50 Days of Summer, 1 Community

Published in

Future of Design in Higher Education

13 min readAug 25, 2020

One of the many things a physical classroom environment provides is a chance for students to come together and share moments: subtle, serendipitous moments. Special moments build community, something teachers and professors are struggling with in the era of virtual classes and within the space of virtual classrooms. Like many in the United States and around the world, I had the fortuity of dipping my toe into the world of online teaching in spring, when the majority of the United States went into lockdown. Closely tailing the spring semester, I had a 10-week summer program to further explore, experiment, fail, iterate, fail more, and succeed in the perplexing realm of virtual classes, specifically, building a virtual community. By the end of spring, with those 10 weeks looming closer by the day, I was hesitant, to say the least; jittery, to be exact. On the first day of my summer program on June 8th, despite the most fastidious planning and preparation, it was still very much like being thrown in at the deep end. The train has left the station, hold tight or you topple over. Staring at 27 framed faces spanned across 2 pages, I took a deep breath, smiled, and said to the tiny camera on my laptop,

“Welcome to Tiger Challenge Summer 2020”.

Only later did I realize that I had held that breath for at least 4 weeks.

On the books, the summer program was supposed to be an “8 hours a day, 5 days a week” full-time immersion for 10 weeks. As I quickly redesigned my program for a remote format, I knew that 8 hours a day on Zoom would turn us all into ludicrous Zoombies. I had 5 time zones to work with, with 1 that was flipped exactly on the head, a.m. to p.m., 12 hours ahead of my (the cohort’s majority) time zone. I settled on 2–3 hours of synchronous activities, and 1–3 hours of asynchronous time daily. I also asked that my students put in 1–2 hours of individual, asynchronous time each day.

Yes, I slept very little in those 10 weeks, living, breathing, and dreaming about aspects to improve and activities to tweak (purely my own preference and not anyone’s fault except my 7 years of architecture school training). What came out of the 10 weeks was a community consisting of 28 individuals, many of whom have never met in person, sharing a single contagious idea: “Jessica, please sleep more.”

Jokes aside, I feel that the only way to do my students justice for graciously putting up with all of my experimentations and a pure, earnest desire to create a somewhat successful virtual community is to share my journey. This is far from being a guide, but I hope it might inspire some of you out there dreading the fall semester. To quote one of my students, I am not trying to be a “sage on the stage”, rather, a “guide on the side”, or if you’d ask me: a “footnote on the remote” (the best part being at the bottom, I promise). A laugh would at least force you to let go of that breath you are holding.

Main Zoom Room

Traumatized by 2 incidences of being Zoombombed in the previous semester, I debated between having different Zoom links for different days, different weeks, different activities, different project teams. I decided to use the same Zoom link for everything in the first 2 weeks, and to switch if need be. I ended up using that one link for all 10 weeks. As a cohort, we came to understand it as the Main Room — “home”.

My students got used to the idea of the same link with the same set of numbers. Our Slack channel has it pinned. My Chrome browser remembered it: /xxxxx75117/. “See you back in the Main Room.”
It saved time not to have to generate 50 links for 50 days, or 100 links for 2 different activities per day. It also saved me the time to look for “lost” students.
My Zoom room was close to Zoombomb-proof with layered security measures, i.e. waiting room enabled, co-host privileges, screen sharing disabled, etc. It felt like our protected space that required key card access.
A diligent person, i.e. my TA, was always patiently there to open the Zoom room, letting only students in from the waiting room, enabling screen sharing when students were sharing, and always on high alert at any moment to expel Zoombombers who are not welcomed in our community.

Zoom Breakouts

For a summer program that meets every day for both cohort-wide activities and individual Team Time. Team Time in person would be flexible and unorchestrated in a designated studio workspace. Virtually, however, the lack of a shared, common space could be a deterrent for some. Though remote, an easily-accessible shared space was effective for a cognitive establishment of the notion of “work”. As a cohort, we used the same Main Room link for teams’ breakout time.

Students got used to the idea of staying in the Main Room after cohort-wide activities to use the breakout rooms. I am still trying to grasp why they had enjoyed being assigned into rooms, and not having control over where they would be placed, or teleported at any moment.
As the instructor, I was able to go and check in on the individual teams in their team rooms periodically to offer additional coaching and support, or teams would reach out to me to seek guidance when they needed it.
We made good use of the “PA”/announcement system to broadcast prompts or instructions for the next steps. At times, and for specific activities, I also broadcast commentaries with perhaps a little too many exclamations and all-caps.
A diligent person other than you as the instructor, i.e. my TA (again), was often patiently staying out in the “lobby”, such that the main space could still be monitored, i.e. letting students in from the waiting room in case they were dropped from the call, or if the teams decided to take a break before they reconvene, moving people around, etc.
Since Zoom did not allow for the holder of 1 account to be in 2 concurrent meetings, I held my office hours in these Zoom breakout rooms too. We always had a spare breakout room set aside for ad-hoc meetings.
There were 2 times when I, without prior warning and with the almighty Zoom power vested in me, moved 1 team into the room of another team. As the 6 members from another team suddenly materialized in this breakout room, 1 student from the original team exclaimed, “Why are you guys in our room!” Soaking up this room that is “virtually” the same as any other Zoom spaces, I laughed so hard. That was easily one of my favorite moments during the 10 weeks.
The best thing about Zoom breakouts was when I realized there was one thing that an in-person experience could not replicate. (And here we are all complaining about how bad video-conferencing is!) When students are randomly assigned to (read: “thrown into”) breakout rooms, there was no way of knowing who they will end up with. The momentary split-second of switching to another virtual space does not give one much preparation. Being in a “room” together, students are given no choice but to focus solely on their engagement with these people. There is not “looking around”, chatting up their friends in the next group, or physically wandering around to grab a snack, or to use the bathroom. As awkward as the first few seconds might be, my experience told me that no one hated this kind of interaction, albeit being slightly forced.

Live Engagement

In the virtual setting, engagement is a lot different. Without the ambient sounds or facial expressions from the audience to gauge, you could feel like a podcaster talking to yourself. From the audience’s perspective, watching a slide presentation on the computer screen just is not extremely appealing. Throughout the summer, these were the few things that I tried and tested.

The Zoom chat function was a great tool to increase engagement. While Zoom presents more difficulty to allow for interruption with gestures or voices, my cohort made very good use of the chat function to ask questions and make comments concurrently without actively disturbing the flow of a presentation, or a speech. You knew you had good moments when the chat would blow up.
At times when we set aside time to work together on individual tasks, exercises, or activities “on screen”, I would play DJ. Soliciting songs from the cohort made it engaging, but switching from the Spotify app to YouTube to the Spotify website was no easy task.
Perhaps this was how the instructor’s or the main speaker’s experience was the most contrasting from that of the student. I found myself more uncoordinated and awkward when speaking to a screenful of names against a black background staring back at me, rather than live faces. To the dismay and annoyance of some students, I had asked everyone to turn on their cameras as much as their situation and tech support allowed for, especially when we were in pure “talking” sessions without screen sharing.
It also helped a lot if students physically laugh (even without audio), or clap, or use the clap and thumbs-up emojis to indicate engagement. Even if the camera was not turned on, at least I knew they were by their computers.
I often encouraged students to unmute themselves to answer questions or contribute comments verbally. The pace was a little different from an in-person meeting, with longer moments of pauses, more frequent clashes of two or more people trying to speak all at the same time, and sometimes delays because of connectivity, but it was still worth it to hear human voices.
Breakouts were very useful in breaking up long monologues for students to engage with each other. In smaller group settings, and away from the prying eyes of the instructor, my students would enjoy their smaller group discussions or work sessions with each other. Sometimes they were placed into smaller groups with people outside of their teams, which worked surprisingly well. (More on this in the next section)

Live Community Building & Rituals

Building connections with people is hard in-person, let alone through at least 2 computer screens. Once it was decided that my program would be remote, the biggest goal I had for myself was to create a true sense of companionship and belonging. For a program that ran over the summer, it was important that it did not just feel like “school” or “work”, but that we enjoyed each other’s company. The Tiger Challenge is not a one-off summer program, but one in which the students will continue into the academic year(s). Building a good foundation for a community that cultivates meaningful relationships is paramount.

Since we were meeting daily, routines were important. We always started each day with a warm-up exercise that was supposedly related to the day’s activities, or the week’s theme. Whether the students noticed the parallels was secondary, though I would have hoped they did, but the key was to get our mindsets all on the same page.
For our cohort, Friday was always for the “community”. As a way to conclude the week, we spent our last hour in Community Share, where each person in the cohort took turns to share aloud a thought, feeling, or insight that stood out to them on our shared Mural board. Students connected similar thoughts to each others’ with lines and arrows connectors, and old thoughts gave birth to new thoughts. As the weeks progressed, our shared board evolved into an intricate web to which every person in our community contributed.
I believe it was around week 4, when I had a feeling that the straightforward sharing activity was getting monotonous and did not give students the opportunity to get to know each other in a more personal and natural way. I switched up the format and introduced a more intimate, smaller breakout format for the students to build connections with each other. From a mix of different sharing formats, the students were able to “meet” others outside of their own teams.
On one occasion, my 20 students in the cohort had to find 20 radically different things among themselves. On another, they were tasked with organizing themselves first by age, then by last names. With the instructions being somewhat minimal, it was up to them to be creative.
At times I grouped students intentionally, for example, by class years, and asked them to share and discuss sentiments, concerns, and aspirations pertained to their ages and class years.
Another one of my (and my students’) favorite experimentations was something I had come up with somewhat spontaneously, but was not sure if it could work. I gave the students 10 minutes to get on Zoom with their phones either by calling in or with Internet data, and then I sent them out in random pairs, in breakout rooms, to take actual walks with each other remotely. For those who were in other time zones in ungodly hours, or had unfavorable weather, I asked them to walk regardless, but in their own residences. After 40 minutes, some came back sweaty, others happy, but everyone was invigorated.

Offline Engagement and Miscellaneous

We live in a world where not many are unfamiliar with digital screens. However, being on Zoom for prolonged hours together, and the need to be “on”, is still tiring. By cutting the synchronous hours spent together, I had to be creative about ways to enhance engagement and community building “offline”. Technically, some of the following still required the use of Internet, but they were asynchronous activities done outside of the “work hours”.

As a cohort, we used Slack for the majority of our communications. The students read daily notes, periodic announcements, and reminders from me, and they shared fun articles and started random discussions. It was a great way to continue engaging with each other “offline”.
For an instructor, Slack made me very available and approachable to the students. My online status welcomed instant DMs from everyone in the cohort, from the students to the student helpers to the sign language interpreters. At times it got overwhelming, especially when 5 students were telling me about 5 different engagements they had to be a part of and would be missing certain parts of certain activities of certain days. That said, in a time when we are all working and learning from home in our separated spaces, sometimes seeing that green dot that indicates certain people are “online” with you, working on something together, could be rather comforting.
While the breakout rooms have lots of merits, a huge thing missing was a way of knowing or seeing what is happening in each room, unless you are virtually in there. I had 4 great student helpers (or program associates) that were on a rotation with the 4 teams. Every week I had a meeting to check in with the associates to hear concerns and discuss the next steps. At the end of each week, I also had the associates fill out a weekly progress report to help me gauge what each team needed, where they were excelling, and where they could use extra help. Both of these were extremely valuable in allowing me to have extra pairs of “eyes” on the teams before I mastered splitting myself into 4 parts.
Without those physical moments of waiting around before things began, not just for students to chat among themselves, but also for them to get to know the instructor a bit more, there was a need to have more 1-on-1 check-ins to develop a more personal relationship with individual students. Over the 10 weeks, I had 2 mandatory 1-on-1s with each student, and additional optional ones. There were always students who would sign up for optional hours to chat about anything that was on their minds.
To conclude the summer, I came up with the idea of a multi-day scavenger hunt at the last minute, threw it together, and sent the instructions out to the students. The scavenger hunt would be carried out over several days and nights, with tasks to be done as in the students’ project teams, in pairs with members in the cohort outside of their teams, and individually. There was an impossible number of items to be completed, and the goal was to get as many points as possible. There would be 1 winning team, and in addition, 2 winning individuals. To be absolutely honest, which I later admitted to my students, I did not expect more than just a few to play along. That evening before the deadline at noon on the next day, when I saw the Google spreadsheet scoreboard exploded before my eyes, it was the most beautiful thing I had seen, and I laughed so very hard.

Even with the most meticulous plans and the cleverest tricks, no community would have been possible without the people in it. Not only did I have the luxury of imagining, prototyping, tweaking, and attempting these experimentations over 10 full weeks, but luck played an undeniable role in the process, such that I had 20 students, 4 associates, 2 sign language interpreters, and 1 TA to indulge me. Despite all those flashes of skepticism, ambiguity, spontaneity, confusion, up and down the emotional mountains and valleys, coupled with announcements, changes, and updates from the University about the Fall semester as well as other social and political events, they stuck with me throughout the entire ride. I truly could not have asked for a better group of people to be in the Tiger Challenge Summer 2020.

Note: Tiger Challenge is Princeton University’s only design thinking program, with a focus on creating social impact through the human-centered approach. The program begins every summer, and the students continue with their projects in their teams throughout the academic year(s).