Maintaining a positive class climate in what doesn’t feel like a very positive semester

You’ve been hearing the same message since last spring, you heard it over the summer, and you continue to hear it now–teaching during the pandemic is can be a struggle. It can feel harder to connect with students when you aren’t seeing them as frequently in a blended course or if you are teaching asynchronously. Students are also stressed and having a hard time focusing and engaging. Despite these challenges there are still some easy strategies to adopt to help you and your students feel like part of a classroom community.

(Still) Getting to Know You:

One fun and easy approach is to include daily or weekly class questions, polls, or icebreakers.

Easy questions include:

• What’s your favorite food?
• What’s your favorite movie?
• List “Two truths and a Lie” about yourself and allow students to respond to guess the “lie”
• What are your Hopes and Fears. 

Here are 21 Icebreakers for online and remote courses. 

Don’t forget to share your answers with your students. 

Advice From Current and Former  Students:

Consider including a “success” section in your iCollege course. Invite your current students to share what is working for this this semester. Or even some challenges that they are trying to overcome

Good prompts include:

• “What I wish I knew when this class started”
• “What I’m doing to be successful”

Save this advice and share with your classes next semester. You can even ask students to submit short video or audio messages using VoiceThread.