It’s normal to feel some anxiety around the idea of starting out with a new group of students in a virtual classroom. Whether you’re teaching a synchronous, asynchronous or hybrid class this Fall, it’s important to set the tone and create a positive learning environment even if that environment is completely online. Many of our practices that encourage success and empathy in the classroom can be slightly tweaked or adjusted to have the same effect in the virtual classroom.

Knowing each other’s names is likely one of the most basic concepts for creating rapport with your students (as a teacher) but also for creating a comfortable learning environment for everyone in the class. This concept is just as important in an online class, however, you can’t just spend 10 minutes in an online platform ‘circling the room’ or blind-date style partner conversations. This does provide an opportunity to connect with your students through materials they are certainly experts in. For example, one way you could structure online introductions is to have each student create a quick intro slide in which they choose a meme that best represents them. Using pop culture items like memes is an easy way to get students excited about what they create and will surely give them an overview of who each student is.

Creating opportunities for students to contribute to the class can happen on a virtual platform as well. One of my favorite rituals a colleague included in her language class that I attended was each week having a different student start the class by sharing a song in the target language. Each student spent 2-5 minutes talking about the song, the artist, why they chose it, or any other relevant information and then played the song of their choice for the class. It was such a fun way to not only learn some new music in Portuguese but also hear from fellow students, create community, and be held accountable for a practical application of what we had learned. This exact activity could be adjusted to work in a virtual format with a few different options. If it’s a language class, students could share a song in the target language and if it’s a different subject, students could find some other personal connection to the material (a person from a historical time period or country, a poem or other piece of literature, review of a movie or documentary) depending on the intended focus of the class. Whatever the student chooses could be shared in a written format, with a description and a link to the song. If it’s for a language class and you really want them to practice speaking instead of writing, students could record a short video explaining their choice and then include a link to the song or video. If the format is completely written, make sure to include some way that other students react or respond to each post to encourage them to actually read what others are writing and interact with the material. This doesn’t have to be a requirement to comment on a post, you could, for example, towards the end of the quarter/semester have each student choose a favorite song that someone shared and write 1-2 sentences about why they like that song.

Including personal information about yourself always helps students connect to the material and keeps them interested in what you’re sharing. When the classroom becomes virtual, it’s even more important to have examples of the tasks and activities that you are asking students to complete. This is a great opportunity for you to make your example personal and include fun anecdotes. In a Spanish 1 class I taught, we had a communicative task where students had to strike up a conversation at a party in a group of three, introduce themself and their friend, and say something unflattering about their classmate because they were competing for the attention of the new acquaintance. The activity was a fun way to practice adjective agreement and position and using the verb ser (to be). However, students usually had a hard time jumping right into it, so I created an input using pictures of me and one of my friends to describe the exact scenario at a party with an attractive celebrity (take your pick! I used Joseph Gordon-Levitt). With this input, I modeled the language I wanted them to use in their own conversation and they always found it more hilarious (and embarrassing for me) to see real pictures of me and my friend and have me act out the scene as if it had happened even though it was obviously fictitious because I used a stock photo of my friend Joseph. You can continue to use your own pictures and experiences in online materials, whether you’re creating videos, example documents, or recording an input with images.

Mixing up partners and groups is a simple way to create a whole class environment where every student feels comfortable and at ease. In a normal classroom, it requires little planning and can usually be implemented on the fly by moving around groups, rotating partners, or using some type of sorting cards/information. For an online class, you might need to spend a little bit more time upfront to plan this out to make sure that it runs smoothly in a synchronous class meeting. Take a few extra minutes during your lesson planning to map out breakout room groups (if using Zoom) that mix up who is working with who in each class. You can also try assigning weekly accountability partners, for students to have a designated person that they can communicate with outside of the class to keep each other accountable for the assignments due that week or for completing any tasks that should be done outside of class time.

Having students create their own personal commitment to the course encourages student autonomy and makes them accountable for meeting their own goals in the class. I think this becomes especially important in a virtual class because it’s vital that students stay motivated and manage their own initiative. This is a great opportunity to create an example by writing your own commitment to the course as it relates to your students. You can give yourself a time frame for feedback on assignments or grading exams and outline times that you will be available for office hours or answering questions via email. While this helps you stay accountable, it also allows you to set clear boundaries for when you are available to students or how much involvement in the course they can expect from you. Being clear about this manages students' expectations of you and will help them to see how you are successful as a teacher through consistently meeting those expectations.

Creating time for questions about material encourages students to learn from each other and bring to your attention to concepts that likely more than one student is having a little trouble with. In a regular classroom, this could easily be a Q&A time at the end of class, a notes system where students submit questions, or partner/group activity where students generate questions. In a virtual classroom, one way to do this that I developed while teaching a hybrid Spanish class is to create a GoogleDoc for the purpose of questions and outline how often you will check the doc and respond (could be daily or weekly). By giving students editing access to this document, anyone can write in a question and also review any previous questions and answers. I always encouraged my students to answer each other’s questions if they felt confident in the subject because I could always go through and edit anything that needed clarification or fixing. While this is a great tool for out of the classroom help, I want to clarify that it does not replace comprehension checks!! There are so many other reliable ways to check that students are understanding specific concepts in real time in the class. However, I think of Q&A’s as a sort of group office hours or exam review.

I hope these ideas encourage you to actively work on creating empathy in an online classroom and ease some of the stress of virtual learning. What other practices will you be implementing in your online classes?

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