– Yes, so we’re here today for my virtual book launch, and I have a physical book here with me with one very small passage mark that I would like to read from… But mostly we’re here today to celebrate you and all that you are doing for your students. So, once again, I already said this, but it’s important to me to say it again. Thank you to OneHE for hosting this exciting event. And most importantly to me, thank you for your time being here live or watching the recording later. It demonstrates to me that you care about your students and that is what motivates me to do the work that I do. So thank you very much.

When I am not working, when I’m not in my Zoom box, I do have a life. This is my family. If you’ve seen me present before, you’ve probably seen this slide because this is a key takeaway in my work in general and in this book. And that is that we need to prioritize connections, person to person, right? One of my friends and heroes, Michelle Pacansky-Brock talks about humanizing online teaching. Michelle’s here today. Especially now more than ever before, this is the argument that I’m going to make, it’s important to prioritize connections. So my husband, Tim, is a strong partner and collaborator in my work. He really shares a lot of his own wisdom and experience having supported faculty teaching with technology for over 30 years. We have three amazing kids. I think they’re pretty cool, and they get sick of Tim and me talking about teaching especially online, but I do learn a lot from my kids’ experiences as well in terms of how what they’re experiencing in classes and what their teachers are doing. So just a quick moment to introduce a little bit about who I am. These photos are from the UK. I’m actually a dual citizen, which you wouldn’t know to by listening to me. And we love to go to the UK whenever we can, which is another reason that I love working with OneHE.

So, I am here today to introduce this new book, and it’s out now. This slide used to say due out in April, but it’s out, it’s shipping, and we do have a discount code for people who registered. It’s a limited time discount code of 40% off. We’ll be sharing that information with you if you haven’t had a chance to order and if you feel inspired to order it after our time together. Really what it’s about is how can we flourish in our online classes. And I wrote this book because I have long felt that we were languishing in our online classes, and it’s just getting more and more difficult to dredge up the joy, and so that’s what kind of inspired me to write this book. Now, I’m keeping my eyes firmly on you in the webcam. This is an immediacy cue which I wrote about in the book. It is a way to intentionally reduce the distance between the screen between us, even though there are the screens. Now, that said, I’m not keeping an eye on the chat, so that’s intentional for me. I’m not gonna try to monitor both. However, later in our time together, I will be coming back to the chat and interacting with what people are putting there. Right now, I encourage you, if you want to, to interact with each other because I truly think this is a value add for our Zoom experiences. We can learn and encourage from and with each other as well, but I’m not gonna be reading it. I’m keeping my eyes on you to reduce the distance.

So here’s where we’re going in our short time together today. I am gonna very briefly outline the problem that motivated me to write this book. Then I’m gonna provide what I propose as the solution. Spoiler alert, it’s having more fun in our online classes. We’re gonna meet a few online teaching rock stars with whom I spoke for this book specifically. Some of them are here today. And then, again, after we’ve done that, I would love to invite you. this is the point where it says, in the chat, I will turn my eyes to the chat, and I’d love to hear what’s working for you, what motivates you, successes, ideas, strategies. And then if we have time, I have three practical suggestions as well, but really I wanna focus on you. And then as we already mentioned, we’ll have time for Q&A at the end. This is a 30 minute slot, which I love, because everybody is busy, but I can stay a little bit longer than the 30 if people wanna hang out and visit a little bit more toward the end. We can do that. So that’s where we’re gonna go today. As I mentioned right before we got started, if anybody is here live today and is not in a head place where they want to be interacting a lot, it’s fine to be here and observe and just be more kind of passive and absorb the material. So no pressure to engage. We love it when people do, and we respect everybody’s unique moment that we’re in. So here’s the problem as I see it. I’ve wrestled for a really long time with this problem, and it has really been difficult for me to get to a point where I can just kinda say it as I see it, and, that is, I think online classes need a lot of help.

This book is very specifically focused on asynchronous online classes. I know there are challenges in every kind of class, every modality, class size, right? I know large lecture hall classes are also challenging, but I truly believe, after years of contemplation, research, conversations, that asynchronous classes are like the patient in the emergency room that gets triaged to the front of the queue. I think we need to really prioritize this modality. I think they leave a lot to be lacking. And as I’ve wrestled with this for literally years, this project is about seven years in the making, this new book, I’ve come to conclude that really what we have is one problem with two sides to it, flip sides of the same coin. And hear me out here. Some of you may be nodding in agreement, others of you may be shocked or troubled, and that’s okay. I wanna be a little bit provocative. The problem, the coin that I see is that nobody wants to be in class. We know that attrition rates in online classes are higher than they are in in-person classes, and that has been a consistent trend for literal decades. And we also know that students’ number one complaint about asynchronous online classes is they feel like their instructor is not there. I argue that our students don’t want to be in class, and we don’t want to be in class. And it’s kind of a cycle that sort of feeds on itself as like a downward spiral of diminishing energy.

So what do we do? What I’ve kind of conclude is that many of us, myself included, have sometimes felt that online teaching isn’t real teaching. When I’m really teaching, I’m in a physical classroom, or a lab, or a dance studio because I have 30 years of college teaching experience. Over 20 of those were dance Pilates. That’s what teaching is. We’re in a room. There’s a buzz of excitement. There’s interaction. You can see the aha moments in person. You can see the learning happening. That feels like real teaching to me. That feels effervescent to me. Online teaching began to feel like techno administrivia. It began to feel like all I was doing was clicking boxes, checking rubrics, verifying links, updating dates. And in fact, I sometimes lost sight of my students as real people on the other side of the screen. So this is the provocative question that I bring to you today. Is it real teaching? If you’re here today, I suspect you’re gonna say, yes, it is, absolutely. Okay, well, how do we find more of that fizz, more of that effervescence in our online classes? The way that we can do it… Oh, well, before we get to the way we can do it, we have to talk about AI Of course.

This book is not about teaching online with AI. It is not. But I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that AI is in fact posing a very significant threat to online, especially asynchronous online classes. Students are misusing generative AI to complete discussion boards. I know that many of us here probably watching the recording have had the experience of it seems like AIs are just talking to AIs in the discussion boards. But we also know that even more recently, agentic AIs have come on the scene. And these are tools, these are bots that can go into Canvas, for example, or D2L, and just complete quizzes and just complete assignments, and that is deeply, deeply troubling. As of this moment, there is not a technological solution that I think really works. So I’ve come to conclude, again, after months and months of wrestling, there are lots of people who are calling for the end of asynchronous online classes because of the threat of AI, but I’ve come to conclude that we have some agency here. We’re not going to let AI steal our joy.

And so this is just a very, very brief passage that I want to read from my physical book. I thought that was kind of funny to have a physical book here. And this section starts off with, it says: “As I write, generative and agentic artificial intelligence is looming large in the category of faculty joy sappers.” There’s a whole bunch more there. I don’t really need to read that because I think you know what I’m talking about, but I’m gonna pick up halfway through the top of page 23 if anybody happens to have the book and wants to flip over to it. I wrote: ‘In another interaction about the impact of AI on online classes. A community college dean of distance education poignantly summed up faculty fears and frustrations. “Faculty are losing faith in online classes,” she said, “at the very time when our students need this option more than ever before.” But that’s exactly the point. Online education isn’t going anywhere. Asynchronous courses and programs continue to see enrollment growth because, as this dean highlighted, people need the flexibility and access more than ever. So what do we do about AI or whatever the next crisis in higher ed turns out to be? In our ever more precarious world, take heart. It is my firm belief that the essence of joy-filled online teaching cannot be threatened by unwanted technology, by disruption, or by whatever unimaginable catastrophe is coming next.

At its core, joyful, meaningful, purposeful online teaching is about connecting as a real person with the real people in our classes, about our shared humanity, about the relationality that is central to effective teaching and learning. AI can’t steal that from us. Keep showing up for your students. Keep demonstrating that you care. Your students need you. They want your attention, your expertise, your fully human empathy, wisdom, and hard-won experience. Students will choose to do the work of learning when they sense that you care about them and that what you’re asking them to do matters.’ That’s the only section I wanted to read today. Just kind of a clearly stated affirmation that what we do matters, that the people in our courses matter. And so let’s talk a little bit more about what I propose as the solution. Given the threat of AI, given the fact that, not ai, asynchronous online classes have long felt for many people. Now, again, maybe if you’re here today or you’re watching this today, maybe this is not your experience, which is why we are like-minded colleagues, but for many, many online teachers that I have spoken to, this is not a rewarding experience. And our students tell us the same thing, that it feels like they’re walking themselves through class. That’s very common for our students. So what do we do given all these challenges and threats? Well, I argue that we need to center the people in our classes, starting with ourselves and flowing out to our students, and we need to prioritize enjoyment. Let’s enjoy our online classes.

Now, to guide this work, I introduce a theoretical framework that is not the one that you typically find in resources about online teaching. Many of us are familiar with Community of Inquiry Framework, lots of good resources coming out of the educational technology literature. But I took to heart a call from digital learning sciences researcher, Barbara Means. She wrote a paper, published a paper in 2022, and invited us to bring more of the literature from psychology and how people learn into our educational, online, technology-enabled spaces. So I took that to heart, and I am drawing our attention to this well-established, highly-validated, and very, very well-supported by the empirical literature, Theory of Wellbeing. It came out in a book called “Flourish.” Martin Seligman is the author of that book and the developer of this theory.

Just really briefly, I wanna highlight the elements of this theory. As you can see, there are five elements. PERMA is an acronym. P is positive emotions. And what the theory says is that, hey, if we’re feeling happy, we’re feeling better. Well, that makes sense, right? What else can we do to help ourselves feel better if we’re not necessarily feeling happy at the moment? E is for engagement. It’s that sense of flow, that idea that we are so wrapped up in what we’re doing that we just lose all track of time and place. R is relationships, specifically positive relationships. When we feel supported by and connected to other people, we feel better. It’s the number one finding in almost a century of research on human development, and thriving social connections matter. M is for meaning. If we are involved in something that feels meaningful, that is purposeful, that we see the value in, that helps us to feel better. And as for accomplishment. It is something as trivial as crossing an item off our to-do list to something as momentous to helping our students cross the finish line of our classes.

Now, what we can do is we can build on any of these areas. We can use them, we can cultivate experiences in these domains in order to enhance our own well-being. And this is contagious. If we are doing better, our students are gonna be doing better as well. In the new book, I focus on the two that you see highlighted here, positive emotions and positive relationships. I bring to bear emotion science on how we learn. And I have lots of practical ideas for what we can do. Really what this comes down to, and this is something that you know, I think, if you’re here watching this. You know students are not brains on sticks. And this is from a friend and colleague Susan Brock in her book, “Minding Bodies,” about the physicality of how we learn, how we bring our whole selves into our classes. And as I thought about this, specifically for asynchronous online classes… I keep wanting to say AI, for our online classes, I’ve had to really reflect on the fact that my students are not names on a screen. And I am guilty of sometimes, when I’ve had my head down in the online teaching trenches, I have been guilty of seeing my students as names on a screen and items on a to-do list, and not as real people leading beautiful, complex, messy lives. And so, this helps me to remember this theory of well-being helps me to remember that students are whole people. They are real people. And you know what, we are also not brains on sticks or names on a screen. We are bringing our full selves.

Now, because I really wanna focus on the people in our classes, that’s what the book is characterized by, stories of passionate online teachers who love what they do, who are trying to get better at it, who really want to support their students and who care deeply. I also have some really poignant stories and examples from students, right? Student panels and students I’ve spoken to. So for today, I wanted to elevate and celebrate some of the people that I spoke to for this book specifically. I sent out an invitation to some of the folks whose stories are in the book, and I invited folks, if you wanted to, create a slide and tell us a little bit about yourself to do so. That’s what I’m gonna do right now. Not everybody accepted my invitation. That is absolutely fine, but I’m gonna introduce you to some of the people in the book. And my call, when I originally sought people to talk to, I said, “If you love teaching online, please contact me. I wanna talk to you.” And these are some of the people who responded.

First, we have Rebecca Graetz. I hope I said your name correctly. I didn’t check that. She is a senior instructional designer and digital accessibility consultant. She teaches faculty how to teach online, how to humanize online learning. She would argue that, in her experience, most online instructors have not been online students. And by being an online student in a course that teaches faculty how to design quality courses, that’s what she facilitates, they get a very different perspective and she gets a lot of joy when she sees the aha moment when an instructor kind of makes that connection.

Denise Maduli-Williams is here today, Rebecca maybe too. I lost track of exactly who’s here, but I love Denise’s take on video, using video to personalize class to forge those connections. She wrote, “I love teaching online because I get to see and hear every student’s voice.” Right, in a large… Even in a classroom of 25 or 30 students, sometimes there are those who don’t raise their hand and contribute. So that’s a good takeaway for Denise. She said that her favorite compliment was a student who wrote this felt like a real class. And that kind of resonates with me in terms of, do we feel like online teaching is real teaching? Well, if students don’t feel like they’re real classes, then maybe they’re kind of missing that element in some of their other classes.

Quianna Daniels-Smart is somebody who I spoke to for this book. She is an assistant professor and she wrote that, “As a former online learner and non-traditional student myself, I feel deeply connected to this work. Supporting online students is not just part of my role. It’s a way for me to show up for them in the ways that I know matter. It is my goal to show them what humanity looks like in an online environment, still rigorous, community-focused, and joyful.” Absolutely. Dave Ghidiu. I’m pretty sure you’re here today, Dave, ’cause we’ve been excited about this for a long time. Dave is a super fun contributor to the book, and I’m trying to move my window so that I can read your slide a little more easily. I think it says something like connecting with online students. “Meeting one-on-one with online learners brings me joy. It personalizes the experience – a ‘decommoditization’ of online learning.” I love that so much.

And we have Meera Rastogi, I think I might be saying your name correctly, who we connected at first, because Meera was like, “I just don’t feel that connection with my online students. What can we do?” So she wrote here that she wants her online students to feel a sense of connection and of being seen, right? Our students tell us that they feel isolated and lonely in online classes. And we, likewise, experience a lack of connection with our students, if we haven’t really been invited to experience joyful online teaching. So Meera is here today. Her story is featured.

And last but not least, for this section of the talk, I just want to briefly introduce Hannah Cebulski. I spoke with Hannah about an element that I hadn’t really thought about before, and that was how online teaching can support our well-being if there are reasons, and there are plenty of reasons, that we aren’t comfortable teaching in person, we prefer the online environment. Instructors like the flexibility. For many instructors, it’s a mental health support to be able to teach online. And so what Hannah wrote here, she kind of reminded me of that aspect of the benefits of online teaching and learning and wrote that, “The most important thing that I can do is ensure that each learner has the opportunity to connect meaningfully to their instructor, their content, and each other. A learner-first design brings me joy.” So I just wanted to take that moment and kind of highlight just a few of the people who are in this book, and this is exactly what I argue we should do in our online classes, is elevate, celebrate, highlight the people who are in our classes.

So I’ve been talking at a quick pace for a fair little bit of time. I have not been watching the chat nor the Q&A, but right now I am gonna turn my eyes to the chat. In fact, I’m actually gonna bring the slides down because I would argue that they themselves are a little bit of a barrier. And I would love to know from you, what are some things that are working from you, or what motivates you, or where do you find your joy? What do you love, or is there a strategy, something that you do? Please, if you would like to share any of those kinds of thoughts, this is your time in the chat. What do you do? Why do you do what you do? What’s important to you? I would love to just turn my focus to the chat here and see what comes in.

Okay, so Heather says giving video feedback. Learners really appreciate it. Thank you. Require and give back audio and video feedback. Again, it’s all about being more like real people. And what I have learned over time to both of those comments is that words on a screen just feel less personal, right? Even if it’s audio feedback without the video. We have vocal intonations, emphasis. Empathy can be communicated, lots of things. Okay, more comments coming in. I love this so much. Putting the human into online classes, having them show their handmade work, pictures of themselves, and doing the same myself. Yes, absolutely. I love more of a back and forth with students because I teach in-person classes, but I want to learn about being interactive when I do teach online. Yes, that’s why we’re here. And there’s a whole bunch about that point in the new book and a few… I mean you’re getting ideas from your colleagues right now as well. Requiring students to meet weekly with small groups at a time they choose to help students connect with each other, right? One of the recommendations that I’ve put in the book was to maybe consider having study buddies. It could be a group of two or maybe three students that you randomly pair up in the LMS or you could… There’s lots of other ways you could do that. And it’s just somebody to have on speed dial basically. If an online student is working on an assignment and says, “I’m not really sure. How are you gonna go about doing this?” It’s just like this instant kind of more readily available connection in a less formal kind of a way, less of group work. Checking and frequently using video, absolutely. Changed the name office hours to student hours and virtual coffee with Strada. I love that. Hello, Strada. Thank you so much for being here. Helping students recognize that this is the time for them, making it more friendly-sounding – virtual coffee. I love that so much. Creating connections between students, absolutely. Weekly video announcements, providing options on how to participate such as video or written, et cetera.

Hello, Kiana. Thank you so much for being here today. Adore online teaching, says Lisa. For the most part, I work hard at personal connection via detailed feedback, praise, and conversation with students. I encourage one-to-one video chats. The disengaged students are challenging for me. Yes, absolutely. I wanna interject here just for a quick moment because for people who maybe haven’t found their secret sauce of online teaching, these kinds of recommendations sound like it’s a lot more work and a lot more time. And so I just kinda wanna address that valid concern. And I’m gonna bet that everybody who puts something along that line in the chat that this is where we find our fizz. Yes, it takes a little bit more time. But if you’re anything like me, this is where my teacherly cup is filled up again, where my battery is recharged, when I do spend more time with our students. We have to be careful not to overdo it. One of the subsections in the book is protect your boundaries, but spending more time with our students, interacting more, that is where I find my teacherly joy in asynchronous classes.

Okay, good. I have give my own very casual and fun intro videos with pictures of the doggo. We all love seeing each other’s pets, offering virtual office hours. Yes, give the prompt response to students. Yes, right, again, that’s a complaint that students have is that they don’t hear anything back from us. Now, again, we’re not 24/7 chatbots. We shouldn’t be, but sometimes I know I have been guilty of letting a little bit too much time elapse before replying to my students, to their emails, to providing feedback on their work, for example. Okay, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to read all of these out loud. I thought I might. I’m gonna cherry pick a few more here. Enjoy providing weekly video and audio feedback. Students provide positive feedback to that approach. Offer a weekly video. Only about half of them watch it, but I keep going. I love that. Pre-semester survey that invites students to tell their story. Hey, Dan, so good to see you here today. Inviting students to tell their stories. I love that word invite, right? But it’s more sensitive. It’s more inclusive. I don’t think we should require students to divulge things that may not be comfortable for them to do so, but we can invite them to help us get to know them more, even though it’s asynchronous, offer synchronous sessions that are recorded and optional at least three times a semester. All right, I’m gonna start skipping ahead here a little bit. My apologies if I don’t read your comment.

I love teaching sync online virtual classes, but struggled with asynchronous ones, hoping to figure out better ways. I did decide to turn my syllabus into an engaging webpage after observing my lead professor. Yes, exactly. And let me clarify again, the focus in the book is asynchronous, but every aspect of the research and theory that I recommend can absolutely be applied to synchronous online teaching, such as this kind of an interaction, and your in-person classes as well. The Theory of Wellbeing, the PERMA theory applies to every life domain and fosters optimal functioning and success. It fosters academic achievement and persistence. All of these things that help us all feel that sense of accomplishment, notice that and take some joy in that moment. All right, online text-based office hours as well as video drop-in office hours for those not comfortable with video or available at that time. I love that so much. And seeing a lot of affirmation.

Text-based office hours, again, I’m thinking of my own kids, my 19-year-old specifically will choose a text interaction, say for example, with a mental health professional as often, if not more often, than talking in real time. For my 19-year-old, that provides more comfort and more safety. So love all these ideas and… I’m gonna just come right back. Thank you all for participating. Again, my apologies if I didn’t say yours. I’m gonna come back to the slides really quickly, and you’re gonna feel affirmed because my three ideas are right in line with what you’re already doing. Definitely inject your personality and your passion. If you are a meme person, send memes. I heard recently of one online instructor who has whole introduction discussions that are only emojis. It’s fun, it’s a fun way to communicate. So whatever is you, whatever you care about. The fact that you really love your material, you really want your students to succeed. When we bring that intentionally into our classes, it’s going to boost your students, and that in itself is gonna boost you as well. I’m a big fan of structuring social interactions and I did add the recommendation to consider making these worth points. Students are busy people. They are leading complicated lives and they’re very efficient. And in my extensive experience, if something is not worth points, online students may not do it. So I say make it a learning objective for the class and invite students to engage, inform those relationships, those social connections, even just a little bit more rapport and trust. That to me is a worthwhile learning objective and source of points in an asynchronous class.

And last, but not least, once again, please have fun, whether it’s fun and interesting discussion prompts, whether you’re using AI to create fun scenarios or interesting role plays, whether you are, again, having a weekly joke or you look for little places to insert jokes like I know my friend Dave does. The more fun that we can bring into our classes – again, there’s actually a robust neuroscience that shows us, without a doubt, that when we’re having fun, when we’re enjoying ourselves, we’re learning and thinking and remembering more effectively. It promotes better learning. So bring some fun, bring some enjoyment, bring yourself, your authentic self. If you are not a memes kind of a person or you don’t use emojis, don’t do that, right? We have to be true to ourselves to help our students see a little bit more about who we are within the boundaries of what is appropriate and safe based on our own identities and backgrounds. I’m gonna make the strong argument that when we reach out to our students a little bit more as real people and invite their, again, their sharing about what’s important to them, who they are, it’s gonna bring the fizz to our asynchronous and actually all of our classes. So with that, I’m gonna wrap up the slides again. And I know we had a couple of questions come into chat or the Q&A pod. I haven’t read them yet, but now’s the time. So I’m gonna bring these down again because I think that slides can be a bit of a barrier. So the first question. Oh, and it was from the chat. How do I get my students online to engage when I do all of the things, when I do do all of the things, video lectures, announcement emails, conferences, and they still do not participate or show up? That’s such an important question. And I’m nothing if not practical.

Yes, I am making a very deliberate effort today to beam out as much positivity and energy because I’m sharing my passion with you because it’s contagious. Again, there’s a robust emotion science, but there have been times when I do all these things and I have a 50% drop rate. Especially in my community college classes, students who choose community college and who choose online, again, they’re very likely to be leading complex lives. So, what I have come to conclude, is that we can’t beat ourselves up. We do what we can, right? There was a comment in the chat. Somebody said they record weekly videos, and only about half the students watch them, but she still does them to benefit those students who can, right? I think it was a she. My apologies if I got that wrong. The person who put that. We can’t save every student. And what I would add is I learned a little more about this when I had the really humbling and amazing opportunity to co-author my last book. It’s called “The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching.” And I joined a very well-established author team who had way more expertise in equitable teaching than I did at the time. That’s why I wanted to join the project. And what I learned from their comments and their contributions is like, students have competing demands on their time, and it could be the case that one of my online students has multiple jobs, and is caring for the family, and money is tight, and my student gets offered an extra shift at the restaurant, and that’s going to help her put food on the table for her family, and so she ditches my assignment. That’s what I mean about seeing the whole person. I think we have to learn not to take it personally to show up and be there for those and do those things for the students, and then sometimes when the students have to legitimately, sort of say, “Well, I wasn’t able to finish this class.” It’s okay. That’s okay. We’re there for the ones who can, and that student can try again another time.

Okay, so question from the chat. How do you engage with students who won’t turn on their video even in breakout rooms? Well, I’m just gonna be super real. I don’t like breakout . Here’s a bit of from me is we wanna think very intentionally about why we’re asking students to do what we’re asking them to do. And this is a recommendation that cuts across every teaching modality and context. And when students aren’t engaging the way we want them to… In this case, videos and breakout rooms, cameras and breakout rooms, I have to ask myself, do I really need breakout rooms? I never actually taught a college class synchronously, so please take this with a grain of salt. But when I’m facilitating presentations, even if they’re longer, like 90 minutes, I don’t really like breakout rooms for this very reason, and so I choose not to use them. So I think there’s that aspect of agency here that we wanna think about, is this really necessary? Is this really important? But I haven’t even talked about being sensitive to students who may, as we talked earlier today, not be in a space mentally, physically, emotionally, where they can turn on their video. So, proactively planning for, and giving the permission to not turn on your camera. There’s an approach.

I’ll say this last thing, and then I know we’re kind of at time, so I’ll check in and see what we wanna do from here. There’s an approach that helped me in the very earliest days of the pandemic. I heard a recommendation from somebody talking about developing a radio broadcaster kind of style persona. Even if nobody has their cameras on, you gotta project all your energy and keep it interesting just like radio broadcasters have always done. So that is an approach that has helped me to think about, what is the best use of time? What is the pedagogical purpose? Is this going to support relationship-building? Is this gonna make some students uncomfortable or make them feel left out? What works for me and what’s gonna best benefit my students? Okay, so Alexander wrote that, “I offer late points for turning in assignments at a later date, but still sometimes don’t receive all submissions. Is there anything else that we should do with that situation?” I’m gonna answer that, but I just also want to say thanks to those of you who are sharing your thanks in the chat box. I appreciate that. So, yeah, I feel like this is a little bit related to what we were talking about just a few minutes ago about how students lead complicated lives and students make informed choices. And maybe for a particular student, a C is fine, right? And so turning in the late assignment and getting some points is not actually the priority in that moment. So, again, for me, it’s actually been mostly about developing a thicker skin, like not taking it personally. There is one story that I told in the book about a student who needed some deadline extension. And with that particular student, I said, “Fine, but let’s have a phone call. I wanna talk to you. I wanna hear a little bit about your situation.” And during that phone call, I said to her, “You know what, I’ve offered extensions before and then people don’t take me up on them, and I don’t want that to happen to you.” And so being intentional to have… And by the way, she was very successful, eventually, right? Thinking about what will best support the student may be having a real time interaction. Even phones is a richer communication, a phone call. But then also not taking it personally if students just can’t, for whatever the valid reason may be, do the work. What else has come in?

– So there was one question in the chat about text-based office hours. Is this something that you could comment on or tell people how to set it up?

– Yeah. No, but… I took a moment trying to find that topic in the chat, and I’m not gonna try to do that right now. So, I have not done that myself. The comment that I shared earlier was watching my 19-year-old dealing with mental health challenges and choosing that modality with an online mental health support, with a real person, by the way, not an AI kind of a solution for mental health support. So, I’ve heard a rumor that in some learning management systems, you can set up a real-time chat or messaging kind of opportunity in the system itself. I know some instructors are comfortable giving out their personal cell phone and telling students, “These are my open hours. Don’t text me after 10:00 PM and before 8:00 AM.” something like that. And just handling it sort of really organically on their cell phone. Of course, for some people, that idea does not sound good at all. There have been times in the past where I experimented with setting up a Discord server. So I think just being in real time, being able to text back and forth. Maybe you set times. Maybe it’s more open. Those are my thoughts, but I haven’t really officially led with that. I have texted with students on my personal phone. There was another system. I think it’s called Remind, and that’s sort of an anonymous way to have real time text interactions and reminders to students that they could opt into. That’s another one that I’ve tried.