By this point in the Covid-19 transition to remote instruction, you’ve probably had a few sessions on Zoom. You’ve taught a few classes, met students for office hours. No doubt more than once, you’ve seen a lot of students staring blankly at you after you pose a question. (Insert crickets-chirping sound.)
Faculty members are getting a crash course in Zoom and finding it can be supremely awkward, at least at first. One reason for our collective uneasiness: Most of us are not well acquainted with the “hidden curriculum” of Zoom — all the unwritten rules and expectations that you’re supposed to know but none of us have been taught. Faculty members and students together are diving into a new tool with little to no experience with it, technically or culturally.
As you lead a class discussion or a meeting on Zoom, it’s all too easy to lose people in the process. But the principles of inclusive teaching can help you reach students in a virtual classroom, just as in a physical one.
As longtime advocates of inclusive teaching — the practice of embracing student diversity and designing courses in ways that reach all students — we know how important structure is. More structure in face-to-face teaching works for most students, without harming those who don’t need it.
Fortunately, there are ways to incorporate structural elements into remote teaching, too — and it’s not too late to add them, with the goal of reaching more of your now-online students. So if you’re in the “emergency fine-tuning stage,” looking ahead to more remote teaching this summer, or both, here are eight suggestions to help you keep inclusiveness in mind along the way: