How are your students feeling about class? Does silence mean they’re confused, or that they’re ready to move on? Here are a few ways to check in with your students when teaching online.
- Zoom polls during web conference. You can prepare a poll in Zoom before class that can be used multiple times to check on your students. For example:
Are you ready to move on?
(a) Yes
(b) Not quite yet, I still have a question
(c) I’m feeling lost. - Cold-calling: This traditional classroom method lets you know how well all students are following along, not just the ones who raise their hands. Done poorly, it can feel scary and punitive. But if you tell students you’re doing it to evaluate your own teaching, it can be less intimidating. For best practices, see The Art of Cold Calling.
- Short weekly surveys: At the end of every week or class session, send students a short survey in Canvas. Make it optional, or required for a very small amount of participation credit. These can surface all kinds of unexpected student thoughts, and unlike homework, allow you to give feedback or responses without grading them. We recommend variations of these three questions:
- What did you like most or love learning about this week?
- What questions, challenges, or fears do you have?
- Is there anything else you want us to know?
- Q&A Forum(s): Use Canvas Discussions to create a Question & Answer (Q&A) forum for the course, or create Q&A forums by week, unit, or course topic. You can then subscribe to that discussion and get notifications when anyone posts a question. You can allow students to create their own discussion topics, though this requires more vigilant checking. In a large course, TAs can take turns being on duty for answering questions by day, week or forum, and can escalate key questions to the instructor.
- Repurpose section meetings: If course TAs normally use section meeting time for teaching new content or working out pre-prepared problems, consider saving more time for student questions. You can also dedicate a Canvas discussion forum to soliciting student questions to be answered during section meetings.
- Ask questions in assignment feedback. You might know that you can leave feedback for students about their assignment in Speedgrader. Did you know that students can also respond, and the conversation can continue? If a student seems confused in an assignment response, you can ask clarifying questions to which they can respond. Even if it doesn’t change their grade, it can improve your sense of the student’s level of understanding.