Icebreakers
Set up an online activity for students to introduce themselves to their peers and to you helping build trust and rapport in your online class. This can be done using a discussion forum or Padlet. Make sure to start the ice-breaker by introducing yourself first. This way you are modelling what you expect your students to do. There are a range of instructions you could provide such as:
- Post card: ask your students to share a photo of somewhere they have visited and ask them to guess the location of their peers’ photo. This encourages students to look at each other’s introductions and sometimes engage in a conversation about the location that was visited. Start by sharing a photo of a place you have visited.
- Study photo: ask your students to share a photo of where they will be doing most of their online study. This might be their living room, bedroom, backyard, etc. Start this activity by sharing a photo of where you will be doing your online teaching. It’s often fun to include any photos of pets (if you have any) that will be accompanying online learning/teaching.
- Why are you here: ask your students to share why they have enrolled in the particular course and what they hope to achieve from it. Start by sharing why you are excited to teach the course and what you hope your students will achieve from it. You can also ask if students have had prior experience with the subject matter before.
Group Work
Design activities or assessments that ask your students to work in groups. While students may not be thrilled with group work initially, it is one of the skills that employers look for and it helps make learning online less isolating. You can suggest that students use the following tools to facilitate their group work:
- Discussion forums: set up groups of 4-5 students – many learning management systems allow you to randomly assign students to groups. Ask students to work on a task together. The advantage of using a discussion forum is that you can observe the interaction and easily post a comment to either motivate students to engage or answer questions they might have while working on their group task. It also lets you see how engaging it is.
- Wiki or Google docs: when working on a group task, students will need to collaboratively write – using a wiki or Google Docs helps students work on the same document at the same time rather than having to email documents or share documents via a discussion forum. The disadvantage is that you may not be able to see everyone’s contribution although if you have access to the wiki or Google Doc that they use, then you would be able to see everyone’s activity.
- Skype, Zoom, FaceTime: there may be times that students will need to communicate synchronously when working on a group task – you can suggest that they do this using any synchronous live tool that they have access to such as Skype, Zoom, or FaceTime.