You're Muted: A Study in Community-Building in the Virtual Classroom
Efthimia Johanides, Kingsborough Community College / CCNY
Bio
Efthimia is an instructor for College Now through Kingsborough’s DYCD program and a dual-enrollment instructor for CCNY. She holds a BA in French and Francophone Studies from UCLA and she earned her MA in French Education 7-12 from Brooklyn College. A proud product of NYC public schools and the College Now program, she has been a teacher in the public school system for 10 years.
Course Setting
In the dual enrollment course for Freshman Seminar, students are in NYCPS taking a synchronous, virtual class through Virtual Learning Classrooms. The school itself is a high school that supports students from varying populations and various boroughs.
Problem of Practice
In a traditional classroom, there are various ways to create a sense of community, be it easily speaking with teachers before or after class, working on group projects with friends and peers, or even having conversations at inopportune times. In my experience in the virtual classroom, it is not as easy for students to make connections with others in the academic space. I hypothesized that an increase in communication will occur followed by an increase in personal connections and student buy-in as it relates to the class.Strategy
The first component of the inquiry is creating an opportunity for students to have a specific buy-in into the class by giving them concrete ways to connect with the instructor and with the space via shareout. In this particular instance, at the beginning of class, like many teachers, I asked how each student was doing that day and if there was anything they wished to share for that day. To lighten the mood, I often referred to this as “tea-time” (where students can “spill the tea”). Some students who were more vocal offered more information than others. Two students initially mentioned that they were part of sports teams. Others mentioned problems with other classes. Some students stayed quiet. I made it a point to speak to every other student in breakout rooms during the first lesson and tried to find something else about them that could be referenced in class at a later time. This largely occurred during the first week, but continued for some students throughout the four weeks.
The core of this inquiry was a weekly discussion post that students had to answer. These questions were posted in the brightspace platform and were posted in a new topic each week. Students were instructed to respond to the questions at the end of each week over the course of four weeks.
Documentation
Board Questions - First Week
Here is an example of the questions and answers as the students related to them. In their responses, students referenced each other during this first round, some were also incredibly honest about their feelings towards participation in the virtual space (i.e. preferring not to speak).
Board Questions Fourth Week
This document contains more raw student responses regarding what interested them about a classmate. It functions as qualitative evidence of peer-to-peer awareness, demonstrating whether the "tea-time" shareouts successfully helped students notice, remember, and build personal connections with their peers in a virtual environment.
Measuring Impact
Quantitative Data
Fourteen Students participated in total, with 13 participating the first week, 10 the second, 11 the third, and 8 the fourth.
Qualitative data:
Analysis
I believe that the strategy was moderately successful for my population of students. Students were able to communicate more easily and in a more meaningful way once there became more of a connection to themselves as individuals. I think the strategy fell short in that there wasn't as much quantitative data to support the shift, but I think this could be rectified with software that tracks things like un-mutes during class time in zoom (something that I had wanted to do but ultimately found my skill set to not be up to par for this task). I think the strategy enhanced the learning opportunities for my students because they were able to not only participate in class more frequently but they were able to find connections with each other and improve the overall learning experience.
The student data largely showed an increase in the communication but also highlighted a secondary issue present in classes regardless of method of instruction -- buy-in as it relates to the course itself. A handful of students didn’t particularly want to be in the course and didn’t find meaning in the material itself, thereby making it even more difficult to engage. Another thing I would have liked to investigate had there been more time would be the ways in which students participate -- some students don’t have to unmute to still be paying attention and contributing in a positive way. I had some students who were chat fanatics and would always communicate via chat, but rarely if ever unmute. I think it would be prudent to investigate this in the future.
Recommendation
I think this is a pretty good strategy to begin implementing if you are indeed finding yourself in a situation like I was where I was concerned about creating a sense of community for my students. While I don’t believe that it yields a fully comprehensive result, it helped bring some more community into our space and it helped some students feel more comfortable. I think this is also excellent as a first step to inform any instructor’s next decision regarding the climate and sense of community in the classroom.