by Lisa Forbes

I don’t think that a lot of lecturing is a good idea for any class but even more so for a virtual course. I bet you’ve been on some Zoom meetings where someone was just talking AT you and I bet you found it difficult to stay present and engaged. With my virtual classes, I’ve found that if I talk for more than 10 minutes straight without engaging them in some way, I’ve lost them. Therefore, I believe that synchronous class time should be reserved for discussions, role-plays, and interactive games. Here’s some ideas I have tried in place of synchronous lectures:

Role-Plays

I teach mental health counseling courses so my classes naturally lend themselves to role-plays because students have to practice the counseling skills. But, no matter what the discipline, consider how you can incorporate role-plays. Role-plays enhance student engagement and drastically reduce the theory-to-practice gap in order to increase skill acquisition. Even within the role-plays in my classes, I try to get creative or switch them up so they aren’t the same old thing every single time. One time I had all the students engage in a suicide assessment role-play with the students as a collective-mind counselor and me as the client and I played Demi Levato but I didn’t tell them who I was ahead of time. It was a game in my head to see who would figure out what person I was playing. They did. I also created what I now call the “very complicated role-play” where I sent the students to smaller breakout rooms and provided them detailed instructions. Essentially, there were five mini role-plays within the larger role-play where students assumed a role and each role-play built on the previous one. The students said they liked struggling through it and just figuring it out together. It probably activated their brain way more than if I spewed information at them that they’d likely end up forgetting soon anyway.

Self-Initiated Research

I believe it’s important to make students responsible for their learning so instead of a boring lecture, I instruct students to research a topic on their own time to come back to the next synchronous class prepared for a group discussion or activity. Students then engage in a discussion and I have them share something that they found from their research – an interesting and related blog, video, resource, etc. Student-lead research forces them to go down a lot of “rabbit holes” as they search for answers which makes them learn the material on a deeper level and in turn, makes them more invested in their learning. I’ve even received a few enthusiastic side-bar emails from students as they researched telling me something they found or sending me something they thought I might like. But, one of the biggest benefits from student-initiated research is that students usually speak about the concept with much more passion than they would have if I simply spewed the information at them. One big wake up call I had as a mom was when my oldest went to Kindergarten – the kinds of things they expected them to do independently made me realize I wasn’t putting enough trust in my child and that I could put more responsibility on him and in turn, he will achieve more. The same goes for our adult students – we need to put more trust in them and put more of the responsibility of learning on their shoulders. I’ve found they enthusiastically rise to the challenge. 

Small-Group Competitions During Discussions

I randomly assign students to Zoom breakout rooms for small group discussions. I have the groups discuss the topic for a certain amount of time, just as any typical discussion would go, but to enhance their investment and engagement in the discussion, I have the groups create some type of “product” from the discussion to share when they return to the large group. Sometimes I have them come up with a three-sentence theory to explain an issue that has no one right answer, or develop an acrostic based on a list they constructed from their conversations, or a metaphor for the concept being discussed, or develop “best practice” indicators based on the topic, or suggestions for a person or population we are discussing, etc. The “products” can be anything because the type of product isn’t important, the actual discussion around the content is the important part but when the students know they have to produce a product that they will soon show their peers to possibly win a prize, it makes the discussions much more lively and focused. Hint: be sure to continuously pop in and out of the small group discussions, provide them very clear instructions so they don’t get disengaged or frustrated, and use the “broadcasting” feature in the breakout rooms to provide time warnings. 

Video Critiques

I believe the best way to learn something is by actually doing it (e.g., role-plays) but the next best, in my mind, is critiquing someone else engaging in the skill. I’ve found that video critiques can work really well in a synchronous session because students can discuss their ideas and critiques within real-time and get immediate feedback on their thought processes and have an opportunity for co-construction of knowledge. This is much more meaningful in real-time discussion than stale and impersonal asynchronous discussion boards. In the large Zoom room, I describe the activity, provide them the link to the video that will be viewed and critiqued, then I send them to smaller breakout rooms where one person in each group shares their screen and they watch the video as a group. I give them a specific prompt to serve as a lens to view the video from and to guide their discussions. I think these types of discussions work best when there’s no one “right” answer, that way students engage in dialogue from multiple perspectives and viewpoints. This activity makes the learning more hands-on with a real-life example and requires higher level thinking.

As I design fun and play into my classes, sometimes I’m actually designing play but sometimes I am simply taking “dry” or “boring” aspects of traditional education and figuring out ways to do it differently to make it more lively and more engaging. Maybe there’s an idea from above that you could try too. Or, maybe you have other ideas that effectively replace synchronous lecture, I’d love to hear about it!