Well, the new Fall 2020 semester is off and running, figuratively and literally speaking. I am involved in teaching three courses, all of which I am teaching online for the first time. I have never been so busy trying to get the next lecture ready, the next assignment posted, the next e-mail responded to, the next… you get my drift. Some of you may be feeling the same way as I am – too much to do and not enough time to do it. So, what I thought I would do is share some goals and ideas that are keeping me, and hopefully my students, grounded, growing, and going strong and some of my early online observations that are causing me to pause, ponder, and make adjustments. How would you finish this sentence, “When life gets challenging, I…”? It is important to know what keeps you going when life gets difficult. Here are three goals and ideas that help me. Oh and I love a good positive quote, too – from the silly, like “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” (Dale Carnegie) to the funny, like “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on” (Franklin D. Roosevelt) to the more serious, like “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful” (Joshua J. Marine) and “We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us” (William J. Brennan, Jr.). My goal is to teach AND reach my students. This goal is especially important during this time of COVID-19 induced anxiety, stress, and strain. To me, reaching my students means connecting with them beyond the course content, putting myself in their shoes, and listening to them about what is going on in their lives and in their worlds. It also means striving extra hard to enable my students to engage with and retain content from our virtual Zoom meetings. Tim Elmore (2020), in his recent blog, reminds us of two timeless ideas to help reach our students—imagery and emotion1. Our brains remember information better from images than from words, thus, “the more we can harness the power of an image, the better our chances are of getting through to a young listener” (Elmore 2020). We also remember information better that engages us at the emotional level. So instead of making a bullet list or giving a definition, it is much better to tell a story or involve our students in a meaningful discussion. But, alas, these things take more time. And here is where I need to remind myself that reaching my students is, more often than not, a prerequisite to teaching them! Preparing to teach three classes online this semester, which I have not taught online before, is a challenging task. I have run into a number of issues related to online course design and associated technologies. My favorite saying has become “If it ain't one thing, it's another!” But, one of the things that has been a great help and comfort to me is knowing that I have a network of people (some on speed dial) willing to lend me a hand and/or an ear. These people help keep me growing and going strong! I hope you also have people you can go to. If not, try to find some. I don't know what I would do without these folks, and I need to make sure to tell them that, regularly. “Stop and smell the roses” might sound like a quaint cliché, however, research suggests it is actually sound advice for finding satisfaction in life (Fagley 2012, Kennelly 2012). Stopping and appreciating2 all that we have helps us to stay grounded when life is moving faster than we can keep up with. What a gift we give ourselves (and others) when we build in time to reflect on the positive aspects of our lives, value our friends and family, and relish and savor the good times! There have already been a number of things that have given me pause this semester, and we are only a few weeks into the semester. Here are just of few of the highlights. I am sure there are many more to come! Murphy's law is an adage that is typically stated as: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Believe it or not, during the first day of the Fall 2020 semester at many institutions, Zoom went down (St. Amour, 2020). Now, the actual disruption only lasted about five hours, but with the level of anxiety already running high, faculty and students alike were quickly frustrated. But, I must admit, for me, it served as a good reminder that I need to be super flexible this semester, roll with punches, so-to-speak, and truthfully speaking, expect the unexpected. I think right now is a perfect time to embrace a positive attitude and a spirit that looks for the silver lining.3 A silver lining for me, regarding putting my courses online, came during a conversation with two amazingly wonderful colleague of mine, Dr. Anna Dilger and Dr. Dawn Bohn. We were getting ready to team teach the Fall 2020 ACES Teaching and Leaning Academy and were intently discussing how we were going to transition some of the face-to-face (F2F) activities for use in our new online venue. As we were hard at work, Anna excitedly stated, “One advantaging of taking a class to the online format is that it makes you rethink everything!” Ah, there it is, the silver lining. It was so true, as we were rethinking our activities, we were coming up with a number of new ideas and insights, ones we might not have thought of, if it were not for the need to put the course online. In my F2F courses, I have been doing breakout sessions for a number of years. I love having students take a short break during lecture and work on some kind of problem together (Schmidt, Parmer, & Javenkoski, 2002). Educational research shows that engaging students in problem solving as part of the course content promotes student motivation, recall of previously learned background information, and retrieval of relevant information learned in class. These beneficial results of problem solving are further enhanced by solving the problems with others, rather than alone (Light & Micari, 2013). So naturally, I built breakout sessions into my synchronous online courses, using the breakout rooms feature in Zoom. However, I quickly learned that breakout sessions via Zoom were not going to be the same as in my F2F classroom, in several little and big ways. Adjustments were going to be needed! First, when I do a breakout session in my F2F course, I introduce the problem using a PowerPoint Slide, which all the students can continue to see when they turn to their neighbor to work on the problem. In Zoom, however, that is not the case. When students are electronically sent to their breakout rooms, they no longer can see the question posed on the PowerPoint slide in the main room. An adjustment was needed – I needed to put a copy of the question slide (usually in jpg or png format) in the chat space before the students head off to their breakout rooms. So the other day, I thought I would put the breakout question slide in the chat space right after I signed into Zoom, which was about 10 minutes before class was scheduled to start. I thought I was being efficient getting everything ready to go. So when it was time for the breakout session to begin, I announced to the students that the file with the question was in the chat space, but the students, as well as the TA, said they couldn't see the file. At first I didn't know what was going on, but then it dawned on me that the only people that can see the file are the ones that were already in Zoom when I put it in the chat space, so that was only two students and myself. So I quickly re-uploaded the needed file. Note to self, don't put the question slide into the chat space until just before it is needed. Now, just in case, I also post the question slide to Compass, as well as the chat space. Reminds me of the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared! Second, when students breakout into groups in a F2F classroom, I can stand back and get a BIG picture view of how all the groups are doing – I can see and hear them working and interacting with each other and they can see and hear each other and me. I can walk around and pretty easily and naturally stop and interact with a group for a minute or two and then move on to the next group. The next group sees me coming and are aware that I will soon be stopping by. Unfortunately, in Zoom, there is no big picture view for me or the students. The only option I have is to join a group by popping in, unannounced, from the main room. The good news is, so far all the groups have been happy to see me. Some have been busy working together, while others seem to be taking a more “working individually” approach. I must admit, I do miss walking around the room and seeing everyone working and talking and learning in groups. Maybe in the future there could be a Zoom feature where the instructor can see and hear all the breakout rooms at once? Or does that sound too much like surveillance? Third, after a few breakout sessions, it seemed to me that the students were slower than usual (i.e., compared to a F2F classroom) in getting to know each other. Then, it struck me. The informal aspect of students connecting with each other that happens naturally in the F2F setting is not happening naturally in the online space. These students are not getting to know each other day-by-day as they sit next to each other in class, casually greeting, meeting, and chatting with each other. This casual, getting-to-know-you chatting has a substantial, positive effect on the natural development of academic friendships and networks that help the F2F breakout groups to go well (Schmidt, 2020). In Zoom, the students are not able to casually get to know each other before and after class, so breaking out into small, randomly selected groups can feel somewhat awkward, especially for generations such as Millennials and Generation Z, who prefer texting and communicating through social media much more than talking over the phone (Barken, 2019). One fix is to do Zoom breakout sessions where the participants are preassigned to the same group, which I believe will help. But how can we give students at least a little say in who is in their group? We decided that during the first section of the course (about 3.5 weeks), the breakouts session will be randomized, but at the start of the second section the students were told that the breakout groups will be permanently assigned; however, if they wanted to work with someone and that someone wanted to work with them, then they could request to be placed in a group together. I hope4 this helps the students feel more at home in their Zoom breakout groups. One last thought I had on Zoom breakout rooms – perhaps having students touch base about a homework assignment they are working on would promote their interaction with each other. So last week, the breakout session was for students to discuss the experiential learning activity—a 24-hr dietary recall assignment that contained a number of calculations and comparisons to the Dietary Reference Intake values we were learning about in lecture. The breakout session wasn't meant to solve a problem, but instead to help one another on an assignment that was due in a week. I thought this may be a good way for the students to connect with each other, which is, in fact, the underlying purpose of the groups in the first place. Before the semester began, I was searching the web to find ideas about how to make Zoom meetings5 more fun. I ran across a list of ideas, which included doing themed Zoom sessions. Though I thought it might be a lot to ask the students to do, it was something I thought I could do. For each class, I pick out a new Zoom background and a shirt to go with it. I teach Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I quickly dubbed Fridays as Illini Days (Illinois Campus background picture and an Illinois shirt). Currently, Mondays are mainly country themed backgrounds (since I live out in the country) and Wednesdays are mainly vacation scenery themed backgrounds from around the U.S. and the world. But who knows what other themes might sneak in over the semester? Halloween and Thanksgiving are coming up. I was even thinking about bringing in some of the National Day Calendar (2020) holidays – such as National I love Lucy Day on October 15th and National Mutt Day on December 2nd. In my own little way, I am trying to bring a little fun into the picture. As has often been said, little things can make all the difference.6 One last thought, but certainly not the least – a key part of reaching our students is making sure our students know that we care about them, especially during this super stressful and uncertain time. I am blessed to have a superstar teaching assistant this semester, Erin Davis (soon to be Dr. Erin Davis), who is my right-hand person in this regard. She is always thinking about how to help the students succeed, even if it means more work and time and effort on her part. I am grateful for her and grateful for all the teachers out there who are working extra hard to teach and reach their students during such a time as this.
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