommend using it to communicate! Talk to your students. If the array of black boxes on the screen is impacting your ability to teach, discuss that fact with the students. As with all things, relate to them as human beings first. You might provide a flexible camera policy in your syllabus, and be sure to discuss your camera policy throughout the semester.

Also, please keep in mind that a live camera is not necessarily evidence of student engagement. Have you ever been in a meeting where you appeared more attentive than you actually were? Even in physical classrooms, presence does not always equate to attention. A robust participation policy will ensure engagement more than any hard rule about camera usage. Also, consider that the Zoom classroom is not a perfect recreation of a traditional classroom. Prior to the COVID lockdown, we did not spend our entire class time looking every single student in the class directly in the eyes from mere inches away. Now we spend all day doing exactly that! Meanwhile, we have no idea what students are looking at on their own screens.

With these facts in mind, you can take some simple steps to mitigate the issue. First of all, ask students to add a profile picture. This can be done by going to the profile section of zoom.temple.us or, in a live meeting, using the video settings tool to navigate to the profile settings. Some smiling faces, even still pictures, may help you feel more comfortable teaching in the Zoom environment.

Second, begin Zoom sessions with a breakout room activity. Students are more likely to turn on their cameras when doing a small group activity like discussing a question, reviewing prior material, or completing an activity. Some of those students may leave their camera on when they return to the main room, and regardless, students will have had a chance to warm up to class time.

Third, consider warm-calling. This strategy lets students know that they are expected to participate during class. In warm-calling, students reflect quietly on a question or chat together, before the instructor randomly calls on names. While reducing stress by giving students time to sort their thoughts, this strategy also maintains the expectation that students be focused and attentive to class lecture or discussion.

Fourth, practice screen rest. For long synchronous classes, consider a “screen break” or encourage all students to turn their cameras off during a reflective moment. This practice helps students suffering from Zoom fatigue and can reenergize everyone’s focus and attention.

Finally, we acknowledge that different types of courses require different levels of camera use. An acting instructor, for example, needs to see the faces of students performing a scene. If you need cameras on, make your case to the students. Explain how the camera helps them achieve the learning goals of the course. Specify when cameras must be on–such as when giving a presentation–and when it is okay to have them off. Review this policy with the students early in the course, remind them of it regularly, and incorporate these rules into your syllabus. Whatever approach you take to Zoom, make sure the students know what to expect from the beginning of the course.

The resources below offer more ideas for navigating Zoom camera policies. As always, feel free to reach out to the CAT with any questions!

• “Should Showing Faces Be Mandatory?” Matt Reed, Inside Higher Ed
• “Should We Require Students to Turn Their Cameras On in the Zoom Classroom?” Anna Lännström, Wabash Center
• “Please, let students turn their videos off in class.” Vincent Nicandro, Aditya Khandelwal, and Alex Weitzman, Stanford Daily News.

Kyle Vitale and Jeff Rients are Associate Director and Senior Teaching & Learning Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Learning, respectively.

Jeff Rients

The breakout room features available in Zoom meetings allow us to craft learning experiences for our students that incorporate small group work. This allows students to test out new ideas and compare their learning to that of their peers. Importantly, this work blossoms in the lower-stakes environment of the small group, because individual students do not feel the same level of scrutiny and social pressure they face in front of their peers and the instructor.

Although breakout rooms are functionally analogous to small group work in the traditional classroom, they differ in some substantial ways. Perhaps the most important difference is that it is impossible to overhear what is happening in other small groups. Although the host of a Zoom meeting can visit each breakout room, you don’t receive any clues regarding student progress (or lack thereof) in the other rooms. Your ability to “read the room” is reduced in comparison to patrolling the room during in-person small group activities. Here are some strategies you can use for better oversight and overall improvement of your breakout room activities:

Clarify instructions

Sometimes breakout room activities don’t work out as planned because the students arrive at their room and don’t know what to do. Whenever possible give written instructions that you share via the File tool in the Chat window. You can also put these instructions on a slide and review them orally before sending students to the breakout rooms. This gives students a chance to review the task and ask questions before they leave the main meeting. If your activity has a hard time limit (and most activities should) include that on the instruction sheet and use the timer option when you set up the breakout rooms.

Keep lines of communication open

Remind students that they can use the Ask for Help button in the breakout room to reach out to you. You may also want to remind students that they can leave their breakout room and come back to the main room to ask a question. You can also use the Broadcast a Message to All tool to send short reminders or clarifications out to all rooms. (But keep in mind that such messages don’t stay up for long, so you may wish to broadcast important information more than once.) And don’t forget that both the host and co-hosts can visit any room they want, though co-hosts must be manually placed in a breakout room by the host first before they are able to move among the other rooms.. You could even appoint some students as co-hosts with the task of checking in on the breakout rooms.

Encourage accountability

Perhaps the easiest thing you can do to energize students in breakout rooms is to create activities that require some sort of reporting out to the instructor and/or the rest of the class. The simplest approach would be to call on students after the activity, asking them to share their results. (This technique works best when you warn the students ahead of time that you are going to do this; you can also put this fact in the instructions you share.) Another approach is to create a worksheet that each student must complete and hand in via the Canvas Assignment tool, with a deadline set for the end of the Zoom session. Or you can build the activity around a Canvas Quiz that the students work on together while in the breakout rooms.

Vary activities

Sometimes student participation wanes simply because they are used to the routine of the classroom. A new breakout room activity that requires different skills for success or that poses a new challenge can re-activate disengaged students.

Temple instructors needing additional assistance with breakout rooms or other educational technology issues are invited to visit our Virtual Drop-In Ed Tech Lab, a Zoom room that is open 8:30am-5pm Monday through Friday. There you’ll find our ed tech specialists ready to help you, with no appointment needed. Alternatively, you can make an appointment for a one-on-one consultation with a member of either our pedagogy or ed tech teams. We’re here to help you!

Jeff Rients is Senior Teaching and Learning Specialist at Temple’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Olivia Given Castello and Nicole DeSarno

The library is a critical learning support for college students, but the challenge is to make students aware of all the library provides. Since many students are learning partially or fully online, Learning Management System (LMS) integration is a handy way to bring library resources and librarian help to your students where they learn: in your LMS course.

Integrating library resources into the LMS can make your students more successful by giving them easy library access. Linking to library content within a course has been shown to increase students’ use of materials. Including information about library services gives them access to learning support when and where they need it, in a way they can refer back to throughout the semester. This can be especially useful for connecting the library to distance students and hybrid online learners, many of whom seldom visit the library in person.

LMS platforms can connect automatically with systems used by academic libraries. Two common ones are Research Guides and Course Reserves. There are also simple best practices you can follow when linking to library resources that will improve your students’ connection to the library.

Research Guides

Research guides are librarian-authored web pages recommending library resources to help students get started on research for particular disciplines, courses, or assignments. At Temple University, research guides are automatically integrated into the LMS via the “Library” link, an item in the default Course Navigation menu located in the left-hand column of Canvas courses. When clicked, this link shows a matched guide from Temple Libraries’ Research Guides system. The guide shown varies depending on the Canvas course. In most courses, the Library link shows a generic guide that highlights commonly sought information and tools, such as building hours, book and article search, a chat widget for live librarian help, and an online scheduler for research appointments. 

In courses where a faculty member works with a librarian to create a course-specific research guide, that guide is shown. In our pilot study at Temple, we learned that students engaged most with the Library link when it showed a course-specific library research guide! 

Having library resources in the LMS helps students build research skills and get help, and automatic integrations like Temple’s Library link bring these resources to students without any extra work for the faculty member.

Beyond automatic integrations, faculty can also manually add smaller portions of research guides in other areas of a course. Once you identify a single box or page from a larger research guide that would help your students, you can manually embed it in the area of your course content where students will find it most useful. At Temple, this type of content can be added to Canvas as an “External Tool.”

Course Reserves

Another common library integration concerns course reserves: high demand materials related to a specific course that you can make available to students via your library. E-reserves are downloadable in the LMS, while physical reserves are available for short term lending at the library. 

At Temple, faculty members can add the Course Reserves tool, which is separate from the default Library link, to Canvas’ navigation menu in the course Settings. You then request items be placed on reserve from within the tool by adding new requests or importing Reserves items from a previous semester. Library staff see and process the requests, and arrange any necessary document scanning, purchasing, or other additional steps. Once processed, the active reserve items show in the Canvas course.

Persistent links to library e-resources

Academic libraries offer many types of content that you can integrate directly into the LMS as course materials: articles, ebooks, videos, databases, and more — but use persistent links, not the URL in the browser window. A persistent link (a.k.a. durable link, stable link, permalink) is a URL that connects directly to a specific full-text source in a library database or electronic subscription. Using the persistent, library-linked, URL ensures all students (on-campus and off) can access the source. These links are stable over time, and they also eliminate the need to worry about potential copyright issues since students will be directed through the institutional login page if necessary for access. Different databases offer varying options for getting a persistent link to an item, depending on their interface. 

At Temple, persistent links can be added to Canvas as an “External URL.” Intentionally linking to library e-resources is the way to make optimal use of your library’s collections. It also creates a bridge for students to library research support services, since many library e-resource platforms include embedded librarian help.

Want to get started connecting to the library in your LMS?

To explore options for integrating the library into your LMS course, contact your institution’s library staff. Librarians will consult with you on how to integrate library resources, and can let you know what automatic integrations are available on your campus.

At Temple University, start at our guide to embedding library resources in Canvas. It includes step-by-step instructions and short video tutorials on the options described here. Contact your subject librarian to discuss the best library resources for your class, request a course-specific library guide be created, or change what shows on the Library link in your course. Consider adding a librarian to your course in the Designer role. We are happy to help with library-related Canvas options. Have other questions? Need additional help? Email us at asktulibrary@temple.edu!

Olivia Given Castello and Nicole DeSarno are members of the Learning & Research Services unit of Temple University Libraries.

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University

My first experience teaching an online course occurred in the late 1990s when Drexel University’s College of Information Studies asked me to convert my face-to-face digital research course to an online format. My  primary focus  was just getting things to work. Quality learning experiences were an afterthought.

Fast forward to 2017 and after a ten-year gap I agree to teach online again, this time for San Jose State University’s (SJSU) iSchool program for aspiring librarians. Despite my prior experience teaching online, I took a mandatory 25-hour mini-course in online instruction. It reinforced much of what I learned in other professional development experiences, but also introduced me to Canvas.

Less anticipated was the robust expectation to achieve continuous learning. SJSU takes online education seriously and the institution requires that all online courses adhere to the Quality Matters ™ framework. Their high-quality standards require instructors to complete continuous learning modules in any semester they teach. One of these sessions got me thinking differently about student evaluations. Instead of perceiving them as a necessary evil, I discovered they can serve as both motivator and shaper of quality instruction.

In the online session “SOTES Strategies and Lessons” I learned that student evaluations, when analyzed in aggregate, help instructors to modify their educational methods to align with student learning needs. SOTES, (Student Opinion of Teaching Effectiveness) is SJSU’s student evaluation system. No doubt every instructor reviews course evaluations seeking clues that lead to substantive learning improvement. Instead of tweaks to assignments or syllabi, SOTES can lead to fundamental pedagogical change.

The SOTES session gave twelve tips – focusing on ways to anticipate what most helps students learn and succeed – to influence how educators can design a better learning experience.

Be Practical to Demonstrate Relevance

Theory is important but these mostly adult learners, often working in the field, want concrete examples and anecdotes. Use practical assignments and explain how students will benefit later.

Create Assignments to Enhance Learning
Students want assignments directly relevant to what’s in the lecture. Their top two requests: avoid giving busy work; structure assignments into smaller blocks that build on each other.

Emphasize What’s Important
Provide a verbal or written summarization of the top takeaways from a learning module’s content. Keep reiterating key concepts. Share your observations on the best ideas from course discussions. At the start of each week, I summarize what students should know from the prior week, where they demonstrated competency, where improvement is needed, and how it will apply to new content.

Respond, Respond, Respond

We are told to quickly and comprehensively respond to students’ questions and comments, in discussions or emails. The SOTES clearly confirm that. Respond in a variety of communications formats (audio, video, email, etc.) and keep it cordial and respectful. Avoid putting students on the spot or making them feel regret over their question or comment.

Set the Atmosphere
Online learning is about more than content and assignments. Students expect a patient, positive and encouraging instructor who is present, well organized and gives students opportunities to interact and learn from each other. The right classroom culture facilitates learning.

Easy to Approach
If the atmosphere is right, students will feel they can easily contact and communicate with their instructor. My course was asynchronous, but I offered a weekly synchronous office hour (varying days/times) in order to create connection and elevate students’ comfort level in reaching out to me.

Appreciate Student Diversity
Students respond poorly to an instructor who plays favorites with respect to differences in age, gender, race or work experience. Pay attention to differing backgrounds in student’s self-introductions and commit to treating students equally.

Passion Speaks Loudly
Set the tone by being the champion for the course topic. Instructor enthusiasm is contagious. If the instructor lacks excitement for the topic, students will too.

Challenge Them Intellectually
Students want “make us think” activities that require more than answers to rote questions. Encourage creative thinking by allowing students to develop multimedia projects in which they apply course concepts to their own experience.

Fair Grading Matters
Creating clear assignment instructions and rubrics to guide students is no easy task, but taking time in advance to think through the details of assignment grading will minimize grading disputes or claims of unfairness.

Make the Complex Understandable
Students expect their instructor to make the abstract concrete through the use of realistic examples. Communicate your personal experience in lectures, assignment instructions and discussions.

Provide Meaningful Feedback
Give praise for work well done as well as constructive criticism. Be specific in pointing out what students get right and where they need to improve. Add comments to graded assignments and return them to students while they can benefit from feedback.

Whatever personal opinions online instructors hold about student evaluations, it feels much better when they reflect a uniformly successful learning experience. Learning those factors that lead students to judge a course as successful and an instructor as competent, organized and responsive, greatly shift the odds of a positive outcome in the instructor’s favor. The SOTES session changed how I think about student evaluations. I now see them as a valuable resource for course design, not simply an after-the-fact measure of “How’d I do?”. Though mostly applicable to online learning, these dozen tips could work equally well for face-to-face courses. I encourage you to put them into your practice.