Technology Tips for Incorporating Remote Students in Face-to-Face (F2F) Class

Remote and hybrid teaching presents faculty with both challenges and opportunities. At some point, faculty teaching classes on campus may find themselves in a position to need to facilitate incorporating students to participate remotely, perhaps with short notice. In doing so, replicating the classroom environment may be tricky but integrating students intentionally and effectively is definitely possible! The key is to get students involved in taking responsibility for their shared learning environment; faculty can't do it all. There are going to be new things coming at all of us and we will have to work together. Asking students to take roles to support the learning environment can promote agency in their learning. Below are some tips that the Digital Learning Team has assembled to offer strategies to leverage our technology resources.

General considerations, tools, and tips to help manage students in multiple locations

  • Ask/Assign students to assist with class management and have them take turns:
    • monitoring the Zoom or Canvas chat for remote contributions
    • watching for "raised hands" in Zoom
    • watching the teaching process to check for audio or visual needs (ie, are you or other students forgetting to step up to the webcam?) See audio and webcam connection tips
    • bringing a remote student to the face-to-face class by opening up Zoom on their laptop and placing it nearby
  • Portable tabletop tripods and stands are available for borrowing from the Help Desk as you may find you prefer to have a remote student on-screen via a mobile device
  • Zoom in the face-to-face classroom can be done; however, multiple students in the same room in the same meetings can cause microphones and sound to interfere with each other. Consider utilizing additional space, or asking students to bring headphones with built-in microphones.
  • Designate a space for students to ask questions between sessions that can be addressed in later videos/Zoom sessions/office hours. Canvas and Box Notes are both great for this purpose.

Sharing physical and digital resources with students

Facilitating participation for all students

  • Utilize the webcam mic to capture student participation
    • Depending upon room and class size, face-to-face students may need to be advised to approach the webcam mic to contribute to discussion
    • All assigned classrooms will have webcams
    • Developing a routine of repeating back all student questions can also help
  • Multiple chat options are available: both Zoom and Canvas have chat tools.
  • Consider synchronous note taking - using Box Notes for quick collaboration among multiple participants is a great example
  • Box Notes could be launched daily to encourage student contributions - recommend asking students to put their first name in parenthesis to indicate accountability

Conducting assessments and checking student understanding in the hybrid environment

 

Need additional help? Contact the HWS IT Services Digital Learning Team.

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