By Vay Laine & Shelby Stack
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
The Problem
Do you ever wish you could go back to when classes were in person? Miss tapping the classmate seated next to you when you’re confused about something? Wish you weren’t confined to staring at a screen all day just to get instruction? These are just a few of the aspects that students miss most within the online class setting, where a sense of community is often lacking.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began last March, millions of students and professors were sent packing from campus, forced to settle into makeshift home offices. In the spring 2020 semester, more than 1,300 colleges across all 50 states shifted to online-only instruction. Additionally, tracking from the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College shows that 44 percent of institutions developed primarily online instruction while 21 percent used a hybrid model.
In this online setting, students and professors no longer have the advantage of using physical interactions to get to know one another. Where there’s a lack of physical presence, there’s often a lack of community.
Research shows that students feel that they are isolated from each other in an online education format, especially in programs that were meant to be hands on, where the interactivity is at a minimum. This feeling results in negative attitudes toward the course and reduces the communication between professors and students, according to the research.
The Solution
In online classes, students need a way to interact with each other — and with their professors. Student-teacher Zoe Bridges has found a way to facilitate those interactions. Bridges is a senior at Towson University and a first grade student-teacher at Bollman Bridge Elementary School in Savage, Maryland.
The pandemic has forced Bridges to gain her teaching experience through a virtual format. Because Bridges is a virtual student herself, she learned what worked and didn’t work, and wanted her students to have a positive experience.
“As an education major, my professors understand how important connecting is in this online setting,” Bridges said. “However, there have been moments where I still feel that lack of community in my cohort. Since the students I teach are at such a developmental age, I didn’t want their first experiences with schooling to make them feel like they’re isolated from their peers.”
Bridges felt strongly from her experience in both school settings that taking breaks during class time is helpful. Staring at a screen for long periods of time while trying to take in information can be tiring, especially for younger students.
About four months ago, Bridges decided to see how the class she teaches would react to these breaks. Briefly in the beginning of class and once in the middle, Bridges will stop instruction with her students and either ask them a random question like what they watched on TV the previous night or what their favorite food is, or ask if they want to discuss anything interesting they’ve seen or heard, non-academic related. Typically, Bridges aims for questions that apply to all students to spark discussion. This often results in the students un-muting and talking to each other or to the entire class.
These periodic conversations are a just a few representations of “social breaks” or “brain breaks,” which are being used to give both students and teachers a way to connect with one another outside of academics.
Typically, these breaks are simple transitional exercises, no longer than 10 minutes each, designed to help the instructor manage the attention of the class and to keep students fresh. In this case however, these breaks aren’t only being used to keep attention spans intact; they’re also to keep the sense of community students had been used to in physical class. Bridges has found that if students are given the opportunity to interact with their classmates without the pressure of answering academic questions, they are more likely to engage with one another, instead of just conversing to get the answer, then sitting quietly in the breakout room until the teacher resumes instruction.
Bridges has seen this when teaching herself. When her students feel overwhelmed, which is often, she will take a break from the work. She pauses anything to do with school and asks if there is a song they want to hear and dance to, they can talk about anything they want.
“Just take a second to breath,” Bridges tells her students. This break in the middle of the class allows her students to be more attentive and productive throughout the second half of class, as she noticed after the breaks, they aren’t as antsy or staring off into space.
Professors can utilize the breakout room feature for breaks, or let the class interact as a whole. In a breakout room, students can take the topic at hand and begin to converse among themselves, which can lead to more self-disclosure. If interacting as a whole, the instructor or students can identify what the topic is, and students can either volunteer to talk about it, or the teacher can go one-by-one until everyone has spoken. With this format, the professor would encourage students to chime in if one of their classmates says something they agree with, disagree with, or if it sparked a different idea in their heads.
The goal is to get students to know the professor and individuals in their courses as more than just a series of boxes in their screens.
Insights
The main purpose of these breaks is to get students and professors to connect with one another, but that responsibility of building a sense of community doesn’t fall on the professor alone.
For effective breaks, it is important that the students are involved in this process as much as the professor. Whether that’s having them choose the topic of discussion or the placement of the breaks, their involvement is important.
Bridges said she found it helpful to have a break in the beginning of the class so that students can get some of their extra energy out before instruction begins, and once in the middle of the class to regain students’ attention after a long period of instruction, which usually has students refreshed and ready to finish out the rest of the instruction period.
Also, if time is of the essence but the class is still in discussion on a break, Bridges advises teachers or professors to try and wrap up the conversation, and if students are still eager to share, they are given an opportunity to share during the next break or starting off the next class with their thoughts.
“I think it’s important to understand that it’s not about you,” Bridges said. “You have to be willing to have discussions that are completely non-academic and not think about the instruction time lost, but instead the community that’s gained.”
“I think it is important because you’re able to talk to individuals that may have greater depth of knowledge in a certain subject area that you might not have,” said student Kaitlin Thornton. “And so, if you’re having any issues or problems, it is easy to just reach out to them and ask them questions. I think now when you’re online, you feel more awkward to reach out to the individual.”
While numerous studies show the effectiveness of these types of breaks for keeping students’ attention, not much has been reported on the effectiveness of the breaks on community building.
“The best advice I can give, and this applies everywhere not just for this topic, is to be understanding and open to the idea of breaks,” Bridges said. “As a teacher your main focus is to teach your students information and make sure they retain it, but it’s the feel of being a part of something bigger like a class, that really keeps students going, so to have that community aspect is essential, but you first have to be open to losing some instruction time, which is OK.”
Evidence of Effectiveness
Bridges has found that her discussions lead to more quality interactions and a sense of community.
With Bridges including time in class to discuss any topic or ask a random question, students are more comfortable with turning cameras on and participating. Bridges has found that making the topic about what they want to talk about, or asking a random question takes the pressure off it being class, and there is no worrying whether the answer is right or wrong. She has also noticed that when the students pick the topic themselves, they are even more engaged because it is what they are interested in and find that they can be more engaging with their classmates. When students are more comfortable, the class begins to be more effective, productive, and engaging. The open discussions about any topic leads more than two or three students to participate as well. When there is a discussion based on what they’re learning about in class, students who tend to answer are the ones that are more confident in their responses, have their cameras on, and tend to be more engaged even in the online setting.
Bridges said students have also done better in class since she’s implemented the breaks. More engagement leads to more participation, then students get their assignment done, therefore their grades improve. All of this then leads to a better online learning environment and helps with Zoom fatigue, too.
Bridges has also seen mental and emotional improvements among students, as well. Most of her students are smiling in class and as one student says, “Online school can be fun!” One of the most memorable moments for her was when she was conducting one of these breaks, and every student was participating and enjoying themselves. The topic the students chose to talk about was the new Disney movie Raya and the Last Dragon. When it was time to get back to schoolwork, one of the students offered to use their Disney+ account to do a Zoom watch party for the whole class over the weekend. Seeing the effect the discussions have had on her class, Bridges wants to encourage more teachers and professors to develop their own way of building community in an online setting, because when done right there are many benefits.
Limitations
One downside to Bridges’ approach is students becoming rowdy and distracted. Especially with younger kids, they all want to talk at the same time and because of technology there is less control on who is going to talk. If they all wanted to, they could un-mute at the same time and start talking. It can also lead to it being harder to get them focused on school again. With the younger age group and online environment, it becomes that much harder for them to remember they are in class, and that is the main focus.
Another issue is open discussions eating into class time when there’s a lot of material to cover. Yet if the open discussion is done outside of class, no one would show up. Since the questions or topics are open-ended, if the students really enjoy the topic, it can go on for too long and therefore Bridges finds herself losing class time. The solution to this problem would be doing breakout rooms with a specific amount of time on the discussion to keep it controlled.
A common limitation seen across many online classes, and sometimes even in person, is the unwillingness to participate in the discussion. How do you know this is something students actually want to do? There also can be only a select two or three people always being the ones to speak. Lastly, this solution can lead to potential disagreements, creating a negative environment for the online classroom, returning to awkwardness and students feeling uncomfortable. Bridges places an emphasis on making her topics and questions about things that the students want to talk about, making sure they have nothing to do with what they are doing in the classroom. Prior to starting class, she does make sure she has a list of questions to ask in case they do not come up with anything. It could be about what they did over the weekend, a new toy that came out, what they ate for dinner the night before, a new show, etc.