Choosing technologies for creating community in your class

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Last week in her PETAL Workshop—Classroom Paradigms for Hybrid Teaching—Jennifer Eidum talked about aligning our pedagogical choices, including the technologies we use, with our values.

(If you weren’t able to attend, but want to see the resources from the workshop, they are available here or on the English department Moodle Page; the video is below or on Moodle.

PETAL Workshop: Classroom paradigms for hybrid teaching

Whatever technologies we choose, including the technology of face-to-face instruction, we want to make sure that these choices support our teaching values. For example, as someone who wants to work in partnership with students to create the class and to encourage exploration, it is important for me to choose technologies that aren’t too hierarchical and which give a certain amount of creative control to students. Within a course, though, I might want more or less control for a specific activity based on specific learning goals.

When choosing technologies for the classroom, considerations include

• my pedagogical values;
• my own comfort level with the technology and ability to teach others to use it;
• the learning goal or outcome I have for the activity;
• the audience of the activity (is it me or fellow students or someone else);
• my role in the activity (am I prompter, facilitator, observer);
• how I want to assess the activity;
• how much time I have.

I give examples of matching technologies with learning goals and assessment strategies below.

Aligning learning goals and technologies

Form does indeed matter, perhaps as much as content. Form matters precisely because the learning that happens in any course is inextricably bound up with the means by which the learning process is facilitated and encouraged, and this is especially the case in online courses. Because many instructors simply take the traditional classroom model for granted, the online model is still novel enough to require deliberate and intentional reflection on the part of the instructor, specifically in terms of creating a safe and vibrant community of teaching and learning that respects and values the unique considerations and needs of the learners, the material, the instructor, and the delivery platform itself.

My in-person classes are almost entirely discussion-based, so obviously I value discussion as a pedagogical tool. What are my goals for that activity? It really depends on what we are discussing and the class, but common goals for a discussion in my class might be

• for students to unpack and find meaning in a difficult text;
• for me to gauge student understanding of a text;
• for students to come to understand how their classmates view a text, including alternative readings;
• to create a dynamic group interpretation of the text; and
• to foster a sense of belonging for students in the class.

If I’m using an online technology or technologies to accomplish these goals, I think about if I need to accomplish all of these goals in the same activity online, or if I can use multiple activities.

For example, I might use group annotation in Google Drive to gauge student understanding and to create a dynamic group interpretation and small groups in GroupMe for students to come to understand how their classmates view a text and to foster belonging.

We’ll talk about this more using this chart.

Aligning technologies and assessment strategies

For the examples above, I probably wouldn’t use formal assessment strategies other than participated/did not participate, similar to how I might assess in-class discussion. Instead, I might give feedback by responding to comments in the annotations.

Questions to ask about assessing work in different technologies:

• What am I trying to communicate in this assessment?
• How nuanced does my assessment need to be in order to communicate effectively?
• Does feedback work decoupled from assessment for this activity?

Some technologies have built-in grading options, but many do not. Some may work better for ungraded activities. Something like a GroupMe chat, which is informal and promotes spontaneity, might not work well with much assessment or feedback, whereas a blog post could be assessed in a more nuanced manner with more feedback.