Flexible Participation and Accountability

When you are setting up your grading system and writing your syllabus, make sure to account for participation, not just attendance. Be specific about the kinds of activities that will be awarded points: contributing to discussions (both synchronous and asynchronous), group work, helping other students on a course forum, etc. Having a variety of activities will allow students to participate in ways that best suit their learning style and current environment.

Be clear about what good participation looks like. Use the first Zoom session to negotiate a code of conduct and expectations, and then post these in a prominent spot in your course. If possible, codify your expectations in a rubric that accounts for a variety of ways to participate and use it to award participation points weekly. 

Provide a worksheet or survey that guides students through thinking about how to manage their time and environment. What are they usually doing just before and after class? Do they have access to the internet and a device at home? What do they value most about attending live class sessions? What are their obstacles to attending class sessions? Can they brainstorm ways to minimize those obstacles? This will also give you a good idea of what your students are dealing with so that you can think about making reasonable accommodations.

One accommodation is to vary the times when you hold live class sessions. If possible, have your students fill out an availability survey and then find two or three times a week that allows for the maximum number of students to attend at least one session per week. If you only hold live sessions once a week, then alternate times each week.

Make sure that each of your sessions contributes to success on a particular assignment and course objective and advertise that connection at the beginning and end of each session. You might even send out an announcement before each session that provides the agenda.

If you have regular sessions each week, some of them might not be as essential to student success as others. Let students know ahead of time which sessions are required, and make sure the activities in those sessions benefit from synchronous student activity. Whenever possible, find asynchronous ways of accomplishing the same tasks and perhaps give students the option of participating live or through some asynchronous assignment.

Adding technology to a lesson plan will always increase the preparation time. This factor is multiplied by the number of people who have to interact with that technology - figure that into your lesson plan and adjust your expectations accordingly. Prioritize the most essential elements of the lesson and plan to cut the less essential or outsource it to something asynchronous.

The ability to record a live class session is a significant advantage over a traditional classroom, where the ideas generated, and the process used, can be ephemeral. Zoom allows us to capture that process, but simply remembering to hit the record button is not enough, especially if your lesson design is engaging and interactive. When you record a session, think about students who will be watching it later. If students use chat rather than participating vocally, read their comments out loud as they come in. Make sure that there is adequate time to debrief after breakout room sessions, which can’t be recorded. Try to leave time at the end of the session to summarize main points. If possible, get your student in the habit of doing it.

Another good strategy is to have students produce something in breakout sessions that absent students can interact with later. You can see an example of this in the Google Docs section of the Google Suite page. You can even make contributing to this document a requirement for participation or an assignment.

Beyond summarizing, provide time in the session, or an assignment after the session, that requires students to reflect on what they learned. There are many studies that demonstrate these activities are when actual learning occurs, especially if they are able to connect what they did in the class session with something in their lives outside of class.

Students can demonstrate that they have watched a recording by summarizing, responding to, or reflecting on what they learned in the session, but this should not be limited to those students who are watching the recording. Have all students fill out a comment card or an exit assignment Links to an external site. to get a sense of how well they understood the lesson and what you might want to review in the next session. These comments and assignments can also be shared to provide more context for students who were unable to attend the session live. 

If you use slides, articles, images, or other documents in your live sessions, make sure students have access to them outside of the class session.

Gaining understanding on what your students know. (2015, June 23). Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/exit-tickets-checking-understanding Links to an external site. 

Pincince, B. (2020, April 30). 7 ways to hold online students accountable. Retrieved from https://medium.com/studentsuccess/7-ways-to-hold-online-students-accountable-fa23907629e1 Links to an external site.