When classes moved online to protect community health, many students felt disconnected from their teachers and peers. To address this lost sense of connection, I restructured a live remote class. Rather than teaching this 400-level class live via WebEx with some breakouts for active learning assignments, I pre-recorded the lectures for each week and asked the students to watch these on their own time, in place of one of our scheduled class meetings. I assigned the students to small (5-6 person) discussion groups and broke out our remaining class meeting time into multiple small group meetings. We met in these small groups every week to discuss questions that the students prepare based on the assigned reading material. This smaller group format facilitated better connections among students and between the students and myself.
Since this was a novel teaching practice, I committed to my students that I would assess their satisfaction level about a month into the semester. I sent out a brief survey 4 weeks into the Fall 21 semester. 18 of 29 students completed the anonymous survey. 17 of the 18 indicated that they felt their learning experience in this class was “good” or “great” (4 or 5 on a 5 point Likert scale) compared to other remote synchronous classes. Surprisingly, 15 of the 18 participants responded that their learning experience in this class was “good” or “great” compared to traditional live classes. Students commented that this “feels like a graduate level class” and “I feel like I’m actually learning!!” More informally, students also seem more willing to turn on their cameras during class meetings.
The pre-recorded lectures for this model are based on a flipped classroom model.
To adopt this practice, instructors should consider creating a preparation assignment for each meeting. In this class, students are typically expected to have read 2 textbook chapters before each meeting. For each chapter, students create a “3-2-1” summary with 3 main ideas from the reading, 2 important details, and 1 question they would like to discuss with their colleagues. I provided an organizer for each assignment to facilitate complete assignments and easy grading:
3 Main Ideas
1.
2.
3.
2 Important Details
1.
2.
1 Question You Would Like to Discuss With Your Classmates
1.
When the small groups met, students selected a question to ask and a student who should respond. The responding student then asked the next question and selected the next student. I did not reshuffle the group assignments over the course of the semester to help maintain a sense of community.
This class was divided into 5 groups which met for 15 minutes each. I used a single WebEx meeting, and students joined at their designated time. This model would accommodate up to 60 students during 2.5 hours of class time each week. I would not recommend more than 6 students per group since all students may not have an opportunity to speak. Other instructors’ ability to adopt this approach may be constrained by class size.
