by Yvonne Braun
The global pandemic that has driven the need for remote instruction creates or amplifies stresses and challenges during this extraordinary time. Teaching and learning through this crisis requires, more than ever, that we consider practices that demonstrate care for our students’ wellbeing and recognize how the challenges of the moment may affect the student experience and students’ academic progress. The recent survey of students highlighted what students are experiencing during remote instruction, including specific practices that students appreciated or found challenging this term.
The recent survey of faculty instructors was an opportunity to hear what faculty are experiencing during this extraordinary time. One of the major themes in the responses was faculty members’ concerns for students. In fact, nearly half (48%) of all faculty comments focused on students including concern for the quality of the student experience, students’ wellbeing, how to best engage and connect with students in classes, and students’ academic success.
Below are three short profiles of faculty instructors highlighting how they are creating opportunities to demonstrate care for students’ wellbeing and academic success this term, while also helping students build resilience skills. Each faculty instructor also shares one piece of advice for other instructors. As always, not all ideas may work equally well for all courses and disciplinary considerations, but hopefully seeing how colleagues across campus are finding ways to create connection remotely inspires you to find solutions that fit best for you and your students.
For additional ideas on connecting with students, see this previous spotlight on student engagement, TEP’s blog post on Interpersonal Connection and Remote Peer Learning and this recording of a TEP/UO Online workshop on the same topic.
Name: Jagdeep K. Bala
Unit: Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: PSY 201 (500 students), 302 (100 students)One Way I’m Demonstrating Care to Enhance Student Learning:
I listen. Typically, I include students in decision making about course plans, format and structure, so this term I figured it was particularly critical to query students about their circumstances and familiarize myself with their needs.Week Zero through One, I polled students to ask them which elements of my course plan, format and structure they thought would be conducive to their learning and engagement this term, or was a concern. This term, the primary drivers were students’ worries about not having interactions in class, and the asynchronous availability of course materials to facilitate self-paced learning. To address these, I made all recorded lessons and explorations available in weekly modules. To address their concerns about organizational challenges, I provide checklists that help students stay on track, as also increase their engagement by helping them develop metacognitive processes around their learning and tasks for the week. To help with technical and access issues, I’m flexible with due dates. To address students’ feelings of isolation and help build a learning community, I am using weekly discussion boards on canvas and holding live office hours and ‘Wednesday webinars’ during class time that are also recorded and available asynchronously. I’ve found that many more students are hanging out with me in office hours via zoom than ever came to office in the first three weeks of term. Turned out, these were all the easy parts!
Then there are my students who are in unique circumstances, struggling with daily stressors, physical and emotional health challenges, and severe financial constraints. I chat with them across a camera, refer them to UO resources, but also let them light my path with: “What might help you?”
Planning my course around student needs
Checklist
One piece of advice: Let’s connect with students, listen to them and be flexible. Many are dealing with circumstances we can’t intuit, or relate to. If we focus on our student’s wellbeing, engagement, application and learning will benefit, right?
Name: Alison Gash
Unit: Department of Political Science, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course(s): PS 275: Legal Process and PS 368: Gender in the LawOne Way I’m Demonstrating Care to Enhance Student Learning:
I’ve implemented a number of practices to reach current and former students where they are, acknowledging the extraordinary quarantine circumstances that we are each experiencing in different ways and addressing directly how they personally are coping. This creates a bridge for students to build community in ways that support their well-being, develops their resilience skills, and enhances their learning.For my PS 275 course: (200 students, asynchronous): I created an introductory assignment asking students to respond to specific prompts that invited them to share about themselves and how they are making the quarantine more bearable:
- Your preferred name and gender pronouns
- 3 WORDS that describe you
- 3 of the STRANGEST things you like
- 3 SENTENCES describing how you are feeling during the quarantine.
- 3 things you have done to make the quarantine more bearable.
- 3 TIPS you would give to others for making the quarantine more bearable.
- 3 things you have learned to do, or learned about yourself, while in quarantine.
Students were split up into “reflection groups” of 10 or 12 students and each member of the group was asked to respond to three of their group members’ posts. My GEs and I have each become the point person for 6 or so reflection groups and are providing comments on the group member postings as well. We have a) learned a lot about the students–in particular that many of them are rediscovering their love of cooking and b) have seen some great dialogue among group members. Students will remain in their reflection groups for the duration of the term and will complete three more assignments where they are asked to blog about an issue, their favorite form of quarantine escapism, their favorite legal thriller and then respond to other posts. The purpose is to give students a moment to process or a moment of reprieve, while also remaining tethered to some form of community.
For All Students:1) I am holding a “connecting while quarantined” Zoom meeting every Wednesday evening for current and former students to connect. These virtual get-togethers are informal and are not used as office hours, but rather a place to chat about non course-related issues. During one meeting, four recent UO grads who work in DC joined the meeting and ended up providing some great feedback to my current students who are looking to follow a similar career path. I will DEFINITELY continue to provide these opportunities once the Quarantine has been lifted.
2) After learning about students’ rediscovery of their love of cooking, and hearing about how they are coping, I’m asking my PS 275 and PS 368 students to submit recipes, artwork and poetry/prose that they have tried/created during Quarantine for a recipe book. We will distribute the recipe book to members of each class and, hopefully, also raise money to donate to Coronavirus-related charities by offering the book to those outside of class. This idea originated in the Wednesday night chat.
One piece of advice:
Creating community is critical. Students need to feel that they are part of a community AND that they have a connection to their instructor. It is harder to make that happen in a virtual setting. Providing an ice-breaking moment at the beginning of discussion sections–or a space to engage with students if you have an asynchronous class–is critical for helping students to feel connected and invested–especially now. It will also create a safe space for students to ask questions. But you do not need to make these approaches specifically course-related. For instance, in PS 368, we open every class with an option for students to talk about anything COVID-related. Sometimes we ask students to talk about the pets they have brought to discussion, crazy habits they have developed. We have also made great use of the “virtual background” feature, just to provide some levity and escape during this challenging and stressful time.
Name: Sara Weston
Unit: Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: PSY 302: Statistical MethodsOne Way I’m Demonstrating Care to Enhance Student Learning:
Each week, I have multiple ways for students to actively practice the material in class, in addition to watching videos and reading the textbook. Students can take practice quizzes that draw from a bank of questions — each time they take the practice quiz, they get new questions and better practice. I also have activities called “Your Turns” where students try their hand at calculating the key statistics from that week or answering interpretation questions. I film myself going through the activity, which serves as an answer key. These practices are low-cost, meaning students don’t have to worry about how they affect their grades, which reduces their stress and also keeps my workload and my GEs workloads manageable.One piece of advice:
Create a weekly journal assignment. My students have to write 250 words each week on “education, broadly defined,” and I’ve been very clear with them that almost any topic under the sun, including Tiger King, can be educational. I read the entries every week and do my best to leave comments on most, if not all. It helps me get to know my students as people, not just numbers in the Canvas grade book, which makes the class more enjoyable to teach. Plus, many of my students have used it to ask for support and help in ways that I’m not sure they would have through email.
Have a question about how you can enhance student learning by considering student wellbeing in your courses?
Contact TEP at tep@uoregon.edu or you can use this form and a consultant will be in touch.
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