As we have moved our courses online, we have been compiling tips and strategies to apply the same principles we care about in our classroom teaching (interactivity, inclusion, efficiency and organization) to our teaching on Zoom:
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Now more than ever it is important for our courses to offer our students a community they can feel like they belong to and can participate in. Our classes should strive to mitigate the isolation we are all feeling as we socially and physically distance ourselves by welcoming students into an intellectual and engaging community.
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At the same time, teaching through Zoom may make students less willing to participate. Speaking in front of a large group of muted people can be particularly intimidating, in part because we lose some of the social cues from verbal and nonverbal feedback we are used to when we speak up in front of many muted (and sometimes faceless) people.
Here are some ways to increase interactivity and inclusion in your Zoom classroom. You might think of these as the "grammar" for our new "language" of teaching online.