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Ok, you’re stressed and you have to start teaching fully-online, like, soon. Here are five things you can do in the first class to really set a good tone, establish community, and enact care. A thread!
(None of these relate to content, by the way. There will be space enough and time. Or there won’t be, and you’ll drop something. In the vast majority of courses, this won’t matter a jot. Let coverage go.)
1. Survey students to get a sense of when/how they will be accessing the course and what barriers they are managing. This one from Danya Glabau at NYU gives you a good template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPbbjxSDLVxHtLCv0jkzqZSs4QpwQqMRXSPhmBHeLGY/edit
2. Introduce (and humanize) yourself. I don’t want you to do anything more than you’re comfortable, but a pet photo, a picture of where you sit to do your grading, a video where you tell a really bad joke — all great ways to remind your students you’re a human bean.
3. Make space for students to introduce themselves to you and to each other. Invite them to be personal — again, pet photos do wonders, or maybe favourite music videos or movies — without pushing them to be confessional or vulnerable too early.
4. Build some kind of orientation to the space, whether you’re using an LMS or out on the open web. How do they do the button pushing they need to do to succeed? Don’t make assumptions about “digital natives” — these spaces aren’t intuitive. Teach them what they need to know.
5. Invite students to contribute to a group charter. How do they expect to be treated? How do they intend to treat others? What makes a good learning experience? Listen hard and build a collaborative set of expectations.
And that’s it. That’s lots. That’s week one. Everything else can grow from here. But do this. Make time and space to create the learning community. You already know how to do this F2F — just be intentional about it online and you’ll be fine.
You got this.
