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Teaching Remotely 

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Instructors who are teaching in HyFlex, hybrid and online modalities understand and have responded to the challenges of engaging students in learning environments that require additional methods of communication, community building and teaching and learning strategies.

See our self-reflection checklist

Remote learning strategies that work

Peer-to-peer interactions and active learning strategies

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (Orlov, et al., 2020), students performed better in remote learning environments when instructors facilitated group activities and projects. Consider engaging students with one another with the following strategies.

Peer instruction

Ask students to answer content-related questions or solve problems during class while working in pairs or threes to solve challenging questions. This form of peer instruction has also been encouraged and used by instructors such as Eric Mazur, who want to help students understand rather than memorize concepts or facts. Julie Schell, 2013, describes the process for using peer instruction here. Consider these activities in a mixed modality course of face-to-face and remote students based on suggestions made by James Lang (2016).

  1. Pre-Class Activity: Assign a reading, video, or activity that introduces students to the concept or idea that you plan to poll during class. Be sure to have students complete a related online assignment.
  2. In-Class: Pose a question on the classroom screen (PowerPoint) that requires some deep thinking related to the concept or idea introduced prior to class. Students work on their own to answer the question.
  3. Anonymously Poll the Class: Students use either an electronic polling system or colored index cards to answer the question posed by the instructor.
  4. Peer Instruction: Students turn to a neighbor in class or go to a breakout room to justify or explain their answers with a partner.
  5. Repoll the Class: Students resubmit their answers.
  6. Discussion: Instructor asks for volunteers to share their explanations for their answers and provides an explanation for the correct answer.

Group work

Assign groups with complementary roles so that each student has a task to complete during their meeting time.

  1. Pre-Class Activity: To create more equitable team dynames, students complete an asset map that outlines their skills and interests.
  2. In-Class or remotely through Breakout Rooms: Instructor provides students with a list of tasks (team asset chart) to be completed by each group (research, writing, presentation, illustration of concepts, etc.)
    • Students use asset maps to determine primary roles and include names next to each task
    • Students determine secondary roles; i.e., what they would like to become more proficient in (project goal writing, research, writing, presentation, illustration, etc.)
  3. In or Outside-of-Class: Students work to complete tasks. Instructor provides students with online space (Blackboard discussion forum, Google doc, Slack channel, etc.) that can be monitored by the faculty member for feedback and used by the group to complete tasks and communicate with one another.
  4. In-Class: Groups present their work and quizzes based on knowledge goals of project
    • Start by giving peers a predictive quiz to prepare them for the presentation
    • Give presentation with visuals
    • End presentation with a small-stakes quiz
  5. Reflection: Group members reflect upon what they learned during the process
    • Students complete a self-assessment of the role they played in the group project
    • Instructor gives summary feedback to group presentation
    • Instructor gives individual feedback to reflections

Lecturing strategies designed for learning

“Students have much shorter attention spans when watching educational videos online” (Guo, 2013). Whether you are lecturing in a HyFlex, hybrid or online learning environment, consider this:

Researchers suggest that informal 6-minute lectures created by instructors lead to greater student engagement. To ensure student accountability, ask students to do something with what they have learned.

Pre-class activity

Create curiosity in your students by providing a connection to the new concepts you plan to share with your students with something they can relate to.

  • Offer a predictive quiz on the material you plan to lecture on by asking students to try to answer the questions by connecting with something they already know.
  • Offer an example (video, case, newspaper article, etc.) of how the concept you plan to introduce can be applied to a student’s discipline, profession or personal life.

In-class activity

Offer a chunked, short lecture to both in person and remote students interspersed with asking students to:

  • complete a short quiz in Canvas
  • offer a tweet-like response (280 characters) describing, in their own words, what they learned or how they might apply what they have learned in a shared Google doc
  • complete a related problem and post an annotated explanation of how they got to their answers
  • respond to a Poll by answering a challenging question related to the lecture content

Out-of-class activity

Ask students to summarize and integrate new content with previously learned content by:

  • Creating a concept map or infographic of a concept they have learned to show how it integrates with the content of the course to date
  • Finding an authentic example of how the concept has been applied and posting it to a Discussion Forum in the form of an image or web link with a short annotation or explanation

Discipline-specific remote learning activities

In researching remote learning activities, it was noted that it is difficult to replicate instruction that has worked well in the face-to-face learning environment. Adapting to the remote learning environment takes time and communication.

See a list of discipline-specific strategies →

References

  • Guo, P. (2013, November 13). Optimal Video Length for Student Engagement. Retrieved from edX Home: https://blog.edx.org/optimal-video-length-student-engagement/
  • Lang, J. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Orlov, G., McKee, D., Berry, J., Boyle, A., DiCiccio, T., Ransom, T., . . . Stoye, J. (2020). Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic: It Is Not Who You Teach, But How You Teach. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

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