Foreword

Today’s blog post is brought to you by representatives from our team of Online Learning Ambassadors (OLAs). In 2020, like countless other institutions, DePaul University moved classes online in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. To help instructors unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the transition to Zoom, the Center for Teaching and Learning created a new team of student employees designed to help support students and instructors. Although we’ve returned to campus now, some of the new online modalities remain, so the need and appreciation for the OLAs remains as well.

Three of our OLAs have collaborated here to reflect, research, and compose this guide for instructors. They’ve highlighted two main areas where they felt that research, alongside their expertise as both an OLA and a student, could benefit a wider audience of instructors. 

I am excited to share my space with the OLAs because I have benefitted personally from their expertise and assistance in my classes. Over the past 2½ years, I’ve taught 5 iterations of my Composition and Rhetoric II course in our Flex modality. In each offering, I’ve had an OLA to support and assist students who join class via Zoom–whether that’s helping with breakout rooms or making sure that the voices of my students online don’t get lost. I credit much of the success and smoothness of those first few offerings to stellar OLAs who helped me and my students in Zoom.

I know firsthand that the OLAs have the knowledge and ability to offer more than just their technical expertise to instructors. In any given term, OLAs are sitting in, monitoring, and assisting with 40-50 Zoom-mediated classes at DePaul. This means they have a front-row seat and a breadth of information about what elements can help create a successful class. Here I turn it over to the OLAs to share their collected research and experience on how we can make Zoom-mediated classes more engaging and meaningful for students.

N.B.: Although many of the examples they share come from DePaul instructors and classrooms, we are confident that these are tools and methods that instructors at any institution could incorporate into their teaching. We’ve done our best to include links and information to help contextualize any language that may be unique to DePaul.

Carolyn Vos

Introduction

By Sofia Gutierrez, Braeden Matsumoto, and Lauren Miller

As both Online Learning Ambassadors (OLAs) and students, we have been lucky to witness countless approaches to running online classes. As we consider what contributes to a successful online class, we often point to traditional metrics, like course evaluations and instructor-reported participation. 

Yet completion of course evaluations is its own battle: students are getting survey fatigue and evaluations can minimize ongoing development or adaptations made during the term. They cannot inherently tell the full story of how instructors may have adapted and evolved their teaching, so it is worthwhile to look beyond the predominantly quantitative feedback evaluations provide. Although these standardized methods can capture concise data points that aid in university planning, they do not capture a full-enough picture. 

We have seen many approaches to teaching in these spaces, and observed the ways in which these approaches can affect classroom culture and overall engagement. One commonality we have noticed is that, for both in-person and online students, there is genuine engagement in classes where instructors work to build community. 

Professors have the unique responsibility of shaping their class culture. Within online courses, this expands to ensure that all students, regardless of their modality, have a meaningful educational experience. This cannot be done by using Zoom as a replica or extension of the physical classroom–professors must devote deliberate attention to engaging students.

Without a shared physical space, the online classroom holds its own challenges, from tools to communication, that make additional planning necessary (utilizing frameworks like the SAMR model can help in navigating these complexities). Student perceptions and technological adaptations stand among the most prominent divergences to address, but through a shift in mindset and with the implementation of readily available university resources, instructors of any online modality can effectively transform the online learning experience for students. 

It’s easy to feel all alone in the wild west of online education. Many professors want to adapt but feel there’s no clear place to start. We are making this guide to shine a light on the resources that can make the online teaching space just as familiar as the in-person classroom has come to be.

Instructor Presence

One of the main differences between an in-person class and an online class is the altered perception of the professor from the students’ perspective. As both students and OLAs, we find that when a professor teaches an in-person class, they may not realize how impactful their physical presence in the space is with regards to earning students’ attention and finding common ground. Fun conversations before class, non-verbal cues, and body language, or even the simple presence of eye contact can all help strengthen that foundation for human connection. These little details often occur without a second thought in a physical classroom, but over Zoom, they must be consciously sought after. 

Despite the fact that students can see the professors over Zoom, the lack of a shared physical space acts as a barrier, making it more difficult to be fully engaged. But how can a professor break through this barrier? Through fostering intentional, interpersonal connections. 

Students may be more likely to engage if the professor takes initiative, sets the expectation of communication, and continuously models these goals. Clearly indicating expected avenues of engagement, whether that be camera use, spoken contributions, chat, reactions, or some combination, sets the tone for students. As professors normalize these functions themselves, it can encourage students to follow and start the purposeful formation of the instructor’s presence. Creating personal interactions in this shared online space is the first step to constructively formulating the professor’s presence, building relationships between students, and maybe even cracking that wall of black boxes. 

It may be difficult to imagine that students are fully present and truly investing in education when they are represented as tiny boxes with initials. For students, there may be any number of reasons for not wanting to turn a camera or microphone on. Showing understanding for these factors and using them to create new engagement opportunities can help professors make learning more accessible.

Normalizing the collaborative learning environment is best approached first from a non-academic beginning. Assistant Professor Julia Ariel-Rohr (Driehaus College of Business), has implemented the practice of asking low-stakes check-in questions during her Flex courses. This contributes to casual relationship-building and addresses accountability of Zoom students by fostering commonalities. Questions can range from favorite restaurants to the latest movies. These easily answered prompts allow students to share with each other and closely resemble the give-and-take of an in-person course. These seemingly small actions go a long way in garnering students’ enthusiasm which can boost engagement with the course material. 

Zoom Tools

One of our favorite Zoom capabilities is breakout rooms. These allow students to partake in activities or discussions in smaller groups without the pressure of a full classroom audience. Students may be more likely to turn on cameras and microphones when in small peer groups, furthering classroom connections and encouraging more investment in the academic material. Breakout rooms also help in pacing a long class period or lecture, allowing students a change while still promoting active learning. 

Professor Kirsten Fanning (Driehaus College of Business), embraces breakout rooms in her Flex courses. She takes it to another level by creating mixed groups of in-person and Zoom students. This not only breaks that Zoom barrier between students of differing modalities but also provides online students with a more direct line to the classroom through their in-person peers. 

Some of our other favorite tools include polls, screen-sharing, reactions, and hand raising. Some Zoom features help imitate actions that are taken for granted in an in-person class, and others, like chat, lend a unique advantage to those online. Chat affords students the chance to be more active by asking questions, seeking opinions, displaying viewpoints, and interacting with peers without the demand of speaking aloud and drawing the attention of the entire class.

These tools can also be used to combat a professor’s greatest fear, the dreaded sea of black boxes. Simple strategies, such as encouraging students to give themselves personalized profile pictures or avatars, can allow students personal expression and give the professor a better idea of who is on the other side of the screen. For professors who wish to actually see their students, suggesting blurred or other background options are good ways to get those cameras on. Students might be reluctant to display their personal spaces to the rest of the class, especially when in shared or small living situations. These features help provide some peace of mind and privacy. Allotting explicit time where cameras can be turned off, such as during PowerPoint presentations, may also encourage students to leave them on during discussions or other activities. There may always be those students who ignore requests or have non-functional cameras, but these tools will surely bring some level of life into the Zoom space.

Conclusion

Online learning is here to stay, and it’s time for the narrative shift: Online education is not inherently lesser. There are unique difficulties that surround online classes, but creating new kinds of opportunities for online engagement can help professors overcome these initial obstacles. This scale of online learning is relatively new, and there are still kinks to work out, expectations to be set, and normalcy to be established.

Online learning holds a distinct opportunity for instructor-student collaboration and respect, made possible through a professor’s intentional efforts to help students feel valued. By allowing students to engage in their classes online, instructors are actively working to make higher education more accessible–and that is something to celebrate!

Resources

We’ve given a lot of features and options, and that may feel more overwhelming than helpful. Between taking attendance and sharing powerpoints and starting the recording and the rest of the seemingly endless start-of-class to-do list, everything a professor knows about Zoom is liable to fly out the window, forcing an improvised scramble just to keep the class afloat. However, this is where we hope our resources can help most.

If you are an instructor at DePaul, we might be a touch biased, but we believe one of the strongest resources we have available is us–the OLAs. We are here to help you run your classes without having to stop every time a poll needs to be launched or breakout rooms need to be assigned. We help things run smoother, so you can worry about teaching your content and students can focus on learning. And if other tech troubles pop up, we can have classroom services come to assist you too.

Whether or not you teach at DePaul, we also think the following resources can prove helpful:

• Meaningful Learning in Practice (2014) – This article by Ballester contains theory, examples, and rationale for creating meaningful educational experiences for students.
• Flex Teaching Guide – A guide created by the DePaul Center for Teaching and Learning that has resources for classroom technology, tips for engaging students, and activity blueprints.
• Zoom 102 – A 2021 recorded webinar covering an overview of key Zoom features, including reactions and breakout rooms.
• Active Learning in Zoom – A 2020 recorded webinar filled with Ideas, from simple to more complex, for making your live sessions more engaging.
• Connecting with Reluctant Remote Learners – This article from EduTopia includes a handful of starting steps for creating a Zoom space where students feel more comfortable to engage with you and their peers.