Icebreakers

Ice Breakers give students the chance to express their knowledge of themselves. They are the first foray into an active and engaged class community.

Ice breakers are fun, person-focused, and have the purpose of requiring learners to find something in common with the learning community.

Provide clear instructor communication

• Model clear communication that creates a feeling of support.
• Personalized communication that builds rapport with students.
• Timely response (within 24 hours if possible)
• Post response times (managing student expectations)

Ensure availability and access to the instructor

• Provide instructor availability in office hours.
• Include contact information (email, phone, office hours)
• Consider the modality. Online students have unique needs.

The sense of “presence” an instructor creates to connect with and lead students through an educational experience

• Sending out welcome letters
• Instructor welcome video and microlectures
• Announcements highlighting the connection between the course and real world
• Facilitating in-depth thinking through online discussions
• Providing detailed specific feedback
• Reaching out to struggling students
• Clarification when needed
• Virtual office hours or individual virtual appointments
• Community spaces
• Prompt feedback
• Educational experiences that are challenging and enriching
• Show your personality, passion & expertise

Personal Language

Even if you have 200 students in your course, each of them is an individual sitting at their computer reading, watching, or listening to your words. Say “you” instead of “you all.” Refer to their “draft” instead of “drafts” (unless each person is doing more than one).

• Remember to use I, We, and You when possible in your written and recorded communication. (As compared to instructions like “students will…”)
• Use emotional words like happy, excited, worried, or upset. Emotions are human.
• Talk as if you are talking to one person. Make them feel like an individual instead of just one of XX.
• This idea is especially important when recording media. Talk to your camera or microphone with the volume and tone you would talk to you a person sitting across the table from you, not a lecture hall.

We use discussions to promote critical thinking, engagement, community, cognitive learning, exploratory learning.

Your role in the discussion might be heavier in the beginning, and ease up as your students learn to engage.

Here is an example prompt:

The setup

Set up the question by giving familiar context

A lot of setup start with the words, “Imagine you are…”

The tough question

When you ask a closed-ended, yes or no question about a complicated topic, it forces the learner to take a personal stance.

The defense

Ask a follow-up question, such as “why or why not?” or “why do you think so?” Make them defend their position fueled by their own unique ideas and experiences, integrating the knowledge they’ve gleaned from the learning materials.

“A flipped classroom is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning, which aims to increase student engagement and learning by having students complete readings at their home and work on live problem-solving during class time” (Wikipedia Contributors, 2021).

We flip our classroom to foster more active learning and experimentation during class. Our goal is to replace lecture-style platforms by incorporating technology and rich media to enable students to learn in ways they would not be able to on a strictly physical campus.

Avoid Zoom Fatigue by breaking up the format and adding active learning experiences. 

Zoom Engagement Tools and Teaching Tips by Josh Luckens

Use student feedback to inform instruction and promote learning! This article has ideas for different types of student feedback that you can evaluate for your own courses. If you find one you like, you can copy the instructions and questions and use them in your courses. After that, explore different ways of using the feedback, as well as a list of available survey and polling tools.

Ideas for Generating Student Feedback by Lucy Wolski