[Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona

Wed Apr 15 04:58:53 PDT 2020

As someone who worked in distance ed for over 20 years, the last 10 of that in varying online environments, I can endorse what Rob (who I worked with for over 10 of those years) says below.

Though he doesn't use the term, much of what Rob describes is project-based learning. It is remarkable what students can do 'together' online, whether synchronously or asynchronously. I am not sure who was keen to make the distinction (and the distinction is important), however, both sync and async are valuable modes for teaching and learning (and some intermingling of the two might possibly be best).

Three things that I would add to Rob's description of good online learning processes are:

  1.  The importance of having a 'get to know you' session -- which I would argue, for synchronous learning environments, is essential. I have experienced the value of this in both educational and business settings. The 'get-to-know-you' should be clearly flagged as a chance to say hello in a zero-risk setting. It should be short and  involve an easy introduction, 'If you can hear me, click on the hand-raise/yes/thumbs up button; if you have used Zoom before, click on...; if you like cheese.... Then proceed to a game, such as put a pin on a map, showing where they are; or share a photo of a  pet or  houseplant; bring a 'tool' to your learning - an image, a description, a motivational quote, etc. Then offer a chance to talk with another student about hopes, motivations, etc. Which bring me to:
  2.  Use break-out rooms (or small group set threads) so that very small numbers of students (2-3) need to speak with each other on a particular task. In the 'get-to-know-you', this might be as simple as 'What are your hopes for this course?' or 'Agree on one question you'd like to ask the tutor.' or 'What's a key concern/topic you hope the course will cover?', etc. The break-out group then returns to the main session and relays what they have come up with.
  3.  In synchronous sessions, don't be afraid of what may feel like long silences -- and don't be tempted to fill them! By all means check if your question or prompt was clear, but -- as in f2f sessions -- don't be tempted to answer yourself 🙂. Similarly, in asynchronous, if you are confident the prompt/question/task and deadline for engaging is clear, don't be tempted to jump in with a long string of your own postings. Offer encouragement, of course and -- if you become convinced you've asked the wrong Q or set the wrong task -- revise.

I hope this is helpful!
W

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of robsub@ariadne.org.uk <robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
Sent: 14 April 2020 17:47
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>; Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Love in the time of corona

For what it's worth here are a few thoughts on creating online activities. I don't think there is a one size fits all answer because students (as well as teachers!) come from all sorts of different cultures with all sorts of different expectation about community. But I hope that some of my suggestions will work broadly - my hope is based on my background, which is in the competitive individualist west, where the biggest problem about learning communities is getting out of students' heads the idea that any kind of collaboration is tantamount to collusion and will be punished with the utmost severity. (I find I have had to work at getting that out of a lot of teachers' heads as well.) So basically, if it works on my students, there is a good chance that it will work elsewhere.

I don't think you should work at community directly. it is something best sneaked up on in the course of other activity. But the other activity has to be carefully and artfully constructed. That's one of many reasons why you don't make an online course by chucking offine material on to the web.

There are two aspects - being online and working together. Being online will be a challenge for many students. A lifetime of texting, Snapchatting, Tiktoking, and ordering your clothes, holidays and pizza over the internet does not prepare people for using an online learning environment. So you have to expect people to be clueless to start with. But you should act as if this is an entirely natural environment right from the start. You need to make it their assumption that they will be working together every week if not more often. You need to make it their assumption that if they're live online, they will see and hear each other. It's astonishing in some of the courses I've seen how many students have microphones that don't work :-)

So design your teaching and your assessment work to perhaps enforce, certainly encourage, working together. The more they work together, the more a sense of community will grow. In my environment, students follow the marks, even the disengaged ones. if there are marks available for collaborative activities, they will do them. They will do them with less or more of a sense of engagement, but the hope is that as they get used to them, students will recognise the intrinsic rewards as well as the extrinsic ones.

I don't know what your assessment strategy will be. The standard at the OU is a series of assignments roughly once a month over a nine month course. Each assignment should contain some kind of collaborative element. Even the simplest will do - quote two substantial and meaningful posts you have written in the online forum. There is plenty of room for interpretation of "substantial and meaningful" but you get the idea.

Then you work up to them working in teams to produce, say, an annotated bibliography on a specific topic, or a powerpoint on something.And you can assess the way they work together in a forum to produce this. Sounds daunting - I've done it, works easier than you think.

If you're working with them live, give them opportunities to work together on exercises or issues. Even if there are only two of them, put them in a breakout room together. Without you there, they have to talk to each other.

Incorporate exercises like "how am I doing?" Get students to assess their own progress against the learning outcomes of the course, and discuss with each other. You could give them an exercise after working on it individually, to come to a combined ranking of the two or three bits of the course that they most need to revisit. (Which you obviously then revisit, and get the students who think they're Ok on it to teach the others.)

I have so much more to say. I could write a book, as you can tell. I'd be very happy to give more detail, perhaps off-list.

Final thought: people often compare ftf and online communities by different standards. Ftf communities all have weaknesses and failings but because they're familiar, we assume they're working. Because online communities are new and unfamiliar, we tend to see all their faults and weaknesses and judge them by standards that we don't apply to the ftf world.

Rob

On 13/04/2020 18:17, Greg Thompson wrote:
Lois and others,

Inspiring to see all that you and ESI are doing there in the midst of this whirlwind - and in the eye of the storm no less!

This comment of yours seemed to resonate with Liz' and Annalie's comments about mental health:
"people are realizing how they feel is not inside them".

That seems to me to be a revolutionary thought.

Also, I'd ask this to you but don't want to distract you from your important work, so perhaps others can talk about how activities can be transformed in these times to adapt to this new era (I'd like to call it a "moment" but it feels bigger than that).

What got me thinking of this were the Zoom sessions that Lois mentioned on Creating Connection and Building Community. The fact is that there will be new possibilities to do these things (e.g., the possibility of truly GLOBAL communities and connections - perhaps to Andy's world-perezhivanie), but the activities that enable these things will also need to be transformed and different.

[I'm a bit of an idiot about these things so I'm just realizing that online classes can't just be in-person activities that are taken online. They need online activities that can build connection and community among students. Still working on that.]

So I'm wondering if anyone has had any success or even just suggestions regarding how to create online activities that can realize the possibilities and potential for connection and community in online spaces?

[I'm thinking really practically/locally here in terms of what can be done in my classes to build connection and community in online spaces, but the answer will, of course, be relevant to forms of cross-national solidarity, granting that there may be other challenges as well - e.g., language].

-greg

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Lois Holzman <lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org<mailto:lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org>> wrote:
Hello All,

Following the lead of others, I'll jump in. While NYC and state are in serious crisis and all its cultural and economic conflicts even more glaring, the vibrancy and energy has not disappeared. It's just different.

As Vygotsky is purported to have said, "A revolution solves only those tasks raised by history..." History has thrown us a monster.

Different too are the forces working to shape this extraordinary historical moment. Much of that shaping by those who are in positions of political and economic, etc. authority—and the pandemic itself—are creating fear and despair, both for now and the future. At the same time, the shaping being done by so many thousands of people and organizations that inspire and organize people to exercise their power and creativity for connectedness are generating hope and possibility.
I feel that palpably all day long.

We in the global development community are re-tooling and/or stepping up our virtual activities, many of which involve play, performance and ensemble building, not to take people's minds off what's happening, but to involve them in some "non-knowing growing" and participation in creating positive responses to what's happening that have the possibility to continue to be transformative of individuals and communities. A few examples—
     establishing a Global Play Brigade working across borders of nation state, culture and economy (so far performance activists from about 40 countries involved)
     offering Creating Connection and Building Community <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmyemail.constantcontact.com%2FPlay-Sessions-via-Zoom-Opened-Up--Free-online-social-gatherings.html%3Fsoid%3D1101246158194%26aid%3DqweSrQdaUGo&data=02%7C01%7C%7C5663a6221e70481f073a08d7e094077f%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637224798691594694&sdata=7miiPkjAfjWnwiQs33uxHGc46ldMpsDPTgAP3o%2Bhghs%3D&reserved=0> free play sessions via Zoom, each one originating in a different part of the world (about 150 people per session so far)
     taking our Creating Our Mental Health conversation/workshop series national and international in a moment when people are realizing how they feel is not inside them, not merely socially produced and organized, but social in its potential transformativity
      taking All Stars Project programs for poor youth and their communities in NYC, NJ, Dallas, Chicago and the Bay Area virtual

If you're interested in any of this and more, let me know. And you can always check out the social media listed in my signature.

Stay safe,
Lois

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