Virtually Autumn: Prompting interaction

In a virtual course, it certainly can be more difficult to engage students than in a face-to-face setting. This is even more true in an asynchronous context, which I suspect many of us will create in our classes this autumn. For example, I will be asking students to interact with me and with each other using web-based discussion boards. I will also be having synchronous opportunities for students to Zoom for the purposes of asking questions. What are some ways in which I can stimulate interaction and moderate it in this sort of online environment?

Stimulating

Here, I'm going to replicate some content, in an abbreviated fashion, from one of my posts from 2017. I design my synchronous classes (both face-to-face and virtual) to rely on students asking questions to get clarification on concepts they don't feel that they understand well. However, I often find that when I ask for questions, only very few students will ask one, and those are predictably the same few students each class period. So, the problem I am trying to solve is: can I create a scaffolded process to guide students through how to develop questions to ask? My goals are to help students:

1. recognize when they feel like they need clarification, and then
2. formulate a question to ask me that will provide that clarification

I have two main approaches to help students bring questions to ask during class. The first is to provide one "homework question" at the end of class and ask students to attempt to address it. This question is not an addition to other homework, because in a "flipped class" like mine, there is rarely any outside-of-class work to be done, other than encountering class content by reading texts and watching videos. All of the practical work is done during class. So, by asking them to work on a single question "for next time," that helps focus their attention on one concept.

Such a question that I pose to students will always be a tough question that, at its core, requires the students to employ content and concepts from the pre-class video and/or reading material. That question will often have one final part that will be difficult for students to complete. When students come to our synchronous meeting, I am fairly confident that a number of them have FAILed to answer that question (where the acronym FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning - that's not my invention, but I'm not sure who to attribute this acronym to). This approach ensures that, at the very least, students should come to class expecting to work on figuring out how to appropriately answer that question. Thus, it sets expectations for the students and provides a single common discussion point for the next class meeting.

My belief, based partly on my experience as an introvert and a former undergraduate student, is that at least part of the delay (or absence) of students asking questions aloud in class is their discomfort in deciding exactly how to phrase their question in the heat of the moment. So, I also think it is well worth the practice of asking your students a question to solve/consider at the end of one class and then addressing it at the start of the next class, because that gives students time to articulate points that they don't feel that they understand. So, I provide some guidance to students about how to prepare questions to bring to the next class!

Here is the current version of my flowchart of prompts that I provide to students to help them pinpoint and then clarify where they encountered difficulties while addressing their homework question. I fully expect that at least some parts of this are discipline-specific, although I've tried to develop them to be fairly agnostic. I'd appreciate hearing from you what other guidance you would give students to help them define and describe obstacles they encounter while engaging in academic activities.

• Where in the process of answering the question did you get stuck?
• What were the questions racing through your head when you felt like you might as well stop trying to answer the question? Write those down right now, and bring them to class. Examples include:
• "Do I need this piece of information? (is it relevant or a distractor)"
• "How do I incorporate this information in my answer?"
• "What does this term mean?"
• "I have multiple possible options of how to proceed at this point - which one should I choose?"
• "How do I know what to do next? I don't know what options exist for how to proceed."
• "How do I know if I'm on the right track? Why should I spend more time working on this if I'm not confident in my work up to this point?"

Help students to identify their misunderstandings and to articulate them as questions by providing them with:

1. a question that has the learning outcome at its core
2. a framework for identifying potential questions to ask
3. time for them to develop their own questions in response before class

Moderating

Many of my colleagues (and I!) have questions about how to moderate asynchronous class communication. I think we all understand how to moderate oral discussion in face-to-face classes, because that's what we're used to! We are comfortable asking students to remain silent and to raise their hand when they have a question or a response to a question we ask. We are perhaps also prepared with ways to respond to inappropriate/disruptive behavior in a physical classroom (though I do not feel like I am…). Even more difficult is how to moderate communication in a virtual and asynchronous environment in which we instructors are not always present to immediately take action if need be!

Here are a few ideas, and a question that I'd also appreciate your feedback on.

First, make sure that your school's policy about disruptive behavior (its definition and consequences, for example) is clearly posted in your syllabus and that its content is appropriate for a virtual modality. If you need to add or change some content to make the policies relevant to online instruction, then please do so.

Likewise, consider make a clear policy about your expectations for all things communication, both oral and written. Many schools have such "netiquette" policies available for your use. CSU Los Angeles has a great repository of such policies, including a quick overview of topics you might want to consider. For example, especially for discussion board posts, here are topics that I reinforce to students:

• Use your real name
• Write in the first person, taking ownership of your creative work and your opinion
• Be careful using sarcasm, because tone is difficult to translate into the written word
• Be professional (e.g. use good writing mechanics: check your spelling, capitalize proper nouns, use appropriate punctuation, don't use text speak like "ur statement sux"…)
• Be critical and be respectful in your interactions at the same time
• Stay on topic
• Do not make ad hominem attacks

The question that I need you to help me answer, please, is: what should the instructor do when one of the above rules is broken?

• What if a student uses a racial slur on a discussion board post?
• What if two students start by debating the value of genetically modified organisms and then the thread degenerates into a discussion about politics, straying from the point?
• What if a number of students "gang up" in opposition of one student's perspective?

In particular, it is yet unclear to me

1) the extent to which, and

2) how

an instructor should moderate online discussion.

The easiest solution, but perhaps an academically disingenuous one, is for the discussion board to be moderated (the instructor reviews submissions and then decides which get posted to the board). To what extent should we use this power? It is the safest approach, but student minds aren't always best stretched and broadened in the most safe environment.

Also, post moderation hinders (but is that a con or a pro?) real-time asynchronous discourse. For example, I fall asleep much earlier than most of my students, and I wake up much earlier as well. So, I fully expect that I'll wake up to the initial submissions of students, and I'll post them all…and hours later, those students wake up and see the posts, and they can begin writing and submitting responses…which I'll then see at some point later, and maybe take action on before I sleep.

While I've been writing this, I realized that I had been considering the saltatory process of post moderation as a bad thing, but maybe it is beneficial! Could it be that forcing gaps in time between comment submissions gives students time to more thoroughly reflect on their perspectives before being able to view responses?

Please share your thoughts! I promise that I'll moderate the submitted comments to this blog post as quickly as I can.