2018 Presentations (Communicative Events)

One class, two modes of participation: Fully integrating online students into residential classes via web conferencing

Marquart, Matthea S.; Englisher, Martin G.; Tokieda, Kathryn J.; Telfair-Garcia, Alexis

What if online and residential students could have an expanded choice of electives, more scheduling options, and greater opportunities for networking with a larger group of peers by offering courses that online and residential students can take together, at the same time?

At Columbia University’s School of Social Work, in our Master’s of Science in Social Work program, we are piloting a new type of hybrid course that uses Zoom to bring online students into residential courses. The pilot is an opportunity to figure out how to set up, design, and teach this type of course, and in this poster, we propose to share our lessons learned while we prepared for our courses during the fall semester and have begun to teach during the spring semester.

While it is early to evaluate the pilot’s outcomes, we have already learned a great deal about how to plan for technical logistics and how to design engaging class sessions, and the first week of class included breakout discussions in groups that combined online and residential students, as well as whole-class discussions in which both types of students participated equally.

We propose to share our work towards the goal of creating one cohesive classroom community rather than two parallel communities or a situation in which the online students simply watched the residential students through a virtual window. We will share our lessons learned around logistics, and considerations for designing lessons plans and assignments that fully integrate the online and residential students, including small-group breakout activities, group presentations, lectures, guest speakers, whole-class discussions, homework assignments, and potentially field trips off campus.

This poster will draw from the presenters’ experiences teaching and preparing to teach two Spring 2018 pilot seminar courses: Staff Development, Training, and Coaching, and Managing NGOs.