Virtual Teaching Techniques
Active Learning in an Online Setting
Teaching in a live, online setting introduces a whole new range of techniques and teaching tools that aren't possible with in-person instruction. I have experience teaching many online courses and have found it to be an exciting opportunity to think of creative techniques to teach in an engaging and interactive way. Below are some of my favorite activities and techniques I use when teaching online. Let me know via email if you end up using these in your classroom and how they go!
Type, Wait, Send!
Technique: Pose a question to the students and have them write their response in the chat, but tell them not to send it yet. After ~45 seconds tell everyone to send at once!
Thoughts: This technique lets each student think and come up with an answer before seeing everyone else's responses. You can think of it like the think-pair-share technique but in a virtual setting.
Breakout Room Roles
Technique: I often split students into groups of 3-4 and send them to breakout rooms to work through a problem or discuss a topic. To facilitate group interactions, I assign students roles. I do this through a mini-icebreaker question. For example, the person who drinks the most coffee in a day is the screen sharer, or the biggest Taylor Swift fan is the leader/includer. I often pair this with a slide on why we are doing group work, and how it will help them in the long run. I also make sure to put the information in the chat before they go into breakout rooms, so they see the information once the slide is gone.
Thoughts: This techniques helps students immediately start a conversation in the breakout room! It also provides structure for the discussion or group work.
Collaborative Editing
Technique: First, put students into breakout rooms and assign roles. In the breakout room, have students work on an open ended prompt. For example, "Given this dataset, what is a question you could ask and answer with a machine learning algorithm?" After they are done and back in the main room share a collaborative document and have each group paste in their answer. Then, have students add comments to their classmate's answers. I always begin by reminding students to remain respectful and also put positive comments. After all the comments are in, I will go through and summarize the best parts as well as areas of growth.
Thoughts: This is a longer exercise but provides a low stakes way of collaborating both in the breakout rooms and then with the whole class.
Easy Icebreakers
Zoom Backgrounds: Encourage students to change their background to a fun image. This can be AI generated, a place they went recently on vacation, a favorite painting, a video game, ect... Then have students share in breakout rooms or the whole class what their background is and why they chose that. I like this icebreaker because it's open ended and you learn a lot of different things about each student. It is also a sneaky way to get them to turn on their cameras.
Whiteboard Drawing: Open up a collaborative whiteboard that everyone can edit. Have ~3 silly prompts for things students can draw then let everyone draw! Students can add stickers to the drawings they like. I did this icebreaker with a group of students that I knew enjoyed drawing and art.
