“I think that having video lectures would have enhanced my remote learning experience.

It would have been helpful to watch a short overview lecture rather than just read the textbook and slides.”

Importance of Building Community

As one of our University core values, community is important for many reasons. When we went remote, students as well as instructors felt a sense of loss in regards to community. As we return to campus, students will gain some sense of community back but may feel disconnected as we follow social distancing guidelines and have remote learners. For first-year students, community will be especially important as they figure out what "community at NNU" is. We need to be intentional in building a community of learning in our classes.

With student-instructor interaction, fostering the "community" in classes can happen in many ways, including how you lecture. In remote learning, we saw some instructors use live sessions where the instructor lectured, and then students could ask questions and discuss just as they would in class. If this is your normal approach to teaching, replicating it online for remote learners helps you keep the community consistent.

Later in Module 3, you'll explore student-student interaction, which also contributes to fostering community.

Building Community: Dan Lawrence

In the video below, Dan Lawrence, Physics, explains how he utilized video conferencing tools to replicate the community he already had in his face-to-face courses. As you watch the video, use the comment area of the timeline to do one of the following:

Ask a question
Answer someone else's question
Identify something from the video you can use in your classes

A Note About Video Conferencing

Video conferencing tools have boomed over the last few months, and what was once a resource used by only a few on campus has now become essential. In the upcoming year, NNU officially offers three conferencing tools that are supported by the ITS help desk and/or Instructional Design & Technology (IDT).

Google Meet: If you need to have a straight forward discussion, recording ability, and possibly share your screen, it works great!
Canvas Conferences: This tool within Canvas can be added to your course navigation and has more features than Google Meet. Also, you and your students can receive free assistance 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week through Canvas Support.
BlueJeans: You can request use of this tool by submitting a ticket to the help desk; BlueJeans is even more robust than Google Meet or Canvas Conferences

With this in mind, IDT goes by the philosophy that the technology you use in your classroom should be driven by your instructional outcomes. If Zoom or another conferencing tool is what works best for your students to reach the outcome, use it! By choosing an alternative tool, be prepared to assist students in its use.

We will come back to these video conferencing tools in more detail in another module.