After teaching my first class online this morning, I have to wonder: How can it be so exhausting to sit at my desk and talk to a screen?
Difficulty sleeping last night certainly has something to do with it; maybe by Wednesday this whole setup will be so routine that I'll be sleeping like a baby instead of repeatedly waking up in a panic over how to share a whiteboard on Zoom.
I did fine sharing the whiteboard, by the way, but then I neglected to save it, so I will have to see whether I can retrieve it from the recording or else reproduce the material on the whiteboard from memory. And I managed to show a brief video clip, although I skipped a step and had to start it over after one brave soul said he couldn't see it.
All but one of my 8 a.m. students showed up (virtually) for class, and the missing student had told me in advance that she would be on the road during class time and would check in with me later. At the beginning of the class session, I wanted to check on our ability to communicate as a group so I went down the roster and asked each student to say something interesting about where they were. A few remain on campus but most of my students are working from home, which is probably for the best.
I was pleased with my students' willingness to jump in and respond to questions, but it feels very odd to talk to a group of people I can't see, unable to gauge their engagement with the material or their eagerness to respond. On Wednesday we'll try an online quiz and by Friday I have to figure out how to do peer review of drafts online. Maybe by next week I'll be ready to try small-group discussions on Zoom, and at some point I need to decide how I plan to give exams.
First, though, I need to chill for a bit. The first class went well enough but they're my talky class; the 11:00 group is much more reticent and also bigger, so I worry about participation. One down, an unknown number to go....I hope I don't have to spend the rest of my career teaching this way, but at least for the moment, I think I can manage.
3 comments:
I would love it if you would share your insights from peer reviewing! I am doing this in a team taught class next month, and probably remotely.
I've tried online peer review a few times in the past and in my experience, students tend to write more and provide more specific feedback when they do peer review face-to-face. I have to provide very specific guidelines about what and how much I expect them to write about their classmates' drafts. The other issue I've had with online peer review is that if I give students total freedom on whose papers to read, certain students inevitably get left out. So what I've tried to do is to assign them to groups or else assign each student a specific classmate to review first and then let them make their own choices for subsequent readings. I know the students who are highly motivated with give and receive more helpful feedback, but that's true in face-to-face settings as well.
So online peer review went well enough yesterday. A few students needed a little nudging, but in the end all but two posted their drafts on Moodle and made comments on two classmates' drafts, which was what I required. Some students preferred to use Google Docs to post their drafts and comment on classmates' drafts, which I permitted as long as they provided me evidence that they were reading each others' drafts. I was pleased to see some really helpful comments and suggestions; a few students went way beyond the call of duty to help their classmates. I don't give points for peer review, but the deal is that those who don't help their classmates with papers won't get detailed feedback on their drafts from me. Unsurprisingly, the two students who skipped online peer review are the ones most likely to skip face-to-face peer review too. So it was relatively painless and I think students got some valuable suggestions from their classmates.
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