Mini-tip Monday: Zoom Polls

Happy fourth week of online teaching, everyone! Can you believe we made it to four weeks? Today’s Mini-tip Monday is also about the move to remote learning. (See here and here for the previous posts in this series.)

If you’re new to my blog, let me remind you of my set-up. I am teaching Calculus II synchronously using Zoom, the now-famous web-conferencing service. I share my iPad’s screen and use notability to write while I lecture. I use Canvas to communicate with my students, post class recording and notes, and share any other resources.

The set-up has been working very well for me. On average, about two-thirds of my students are attending the class sessions live. The others are engaging via Canvas, and I haven’t had a student completely disappear yet. (I have had a couple of close calls, but reaching out to them has always resulted in them resurfacing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my students can all make it through these chaotic times in good health and spirits.)

While I have adjusted reasonably well to teaching online, I really do miss being in a physical classroom. Apart from just missing the energy of a physical classroom, I miss being able to communicate quickly and effectively by virtue of being in the same space as my students. There are just some things that cannot be replicated in an online class, though not for lack of trying. One of the things I miss the most is the ability to get quick feedback from students when explaining a new topic. I do this in a face-to-face class by breaking my lecture up with straightforward problems that I ask them to solve on a pen and paper. I encourage them to talk to each other while attempting these problems, and I do a quick walk-around to glance at their work and gauge where they are. If needed, I pause and chat with the students who seem to be struggling, offering individual help. 

Sometimes I do the same thing before I introduce a new topic. I ask the students to solve a warm-up problem, something that nicely sets up the next section we are going to cover. (I will talk about warm-up problems more in a future Mini-Tip Monday.)

All of this seems impossible in an online class where I can’t glance at their work in real-time. While I haven’t found a way to completely replicate the ease of a physical classroom, one of the most effective tools I’ve used to get me close is the “Polling” option on Zoom.

I have taken the time to reframe the problems I’d usually ask students to solve in a class into multiple-choice questions. Obviously, this reframing would not work for every type of question. Still, when it does, it provides me with invaluable quick feedback that I had no other way of getting in an online class.

Let me explain how Polling works a little bit. You can set up polls you want to use in a class session ahead of time. I usually do this the night before. If you have a recurring meeting scheduled, you can add polls to the meeting at any time, and Zoom saves all of them. Here I will list three examples of questions that translate well to Zoom Polls.

Example 1

Topic: Trigonometric integrals.

Warm-up problem: Integrate sin^2(x) with respect to x.

Zoom Alternative: Which of the following methods would you use to integrate sin^2(x) with respect to x? 

Poll Options:  Integration by parts, u-substitution, a trigonometric identity

(Once students have answered this poll, I would ask them to take a few minutes and try to solve the problem using the method they picked. After a few minutes, I would rerun the poll, asking them to choose either the same or a different approach.)

Example 2

In-class problem: For what values of x does the series {insert some power series here, say with the interval of convergence [-1/2,1/2)} converge?

Zoom Alternative: For what values of x does the series {power series} converge?

Poll Options: (-1/2,1/2), [-1/2,1/2), [-1/2,1/2], (-1,1), I do not know.

(If anyone picks the last option, I would pause and ask them if they have a specific question.)

There are also some much simpler questions one could ask over Zoom. For example,

Zoom Poll: Does the series {insert series} converge or diverge?

Poll Options: Converges, Diverges.

Here’s one I used in class just today.

Zoom Poll: The following differential equation models the growth of a population P: dP/dt=8P(1000-P). If the current population is 200, is the population increasing or decreasing? 

Poll Options: Increasing, Decreasing.

While this approach has it’s imperfections, I have had a lot of success using it. In particular, I like it a lot better than the alternative that I’ve been considering: breakout rooms. Let me know in the comments of any strategies that you’ve developed to make your online lectures more interactive. I am always looking for ideas!

 

Mini-tip Monday: Running to-do lists

I’m back with another Mini-tip Monday, a series where I post a bite-sized piece of information or suggestion that has helped me streamline or improve my teaching. If you missed the one from last week, click here to read it.

For the next several weeks, the mini-tips will specifically be about moving to remote learning amid the Covid19 crisis. We will move to other topics once things go back to some semblance of normal.

This week’s mini-tip is about running to-do lists. 

Since moving our class online, a lot has inadvertently changed. Students were used to a weekly study routine that has had to be modified. I’ve tried not to jostle any of their deadlines drastically, e.g., homework is still due on Mondays, in-class quizzes that used to take place on Wednesdays have been converted to weekly Canvas quizzes, which still take place on Wednesdays, etc. My intention is to keep things as close to normal as possible while being as flexible and compassionate towards their individual circumstances as I can be.

It is a hard balance to strike, though. For example, we nixed a midterm that was supposed to take place right after spring break, since that would not have given them enough time to get used to taking their class online, etc. Emory extended their spring break for a week, which means that we had to rearrange content for the rest of the semester. 

To help students with this transition, I’ve decided to post a running to-do list on our Canvas homepage. I update it as I go during the week, and send out an email with all upcoming deadlines on Monday evenings. Here’s an example of what that email looked like as of Monday evening last week [I’ll add comments and explanations in square brackets, like so. The stuff in blue used to be links that I’ve removed for the blog post.]

"I thought it might help if I made a consolidated list of to-dos for you each week, just to make this transition easier. 

First, if you weren't present for today's synchronous class (and even if you were), please take a look at this page: March 30th, 2020. [links to Canvas page titled "March 30th, 2020. See my last blog post for details about how I'm using Canvas pages.] I have updated it with a link to the video-recording of the lecture, and a PDF file containing notes. 

Then, please complete today's summary exercise [links to the correct page on Canvas. More details about summary exercises in a future mini-tip Monday post!] if you haven't yet. 

This week's WebAssign [online homework] is due on today by 5:00 PM EST. [This is when WebAssign has always been due, and since it's always been online, I decided not to change the deadline.] Please make sure that you have completed it. Feel free to email me any questions. 

There will be a new WebAssign out tonight, which covers Sections 11.10 and 11.11 from your textbook. It will be due next Monday; please plan a time to work on it this week. 

Our weekly quiz will be released on Wednesday at 11 AM. It will available until Thursday at 11 AM. It covers 11.8 and 11.9 from your textbook.

Finally, please attend class (if you can, or watch the recorded video) on Wednesday and Friday, and submit the corresponding summary exercises.

Please let me know if you have any questions/comments or feedback. 
 
Stay safe, 
 
Maryam" 

On my Canvas homepage, that above email just translates to:

• Notes+Recording for Monday’s class: March 30th, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Monday, March 30th.
• WebAssign (due March 30, 5:00PM EST).
• Quiz on Wednesday, April 1st, 11 AM (Sections 11.8 and 11.9)
• Notes+Recording for Wednesday’s class: April 1st, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Wednesday, April 1st.
• Notes+Recording for Friday’s class: April 3rd, 2020.
• Summary exercise for Friday, April 3rd.

This way, they get a reminder on Mondays, but they also have a concise, frequently-updated running list that they can check any day of the week.

In a regular semester, I send students email reminders for any deadlines that they wouldn’t get an automatic reminder for. I’ve never thought of doing one big email with a consolidated to-do list for the whole week before, but after doing them for the past couple of weeks, I like the idea enough that I hope to continue doing this post-pandemic!

As always, please let me know in the comments if you have ideas for making this more efficient and effective. Thank you for reading this far!