This is a guest post, written by our Digital Learning Assistant, Lucie Hopkins, in which she interviews her colleague and fellow DLA, Sarah Bui.
Welcome back to Wander Wednesdays after last week’s hiatus! I hope you all have had lovely starts to the semester, and that they continue to be so as we move forward. I am happy to present you the final post of this series with as relevant a topic as I can think of: building community online. Sarah Bui has graced us once again with her insight and knowledge this week to discuss this topic.
Sarah Bui is a rising sophomore. She is double majoring in Media – Communication and Film Studies. She joined the DLA team her freshman year and specializes in WordPress, Hypothes.is, and many digital storytelling tools such as Knightlab Timeline, Story Map and Canva. She also served as a Learning Assistant during the Camp Design program Summer 2020 and provided diverse perspectives as a student to help faculty in polishing their courses. In the future, she wants to expand her knowledge and skills about digital tools in storytelling and social media practices.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Sarah!
“It has been a month since this semester started, and I hope all of you faculty members are doing well with all interactive and engaging activities we built during the summer. There was much to be worried about for this semester, but I can tell that you are all more and more confident with what you are doing.
Learning online can be a very isolated experience. You study on your own, attend class on your own and do homework on your own. The feeling of disconnection discourages most students and hugely impacts their productivity in class. Therefore, building the online community within the space of classes is significantly important for each student’s learning experience.
From what I experienced last semester (spring 2020), in the summer and in the last month, I want to share some faculty practices for building community that might be helpful from a student’s perspective.
- My professors let me know that they care about my learning experience.
What I’ve really appreciated is that often in the beginning of a course, professors would send out prompt questions that let me share about myself and share what I expected from the course. The professors would also share what they expected from us at the beginning of the class, as well as before each assignment, which made the learning process much more enjoyable. Nothing is as difficult as working online when you do not know what to do and you don’t have friends there to ask.
Regarding in-class activities, I believe the best way to know if this activity or practice works or not is to do it, then ask students for their experience. After trying something new in class, my professor always encourages us to send them an email about how we felt about it. Of course, it is optional, but it makes me feel like my opinion in class and the course structure is valued.
- Often, something in the course seems to be insignificant but has a huge impact.
I watched many lectures in my online classes, and it could be really tiring. If we were in person taking a class, the professor would immediately recognize who in the class did not understand, or would maybe switch to another activity if everyone was overloaded with information. But this cannot happen with video lectures. This is where captions come to the rescue. I have the option to speed up the video to 1.5x speed so I can concentrate more, since my brain has to catch up with the speed, but I can fully understand by reading the captions. Studying by both listening and reading is a helpful way to memorize and process the information given.
I had one online class during the summer which was quite intensive. In that class, my professor broke the long video into smaller sections and named them by the main topics they covered. In our homework, the professor would also refer back to these videos by saying, “You might need to rewatch [name of videos] in the module [week_] for this question.” This was often helpful if we covered many things in class and students later needed to review these topics for assignments and exams.
The amount of time to watch all the videos might be longer for students than only the length of the videos themselves. I often pause videos and in between videos to take notes (and it turns out that I take notes about everything–I realized that online class makes me more worried about missing important information). One of my professors prepared a list of questions and terms as a watching guide so I could focus on the main points of a long lecture and try to understand the key concepts, not just memorize everything in the video.
- Students may drop into office hours more frequently.
Office hours play a vital role during this time. Personally, I feel more comfortable with online office hours since sometimes I just have a small question or want to discuss more about what my professor said in class. When we have in-person class, I find it harder to just come to a professor’s office for very small questions. Now I can just drop in with little commitment. There are so many things I thought I understood which I realized I did not after these meetings with professors. And sometimes, just talking to someone makes me feel more connected with my class. I believe there are many students who need more help with their studies right now, so offering office hours besides class lectures and meetings are a good practice to help them feel connected.
- Recorded meetings and discussion notes are helpful resources.
One thing I love about online class is that everything is recorded. Even though I try to take notes very carefully, I cannot take notes and participate in the discussion at the same time. There are many interesting ideas that we talk about in class that I cannot remember or didn’t have the chance to participate in. Going back to these discussion notes and recorded meetings helps me recall the class materials better.
- Feedback is significantly encouraging.
Feedback is always helpful, and an online environment is no exception. Discussion boards and student responses to materials are good strategies to engage students in class, but it is often more encouraging if we know that our professors in fact read them and value our opinions. Sometimes, I feel myself less likely to contribute to a discussion if my professor only marks it for attendance points and I can’t be sure if they read them or not. In one of my classes, the professor highlights some interesting points of our comments and replies to them with some questions which help us to think further about the materials. I understand it could be exhausting to reply to all of the comments, but highlighting students’ good points is inspiring. It helps me believe that my efforts are recognized.
One thing I’ve learned so far is that online learning is not as scary and stressful as it seems to be before you do it. We all need to plan everything beforehand but be flexible for unexpected things to happen. As a bottom line, reach out to your students. Let them be involved in the building of the community of online classes. Challenge them, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Use your tools from the summer to connect students with one another, as it is so easy to feel isolated at this time.
As I wrap up, it is sad for me to say that today’s post is the last post on Wander Wednesdays. It was our pleasure as Digital Learning Assistants to have an amazing journey working with faculty members this summer and sharing our perspectives throughout to help build our online communities. On the behalf of the Digital Learning Assistant Team, I want to say thank you for everything you’ve done and are doing for your classes. We are proud of everyone and we believe together we shall overcome this challenge successfully and memorably.”
Sarah can be contacted via email: tbui@muhlenberg.edu. Thank you all dearly for your readership this summer and semester, and I wish you all the best rest of the semester possible. You can contact me at lehopkins@muhlenberg.edu.