It seems that every day, more schools are announcing that they will re-open either totally or mostly online in the Fall. If you’re still debating whether opening face-to-face in the Fall is safe, I recommend that you read this compelling essay by my colleague, Bill Widen. I live in a COVID hotspot in Miami, Florida, and fortunately, I had already been assigned to teach online. Unlike many of you who may find out about your school’s plans at the end of July, I’ve already been focusing on upping my online game.

Last week, in Part II of this series, I promised to summarize what I have learned from some of my readings from  Learning How to Learn, Small Teaching Online, and Online Learning and the Future of Legal Education. Alas, I haven’t even had time to look at them because I’ve been teaching two courses, watching webinars on teaching, and taking two online courses for my own non-legal certifications. But it wasn’t a waste of time because it allowed me to look at online learning from a student’s perspective. Next week, I’ll summarize the readings in the sources listed above, but this week, I’ll provide some insight from the experts and from my perspective as a student.

First, we need to understand the basics about learning styles. If you want to know your learning style, try this. Under the VARK model, learners have a primary style, although everyone has a mix:

Visual (spacial) learners learn best by seeing

Auditory (aural) learners learn best by hearing

Reading/writing learners learn best by reading and writing

Kinesthetic (physical) learners learn best by moving and doing

I know there’s a lot of controversy on learning styles, but I believe that students do learn differently, and that we need to plan for multiple types of activities to accommodate for those differences. Accordingly, each year, I conduct an online survey before the semester starts to ask the students their learning style, among other things. The students appreciate my asking and it reminds me to use different teaching methods. According to the VARK site, teachers and students often have different styles and we tend to teach in the way that we like to learn. Teaching online will highlight the need to plan for the different learning styles as we compete with the distractions from home.

It’s also important to understand the difference between active and passive learning. In active learning, the student learns by doing. Students learn passively when they listen to lectures or read textbooks. Students engage in active learning when they are analyzing, defining, creating, and evaluating information. Students learn using both modalities, but as educators, we want them to retain the information. This learning pyramid provides a helpful illustration.

My university provided us with the following statistics, which look at active learning from a slightly different perspective, but still gets to the same conclusion – teachers need to focus more on active learning. Apparently, people remember:

10% of what they read- passive learning

20% of what they hear- passive learning

30% of what they see- passive learning

50% of what they see and hear- passive learning

70% of what they say and write- active learning

90% of what they do- active learning

My experiences as a learner and teacher over the past few weeks leads me to believe that learning styles and active learning really do make a difference. For example, even though I had some of the world’s experts as panelists over the past few weeks in my compliance and corporate governance online course, I found during my scans of the Zoom squares that students who weren’t asking questions often look distracted after a period of time. The more they interacted with the panelists, the more engaged the class was as a whole. Having students use the chat feature increased engagement with the speakers as well (just make sure to disable private chat). But even during the most interesting discussions, some students tended to drift away and were clearly doing other things online. On the other hand, when I did sessions with the same students using breakout groups or requiring them to act as board members in a mock meeting, their engagement level appeared higher, even though they always commented favorably on the guest speakers.

Similarly, when I’ve watched webinars or taken certification courses, I found that if I didn’t see a person’s face during a video at least part of the time, then I needed a more engaging presentation style and slides with embedded videos of people doing something. If I didn’t have activities to do to test my understanding or put in practice what I had learned, I quickly lost interest. Reading  too much made my eyes glaze over, especially after a day of teaching and holding student meetings on Zoom. Zoom fatigue is real and we need to take that into account when designing our courses. Remember, we may be on Zoom for a few hours a day but our students will be on Zoom for many more hours with different professors using different teaching styles. If we thought they were exhausted after a day of face-to-face class, imagine how they will feel after a day on Zoom learning complex topics from teachers with varying degrees of online proficiency.

With that in mind, here are some things we should consider over the next few weeks:

• How do we break our modules down to chunks of learning activities? How do we tie those learning activities to our stated learning objectives? Even though it may seem like we’re dumbing it down, should we say “Read/Watch This Before Class” “Do This In Class” “Do This After Class” each week in the modules? I’ve learned that you can never make it too simple for students.
• How do we ensure that we have activities where students discover, discuss, and then do/demonstrate?[1]
• Are we mixing things up in our synchronous class every 15-20 minutes with polls, breakout groups, or some other non-lecture activity?
• Are we using the tools that work in a synchronous, asynchronous, and combination environment such as team-based learning, peer review, retrieval practice[2], and asynchronous videos?[3]

I use team-based learning by having students work in law firms throughout the semester on graded and ungraded assignments and then requiring them to evaluate themselves and each other on specific criteria. More formally, team-based learning can involve more complex features such as readiness assuredness testing, which I don’t do, so I can’t comment on the effectiveness. The Team-Based Learning Collaborative and InteDashboard both come highly recommended.

I have used peer review occasionally in live classes and on discussion boards for my transactional drafting course, but I plan to use it even more in the Fall, likely using Google docs. I’ve found that my students’ work product improves significantly after they’ve marked up someone else’s draft, and this corresponds with the learning pyramid assertion that students remember 75% of what they do and 90% of what they teach others. Other professors I know have used Peerceptiv, Eli Review, and other tools. I’ve watched demos and think they’re great, but I’m trying to keep things simple for myself this Fall.

Finally, I’ve found that polls and no-stakes quizzes are highly effective for keeping students engaged during class, especially in courses like Business Associations. I’ve used polls and test your understanding quizzes through Echo 360 in both synchronous and asynchronous class sessions. Requiring short answers in the Echo 360 quizzes ensures that the students aren’t just guessing. Using multiple choice questions shows me how many students are answering correctly and gives me an idea of where the knowledge gaps are. I also have a record by student of the number of questions they have answered correctly. The quizzes, which only count for class participation, also provide formative assessment, which the students really need in an online environment.

Students also really like polls. It wakes them up and gives me an idea of what they actually understand or think about the material. During class, I’ve tended to use Zoom polls or Echo 360, but in the Fall, I will use a variety of tools including Kahoot for polling and creating instant word clouds, Poll Everywhere, which has more features than Kahoot, and Mentimeter, which offers greater functionality than Zoom. Poll Everywhere has put together a chart comparing it to its competitors but the best way to determine what works for your teaching style and objectives is to test drive them yourself. I’ve been on webinars where presenters have used all four tools, and I liked them all. I will probably use them all during the semester, but no more than two different mechanisms during a synchronous class session. According to our instructional designers, students respond well when professors use one or more polling feature in a class session. Some of the tools require students to use their cell phones to participate and you may have concerns about that, but let’s face it, they may be on their phones anyway, especially if you don’t require them to keep cameras on, as I do.

I’ve now flooded you with information. Next week, the flooding continues. I’ll continue talking about student engagement focusing on evidence-based theories in learning and the do’s and don’ts of breakout rooms. If you have any suggestions or experiences with any of these tools, please leave your comment below.

[1] Recommendation courtesy of Professor  Linda J. Hiemer

[2] Retrieval practice is more complex and deals with learning science, which I will address in another post. I will also discuss best practices for asynchronous videos in a future post.

[3] Recommendation courtesy of Professor Tracy Norton