When we teach face-to-face, silence can be a useful tool for encouraging reflection and resetting the energy in our classrooms. It’s harder to do this when teaching synchronously online. This thread offers some tips for making the most of silence in the online classroom.
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Participation can take many forms in our classrooms, and goes beyond speaking. Silence can invite engagement, but in online meetings this may need to be more intentionally structured.

There are many reasons why students may not be speaking up. They may be exhausted (Zoom fatigue is real!), or they might be sharing their home w/ other people, who are also working remotely. They may feel disconnected from their classmates or anxious about being in the spotlight.

Community building takes time and attention, but as community emerges silences can become more generative. The tips below are suggestions for how to structure active engagement into purposeful silences.

(1/3) You might start each class with some form of ice-breaker or a warm-up task. Perhaps give students a prompt and ask them to react to it using the whiteboard offered by most video chat platforms.

It can be something simple like “how are we feeling today?” or “what’s the best book you’ve read this year,” or “suggest a movie, series or document that really hooked you recently.”

They can draw, or paste a photo or a gif. It can be a silent moment, but one where much communication and engagement is happening.

(2/3) When you ask a question, give students a few seconds to reflect, and ask them to write down their answers. After that, offer multiple modes for participation maybe sharing their thoughts verbally, writing them in the chat, and sharing reflections in the Google Doc or Slack.

This may help students gather their thoughts and become more likely to speak up, and also could provide you with a revealing perspective on the groups’ understanding of the topic under consideration.

(3/3) You might also think about integrating online polls. There are many real-time response systems including
@SurveyMonkey
@polleverywhere
@Mentimeter
@ParticiPoll
@Slidoapp

Let’s look specifically at @polleverywhere. Students can answer questions using their cellphones, tablets or computers AND, as a real-time system, the responses can be displayed as they are engaging.

For instance, you might ask students about their country of origin using a map. Responses will be visualized for everyone to see, immediately.

You might use multiple-choice questions to check understanding of new content recently introduced, offering students a chance to respond anonymously, and using their responses to determine next steps in your discussion.

Polls also allow you to create open-ended questions, which can be a lot of fun. You can check their understanding of a concept, offer an open free write to warm-up a discussion, check how everyone is feeling…

Using polls requires some planning ahead, but once you start to use them you will learn to get a sense of how to pace the questions, and what kind of questions you want to ask.

The options are endless, and the responses scroll on the screen giving everyone lots of opportunity to actively engage, silently. No matter how shy or reluctant your students are, all will be engaged answering these questions.

More important, because they can see the answers in real-time, they can connect their thoughts to others’, verify their understandings, and may feel more comfortable asking follow-up questions.

Interested in experimenting with polls to promote participation & engagement?

Check the asynchronous workshop “Using Online Polls to Promote Active Learning and Student Engagement”

https://tcuny2020.commons.gc.cuny.edu/using-online-polls-to-promote-active-learning-and-student-engagement/

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions requesting office hours ( https://bit.ly/2RwucEd ) & don’t forget to visit the Teach@CUNY handbook: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/teach-cuny-handbook