The following is a list of engagement strategies you can share with faculty to increase interaction during and after synchronous classes.

Synchronous Classes

Arrive early to greet students.  Use an ice breaker activity to get attention at the start of class.  Keep energy up throughout class by asking lots of questions and shifting activities often rather than just talking “at students” through the whole class.

Highlight students who are doing well (peer to peer) and warm call (prepare students ahead to participate).  Use pre-recorded short lectures or other videos when livestreaming to allow for easy switching to different apps or other tasks. Include images in your presentation and/or chat such as avatars, expression emojis, gifs, and memes.

Class Attendance

For attendance, MS Teams provides a downloadable “Attendance Report” .csv file in the chat to the owner of the meeting at its conclusions.  The history shows who was present in each session.  Be consistent with attendance (required or Not required) (points or no points).  You might also consider a roll call chat using emojis to take roll in answer to the question: “How are you feeling today?”

Study Groups

Encourage semester-long study groups amongst students. Divide students into sub channels during a live class and provide unique prompts for each.  This provides an opportunity for faculty to monitor the channels to see if there is any sign of confusion that can be clarified.  These channels can be synchronous or asynchronous.  Suggest recording sub-channel interactions for later review as needed.

Discussions

Discussions in Canvas are typically formal/graded and asynchronous.

Discussions in MS Teams are more informal, ungraded, and can be synchronous or asynchronous. These discussions can be ongoing, during and after class as participants engage in the topic and clarify understanding.