5 Steps for Engaging Students in Online Learning…During a Pandemic

Next week teachers will “come back” from March break, and by this I mean we will be sitting at our computers, trying to deliver course content online amidst what feels like the end of the world.

It’s tough to engage students in online learning at the best of times. Is it even possible when our current reality mirrors the beginning of some dystopian novel, one that is leaving grocery stores without toilet paper? For myself, writing about the pandemic is helping me to process it, and to feel somewhat in control of something.

While I don’t want to bombard my students with tasks and assignments that increase anxiety, I do want them to have a safe place to ask questions, explore issues related to the pandemic, and most importantly, to slow down any emotional reasoning that might contribute to unproductive mental cycling. And I think there might be an opportunity for learning here — even if it is online learning.

Focusing on creating a safe online space where students can process and intellectualize the pandemic might be the answer to student engagement at a time when the world feels as though it is ending.

Here are some ideas for how to support and engage students through this uncertain time…oh, and to continue delivering course content.

1. Create a safe online space for students to discuss issues and concerns

• Check in with students through online platforms by creating a specific post where students can ask questions and support one another. FlipGrid, as an example, is a free online forum where students can record their questions. It also provides teachers with oversight and allows us to help direct and focus the conversation. Creating a safe space supports an opening: it allows students to explore their ideas and communicate their concerns with less apprehension.

2. Connect students to resources and support services

• This is going to be a challenging time for many students. Social distancing is especially difficult for high school students who are not as vulnerable to the virus. These same student are often more dependent on extra-curricular activities and social engagement to contribute to the development of their sense of self. Create a section on your online platform to share free online social activities (broadway shows, Neil Young Fireside Series, Virtual Museum Tours) will support students to stay connected to a community. Free online yoga and meditation classes will also help students to deal with the stress of social isolation and contribute to their mental health at this very difficult time.

3. Provide students with a place to process what is happening

• Once you have established a safe space and provided students with access to online resources to support their mental health, offer them an opportunity to discuss and explore what is happening in the world around them.
• For example, if you are teaching language arts or social science, give students the opportunity to journal or diary about their experience. Sometimes, we need the chance to just let things out. Provide mentor texts to illustrate diaries as a genre and ask them to mimic craft moves. You could provide students with one of the following prompts to being:

How has your life changed? What are you doing as a family to support one another? Share a special moment you have experienced over the past week. Address a letter to someone you love who you can not see. What do you want to say to them? Write a letter to your Prime Minister/President. What do you want them to know? Write a letter to your future grandchildren. How would you describe this experience to them?

• Prompts that progress from processing concerns, to gratitude, to taking action and finally to the future will help students to process what is happening around them and to feel somewhat empowered and hopeful.

4. Curate content & engage students in rational discourse and decision-making

• Create a section on your platform where students can access up-to-date coverage of events, editorials, and relevant blog posts. This section is important as it will support students to make rational decisions about their actions and interactions. You can do so by providing links to important articles and data.
• The Washington Post, for example, has published some effective data simulations about how viruses spread. Additionally, an article published on “Grown and Flown” features an appeal from an Italian mother who warns against allowing teenagers to socialize, despite school being canceled. She cautions: “Only eight days ago in Rome, our teenagers were socializing in the evening with their friends. The government had closed schools and most sporting facilities, but nothing else…The only thing that could have saved (or mitigated) this tragedy in Italy is social distancing… I’m not talking about a high five instead of a handshake… I’m talking about not being in the proximity of another human being who is not your immediate family.”
• After providing links to relevant articles and data, invite students to join online debates through Kialo. Possible prompts for debates could include: “Will social distancing flatten the curve?” “Should the government provide aid packages for people who don’t quality for EI?”. It is our responsibility as teachers to continue to support students to make decisions that contribute to well being of society, but students must be involved in the decision-making process and need to see how different decisions might impact our future. A platform like Kialo helps students to engage in rational decision making and feel empowered to make rational decisions that are socially responsible.

5. Provide students with the analytical tools they need to move away from emotional reasoning and engage in rational discourse

• When I have access to the right analytical tools, I move away from emotional reasoning and into a place of reason. Providing students with a theoretical lens or focused framing for analysis will help them to focus in and filter out all of the extra information (and anxiety and worry). Here are some ideas for tasks that are relevant and will help students to move away from emotional reasoning and engage in rational discourse:

Example 1: Study a text for craft moves. For example, ask students to do a close-text analysis of two editorials to examine persuasive techniques (style of writing, diction, organization, use of rhetorical devices, etc.).

Which do you agree with? Which craft moves has each author used to convince you? What do you think needs to be done? What would you write in an editorial if you had the opportunity to publish your work in a local newspaper?

Example 2: Introduce a theory or concept and ask students to apply it to one issue resulting from the pandemic. If you have already introduced a number of theories or concepts, alter assignments to support students to explore the pandemic and repercussions through the theories/lenses you have already introduced. Here is an example of an altered assignment that I posted on my Google classroom for my grade 12 social science students:

Analytical essay option — -
I know that I am struggling to focus on tasks at the moment. If you would prefer to examine the pandemic through a theoretical lens instead of analyzing “Halal Dating” or “Period. End of Sentence,” please do so. I have attached some links to relevant articles below.

I think the theories most easily applicable to the pandemic are functionalism, conflict theory, rational choice theory, or symbolic interactionism.

For example, through a functionalist lens, you could examine the manifest function of free-trade and immigration (and the intention to expand and interconnect as societies) as supporting economic growth and prosperity… and a better society…and then the latent (or unintended repercussions) of societal growth (easy movement of people and globalized nature of the world, etc.) as resulting in unintended impacts (viruses being easily transmitted). Then you could look at the impact of the pandemic on social institutions and their function in society…How are they shifting and changing? How will society have to adapt to this new reality? You could even include a section on how understandings of “deviant” behaviour is shifting — going out in public instead of social distancing, for example, has become a faux-pas because it will contribute to further challenges for society.

You might also explore decisions about who to interact with through rational choice theory. How and why is social distancing practiced? How are people making decisions about whether to distance themselves from others? See article about baby boomers.

Conflict theorists might look into the empty shelves at the grocery store and how individuals seem to be in this for themselves and not society as a whole. Or, you might also look at how hospitals in Italy, Spain, and soon Ottawa, are putting into place protocols for who gets a ventilator that shift away from a “first-come, first-serve” model, towards one that gives preference to people who are more likely to survive…Those who are healthiest are often those who are more advantaged in society; the vulnerable are left in the lurch. See article on “Social distancing, triage, and moral reckoning.”

You could even apply symbolic interactionism (what does pandemic signify? What is our current social reality? What are social facts? How are these changing based on our interactions with others/news? How are some people’s interpretations of social distancing reinforcing “selective” or “biased” distancing? (see article about Ottawa’s Mayor & chinatown).

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I am finding it difficult to focus on anything other than the pandemic, so I wanted to give you an option to explore it from an academic lens. I know that writing about it is helping me to feel like I have some control over the situation, and helping me to understand what is happening. See link to my blog below.

Providing students with course concepts and tools to explore the pandemic will provide them with some control over what they are living. By exploring the issues through course concepts, they have some framework and grounding for the influx of information heading their way.

To sum up:

Online classrooms, while not ideal, can provide safe spaces for productive conversations about the pandemic. While tensions rise at home, students will need an outlet where they feel they can ask questions and talk about their concerns without burdening already stressed out parents and family members.

Curated content and critical thinking applications like Kiaro can support students to feel empowered and by assessing what’s happening in the world and making socially responsible decisions based on their findings.

While exploring issues around the pandemic have the potential of increasing anxiety, panic, uncertainty and depression, teachers can provide an analytical tool box or framing that shifts students’ focus from emotional reasoning to academic discourse. This can help to quell our fears in a time of uncertainty.