Tips to Building Successful Teams

Three diverse professionals collaborate at a table in a bright office space. A man in a black suit is holding a document, while two women, one in a yellow blazer and the other in a white blouse, smile and engage with the content on a laptop and tablet.

Answers to common questions about forming student groups

How this will help

Well-constructed team-based assignments help students build skills and knowledge

Surveying students at the beginning of a course can inform better group formations

Establishing team roles gives learners structure and clear expectations

Project-based team learning is a great way to engage students and help them build real-world collaboration skills. But organizing your students into groups that blend easily and productively can be a daunting task at the beginning of the semester.

Below are common questions about forming student teams, along with answers to help you create team projects that support your students and their learning goals.

How can I get to know my students at the beginning of the course?

A student survey at the beginning of the course may help you learn about your students and form teams more effectively. Consider including any of the following questions in your survey:

Where will you be living this semester?
What days of the week are you most available to meet?
What time of day are you most productive?
What concerns do you have about teamwork in this class?
What are your priorities or goals for yourself in this class?
How much experience do you have with [skill relevant to the class or project]?

You can also survey students about personality characteristics and working styles. Here is a sample survey for rating personality characteristics:

An image of a sample survey for students asking the question, "Where would you place yourself on the following scales?" The scales go from 1 to 7. The following scenarios rank as a 1 on the scale: In groups, I tend to listen more than speak; I usually do work close to a deadline; I expect to fit right into this course; I like to share work, even if my team finishes tasks differently than me; I'd rather hold back ideas or preferences if my group stays happy. The following scenarios rank as a 7 on the scale: I often speak up in groups; I get working on a project when it's assigned; I expect to feel pretty out of place in this course; I'd rather pick up extra work so I know it's done right; It's easy for me to speak up about my ideas or preferences even if it disrupts my group.

In some cases, students with similar characteristics do well in the same groups; other characteristics are better served by being spread out among the teams. These insights help you build cohesive and equitable teams.

Consider the following guidance for grouping students based on the survey sample:

Characteristics	Grouping Type
Extroverted vs. Introverted	Group diverse
Precrastinator vs. Procrastinator	Group similar to maximize team happiness Group diverse to maximize team productivity
Belongingness	Avoid stranding low-belonging students on a team of high-belonging students
Controlling vs. Collaborative	Spread out controlling students
Self-censoring vs. Contributing	Avoid stranding self-censoring students on a team of high contributors

How should teams be formed, and which factors should instructors consider?

Forming effective teams is the first step in setting students up for success on their team projects. Here are some strategies for team formation:

Aim for diversity in skills, experiences, and perspectives.
Aim for similarity in schedules and campus location (or time zone if students are remote) to reduce logistics issues.
Grouping students with similar time management approaches and procrastination styles may reduce conflict within the team, though it may also reduce project quality.
Consider outcome goals, academic strengths, and previous experience with the topic and skills when forming teams.

If you have students who indicated they don’t enjoy teamwork or have conflicts with others, consider assigning them to a team with students who:

Have strong collaborative skills and patience.
Share similar goals for the class.
Are empathetic and adaptable.

In some cases, it may be better to let a student work alone on a project, especially if they have previously had difficult team experiences due to factors outside their control (e.g. cultural differences, neurodiversity, etc.).

How can instructors make structured teams (with roles) work well?

Planning and communication are key when designing and assigning roles for group work. Important considerations include:

Clearly define roles and explain how each role benefits the team’s success. Team roles can include a facilitator to lead team meetings, a timekeeper to track deadlines, and a reporter to record team decisions.
Ensure equitable distribution of the fun or exciting tasks, or tasks that help students build critical skills.
Rotate roles if possible. For example, note-taking should be a duty each team member takes on, rather than the same person always doing it.
Talk about different leadership roles and how to share them in a team. Students can be idea leaders, task leaders, social leaders, or organization leaders (or a combination of leadership types).

Leadership type	Strength area	Common contributions
Social leaders	Help to create the necessary social bond and cohesion among teammates	– Facilitate conflict resolution – Amplify teammates’ voices and ideas to increase equity of participation and contribution – Foster an environment of shared respect for teammates and excitement over the teams’ work
Organizational leaders	Offer needed structure to the team and project	– Spearhead conversations about team policies and norms – Develop and implement approaches to project scheduling – Provide big-picture project oversight to make sure all aspects of the work are moving forward as needed
Idea leaders	Help get the team’s work off on the right foot and provide a boost when needed later in the project	– Model strategies for idea generation – Suggest alternatives when a solution isn’t working – Collect, evaluate, and prioritize feedback
Task leaders	Make sure that the team’s work progresses by using their skills and strengths to complete project tasks	– Demonstrate and teach skills to teammates who are motivated to learn – Outline tasks, objectives, and strategies to complete tasks with teammates – Set deadlines and guide teammates when there are gaps in knowledge

How can instructors form equitable teams?

Instructors should create teams thoughtfully to reduce learner barriers and encourage a sense of belonging, particularly for students who may hold a marginalized identity. Important considerations include:

When possible, avoid stranding students who may be underrepresented in their area of study on a team of all majority students. You can accomplish this by asking an open-ended question about how each student would prefer to be grouped.
Allowing teams to self-select may help, but it may also create more homogeneous teams.
Forming teams based on self-reported sense of belonging may help accomplish this (e.g. not stranding students who report a low sense of belonging on a team with all high-belonging students).
Consult with expert resources on your campus to develop strategies that meet this goal while complying with privacy, legal, and ethical considerations.

For more information on team equity, see the scoping review conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, as well as a graphic illustrating their findings. They identified seven themes of team equity: alignment, dialogism, heterophily, participation, power, ownership, and risk.

A graphic wheel with Team Equity at the center surrounded by seven themes that contribute toward Team Equity, including Alignment, Risk, Power, Participation, Ownership, Heterophily, and Dialogism.

References

Legal notice: Protected identity characteristics (race, ethnicity, sex, etc.) cannot be used to assign students to teams, and should not be collected in any team formation survey. The Tandem survey tool meets these guidelines. For more information, reach out to the University of Michigan Office of the General Counsel.

Moffat, A. D., Matz, R. L., Fowler, R. R., & Jeffrey, M. (2024). Facets of Team Equity: A Scoping Review. Small Group Research, 56(1), 32-70.

Resources

Center for Research on Learning & Teaching
- Project-Based Groups or Teams
- Equity-Focused Teaching
Carnegie Mellon University – Possible Roles on Teams
Office of Student Conflict Resolution – Tips and Tools for Constructive Conflict Resolution

Finding ways to support every student is a fundamental challenge for instructors. When the learning occurs online, ensuring an equitable experience can seem daunting, especially when students are part of teams that meet outside a professor’s purview.

According to researcher Yiwen Lin, interventions aimed at boosting student engagement and experience are effective, and the strategic use of generative AI could ensure group learning benefits every team member.

Local Inspiration

As an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Lin got a glimpse into her future research while attending a talk on the student support tool ECoach. Developed by the Center for Academic Innovation, ECoach software provides students personalized feedback and tailored strategies for success.

Lin recalled attending the presentation given by ECoach founder Tim McKay, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics, Astronomy, Education. She was struck by McKay’s finding that while female physics students did not frequently speak in class, they did engage and contribute in other meaningful and important ways.

“What he found was that women like to back channel,” Lin said. “I thought, well women engage, but oftentimes they just engage differently, and it’s hard for an assessment that only looks at the frequency of participation.”

Lin, now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh, researches this deeper data with an eye on gender differences. She examines how psychological factors impact the persistence of online STEM learners, the quality of participation in team settings, and what interventions can be used to encourage more equity among students. Lin shared her research in an Innovation Insights talk titled “Charting Equity in Online Learning Teams: Opportunities and Challenges,” presented by the center.

Male vs. Female Motivation

Examining gender differences in STEM learning has traditionally evaluated how students’ psychological experiences impact outcomes. Lin’s research delves deeper into the learning process, revealing some surprising findings.

In one study, Lin and her team replicated a previous research project that looked at how a sense of belonging and STEM identity impacted female students’ desire to continue in STEM. But unlike the former study, Lin’s research used a pool of international online learners, many of them graduate students.

The results corroborated the importance of belonging and identity for women. However, when they examined the same connection for male learners, Lin’s team found that belonging and identity were also strong motivators for men. In fact, identity and belonging showed a slightly stronger link to STEM persistence for men compared to their female peers. This was the opposite of the previous findings.

Lin believes the pool of students (international and online) may have been a factor in the divergence from past research. Either way, interventions designed to increase female learners’ belonging and identity also clearly impacted male learners. Subsequent polling showed that a positive group dynamic impacted both male and female retention in STEM.

“We found that facilitating effective group dynamics can be potentially quite important for cultivating a more inclusive psychological experience,” Lin said.

Beyond Quantifying Participation

It can be challenging for instructors of online courses to incorporate those interventions, especially for small groups meeting outside the virtual classroom.

Lin outlined those challenges and the importance of diving deeper into the data in a study monitoring 88 small teams (three students per team) who were given a series of challenges to complete in a short period of time. Examining the gender differences in participation, Lin’s team confirmed that women spoke less in mixed-gender groups as well as male-majority teams, using fewer words and speaking less often compared to their peers.

The team then ran a language analysis on the transcripts of the students’ collaboration and found the female students actually provided a higher quality of participation than their male peers.

“Female students were better at responding to their teammates, building onto their contributions, and also being more cohesive with their own participation,” Lin said.

It affirmed her assertion that research can help look beyond the initial observations about frequency. Lin hopes that assessing the quality of contributions will be key to developing effective tools that encourage student participation in online courses and bring more equity to small groups.

AI for an Equitable Learning Experience

What those tools may look like is an exciting proposition to Lin, especially generative AI tools that can be applied to what she describes as the “in between,” the learning experience of students as they work through their course and team assignments.

“We sort of conceptualize that it is useful for AI to help us assess and model collaborative processes, rather than only collaborative outcomes,” Lin said.

Generative AI tools could provide personalized support for students, identifying learning patterns that may require intervention, like an intelligent tutoring system. Lin also sees potential in creating a similar generative AI program for teams, encouraging more equity in their collaboration and helping students from varied backgrounds and diverse perspectives interact in constructive and respectful ways. She referred to the center tool Tandem as an example of how well-designed support tools can reveal more about team dynamics and help instructors better support and guide students. Tandem coaches students working on team projects and allows instructors the chance to intervene when they see a group needs assistance.

Lin acknowledges that integrating generative AI with student support comes with challenges. That is why, Lin says, instructor input is key to ensuring tools are built using careful consideration of privacy and bias, and are extensively tested before launch. When done correctly, they could be powerful tools for building a more inclusive and equitable online learning environment.

“We wanted to think more deeply about how we can leverage AI as a tool for equity,” Lin said. “And this would perhaps be always a constant discussion in the community as we move forward with it.”

References

Lin, Y. & Nixon, N. (2024) STEM pathways in a global online course: Are male and female learners motivated the same?, L@S 2024: Proceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale, 243-249.

Lin, Y., Dowell, N., Godfrey, A., Choi, H., & Brooks, C. (2019). Modeling gender dynamics in intra and interpersonal interactions during online collaborative learning. LAK19: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, 431–435.

Nixon, N., Lin, Y., & Snow, L. (2024). Catalyzing equity in STEM teams: Harnessing generative AI for inclusion and diversity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(1), 85-92.

Lewis, N.A. , Sekaquaptewa, D. , & Meadows, L.A. (2019). Modeling gender counter-stereotypic group behavior: A brief video intervention reduces participation gender gaps on STEM teams. Social Psychology of Education, 22(3), 557–77.

Dowell, N., Lin, Y., Godfrey, A., & Brooks, C. (2019, June 25-29). Promoting inclusivity through time-dynamic discourse analysis in digitally-mediated collaborative learning. [Proceedings] In Artificial Intelligence in Education: 20th International Conference, AIED 2019, Chicago, IL, USA. Springer International Publishing AG, Part 1(20), 207–19.

When teaching in an online and hybrid setting, there are two primary ways to engage and interact with your students. Synchronous activities, like live Zoom sessions, require that everyone is in the same virtual space at the same time. Asynchronous activities, like discussion boards, email, or annotation tools, allow students to engage in academic work with their peers at a time that fits within their schedule.

Synchronous and asynchronous are both useful modalities that exist along a continuum in online and hybrid classes. In some courses, every element is asynchronous (not at the same time, like email or discussion boards), while in others almost everything happens synchronously (where everyone gathers at the same time, like a Zoom session), and still other courses employ a combination of both. These key questions will help you determine where your intentions for this course fall along this continuum and help you decide when to use synchronous or asynchronous elements.

One note: both synchronous and asynchronous modalities are valuable options, with neither being inherently better. Both modalities can be used to develop connections between students and faculty, and facilitate group work, and critical thinking.

What skills are most important for students to develop in your course?

Through asynchronous course elements, students practice written communication in an online setting and can be more reflective in developing and sharing complex ideas. This allows students to build upon their time management and planning skills while completing the coursework.

Synchronous elements are useful when students are learning to develop an argument in real time, navigating time pressure, and constructing in-person interpersonal skills. Students will still build time management skills, albeit in a more structured and periodic cycle.

What type of feedback will be most useful for students in your course?

Asynchronous modalities provide opportunities for more thorough and reflective feedback. For more complex tasks, feedback will require intentionality, and will most likely be based on the product of a process that is not visible to the instructor.

Synchronous feedback strategies provide an opportunity for spontaneous, immediate feedback that allows students to make real-time adjustments to their processes.

What role will student perspectives play in your course?

Asynchronous settings work well for students who have unmovable demands on their time and availability and tend to set the expectation that every student shares their thoughts. This allows a greater diversity of students and ideas to be represented throughout the course.

Synchronous sessions can be designed to allow students to share their perspectives and relate course content to their experiences. This helps students connect with their peers and form a learning community within the synchronous session. Classroom management techniques become more relevant in synchronous sessions as vocal students may dominate discussions, creating a narrowed perspective. There is also a possibility that some students may take a back seat through the whole course if they are not engaged in the synchronous session.

What type of time can you give to this course?

Asynchronous elements are set up ahead of time, requiring a heavier investment up-front that allows you to focus on teaching during the semester. Everything you create can be “durable”, and can be used semester to semester. While they can be iterated, it is harder to make asynchronous elements responsive to students in real time.

Synchronous elements also require prep time, but a lot of the instructional lift happens as you attend to instructional design and facilitate student learning simultaneously. Classroom preparation is iterative and is informed by previous synchronous elements to take into account and address any knowledge gaps. When facilitating the synchronous element, you are able to adapt to changes on the fly and check understanding at the moment to determine your plans need to change. Every session must be constructed in the moment in a way that can be immediately responsive to student needs.

The Right Decision

There is no single “right” choice when it comes to deciding whether synchronous or asynchronous teaching modalities. You’ll need to consider the learning outcomes you are working towards, assessment needs, your strengths as an instructor, and your students’ needs as learners. Clarifying the factors driving your decision can serve as a basis for selecting the modalities that work best for your course.

The Roundup on Research series is intended for faculty and staff who are interested in learning more about the theories, frameworks, and research in online and technology-enhanced teaching and learning.

One of the first questions many educators ask when getting started teaching online is “How do you recreate the experience of a face-to-face classroom in an online environment?” While there are many facets to that question, many instructors refer to the sense of community and connection as a gap that they struggle to overcome. However, much research has been done on the impact and development of learning communities in the online classroom. In this article, we will discuss the influential framework Community of Inquiry (CoI), how it can be used to inform your own teaching, as well as how it has been used to frame online learning research in the research.

Community of Inquiry Model

One of the most used frameworks applied to the understanding of online learning environments is the community of inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, et. al, 2000). Originally developed by observing asynchronous text-based learning environments, CoI suggests that there are three core interdependent elements to a learning experience: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. The intersection of the three presences results in what is categorized as “deep learning.” Rooted in the belief that learners construct meaning within social contexts (social constructivism), Community of Inquiry makes meaning of how learners interact online to create knowledge.

Three Presences: Cognitive, Teaching, and Social

Cognitive presence is the capacity for meaningful construction of learning. Cognitive presence is often what instructors might think of the active learning portion of a class. Indications of cognitive presence include asking questions, engaging in reflection on a topic, and scaffolding engagement with a topic. Cognitive presence can be supported by an instructor asking probing questions, modeling reflection, and encouraging active participation from learners. As the community grows together, other learners may (and should) also participate in the facilitation of cognitive presence.

Venn diagram of Community of Inquiry model with three presences (social, cognitive, and teaching) all intersecting. Common area between social presence and cognitive presence is supporting discourse. Common area between social presence and teaching presence is setting climate. Common area between teaching presence and cognitive presence is selecting content. All three areas intersect with educational experience.

Teaching presence is the design, structure, and guidance that directs the learning experience. Instructional design is one of the earliest ways to demonstrate teaching presence (course materials, assessments, activities). However, it is also important to consider how the instructor demonstrates active teaching presence throughout the time of the course. This can take the form of weekly introductory emails, specifying expectations for Zoom sessions, or providing assistance to a student struggling with a topic. Teaching presence is not isolated to the instructor alone, rather, can also be exhibited by students by providing structure and guidance to fellow students.

Social presence is the ability for participants in the community to represent themselves as whole people complete with emotions and personality. It is easy to focus on the design of a course thinking about the content that needs to be taught or the learning objectives to be met. In a face-to-face classroom, much of the social presence happens spontaneously through a shared location. In an online setting, we design our courses and spaces to encourage the development of social presence. This could involve including an introduction area for students where the instructor shares (and encourages students to share) some pieces of personal information, infusing weekly posts or announcements with personality as well as giving students space to express their own personalities.

COI in the Literature

As one of the prevailing frameworks in current online teaching and learning, the Community of Inquiry model has been in the academic spotlight frequently over the past several years. In a recent search, CoI has been cited in over 1000 articles during the last three years alone. As classrooms transitioned to emergency remote and/or online teaching during the pandemic, CoI has been used to explain students’ motivation in courses (Turk et al., 2022), how to understand the bridge between informal and formal learning (Chatterjee & Parra, 2022), and leveraging learning analytics for student feedback (Yılmaz, 2020). It is also hypothesized that different types of disciplines may have different need profiles for presence, for example, some disciplines may have greater social presence needs vs. teaching presence needs (Arbaugh, 2013).

Most critically, social presence has been associated with student satisfaction in online learning. While teaching and cognitive presence are positively correlated with students’ perceptions of learning (Akyol & Garrison, 2008; Turk et al., 2022), social presence was highlighted as faculty transitioned to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Studies of social presence have cited timeliness of feedback and coaching (Conklin & Dikkers, 2021), frequency of communication and feedback (D’alessio et al., 2019), and the opportunity for social interactions regardless of whether those opportunities were acted upon (Weidlich & Bastiaens, 2019) as ways to build social presence. The benefits of increased social presence suggest decreased issues with academic integrity (Eshet et al., 2021), increased student performance (D’alessio et al., 2019), and increased higher-order thinking (Stein et al., 2013).

Critiques of COI

While being one of the most popular frameworks leveraged in online teaching and learning right now, CoI is not without critique. First, it assumes that learning is inherently social. If your teaching philosophy does not align with the underlying beliefs of social-based learning (like constructivism), this may not be the best framework.

In Xin’s (2012) critique she notes the challenges of parsing out what is a “social presence” interaction (since CoI assumes all learning is social) from the other types of presences. How are cognitive presence and teaching presence different if they are also inherently social? In addition, because CoI is rooted in written communication between community members, is there a difference between what happens in written, asynchronous communication versus what may take place more spontaneously with spoken, synchronous communication? Others have suggested that CoI does not take into account interpersonal contributions to learning. Learners may also need to take responsibility for their learning, and they may not always be invested in a learning community (Shea et al., 2014; Wertz, 2022).

Finally, CoI was developed during a time when synchronous communication (like videoconferencing) was at a premium. The research has not yet determined whether CoI applies equally as well when a portion of communication is taking place synchronously.

How to Incorporate COI Into Your Online Design

One of the reasons the Community of Inquiry is so popular is that it can be used proactively as a framework for creating a more engaging learning environment. Facilitating an online course can feel like teaching to a black box. CoI provides a way to be proactive in development to make teaching online more effective. The best way to leverage CoI is to think about the three types of presences and how you are planning to address them each week.

Since CoI is rooted in active communication, one of the best things to do is to create a communication/engagement plan.

Ideas for Increasing Teaching Presence:

Write weekly introductions and weekly summaries. Consider including points that you may have found particularly interesting and/or general comments on discussions within class.
Use the Announcements feature to post timely updates.
Return emails and assignments within a set expectation. For example, “I will return short assignments within 3 days. Our longer papers will be returned within 7 days”
Create a survey for students to get feedback on organization/communication. Make adjustments based on feedback, and then communicate those changes back to students. Students need to know that you have made changes based on their feedback.

Ideas for Increasing Cognitive Presence

In videoconferencing (like Zoom), create handouts or guided notes so students can be active during lectures.
Tools like Persuall can engage students asynchronously with communications on readings.
Use case studies, application, and reflection assignments to encourage students to consider content topics and make meaningful connections

Ideas for Increasing Social Presence

Social presence is facilitated by the instructor. Demonstrate commitment to connection with students. Create a communication plan. Students frequently cite feedback from instructors as a critical aspect of feeling connected in a class. Give students expectations for timeliness of feedback and provide enough detail to build an academic relationship.
Create space for social interactions during Zoom sessions. Take the first 3 minutes for small talk, have a question of the day, or use a poll to encourage students to share about themselves if they feel comfortable.
Use a discussion board for informal conversations. Consider a theme – favorite meme, favorite place to travel, food that reminds you of home. Make sure that as the instructor, you participate as well.

If you are interested in learning more about Community of Inquiry, visit the COI website.

References

Arbaugh, J. B. (2013). Does academic discipline moderate CoI-course outcomes relationships in online MBA courses? The Internet and Higher Education, 17, 16–28.

Chatterjee, S., & Parra, J. (2022). Undergraduate Students Engagement in Formal and Informal Learning: Applying the Community of Inquiry Framework. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 50(3), 327–355.

Conklin, S., & Dikkers, A. G. (2021). Instructor Social Presence and Connectedness in a Quick Shift from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction. Online Learning, 25(1).

D’alessio, M. A., Lundquist, L. L., Schwartz, J. J., Pedone, V., Pavia, J., & Fleck, J. (2019). Social presence enhances student performance in an online geology course but depends on instructor facilitation. Journal of Geoscience Education, 67(3), 222–236.

Eshet, Y., Steinberger, P., & Grinautsky, K. (2021). Relationship between statistics anxiety and academic dishonesty: A comparison between learning environments in social sciences. Sustainability (Switzerland), 13(3), 1–18.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2), 87–105.

Shea, P., Hayes, S., Uzuner-Smith, S., Gozza-Cohen, M., Vickers, J., & Bidjerano, T. (2014). Reconceptualizing the community of inquiry framework: An exploratory analysis. The Internet and Higher Education, 23, 9–17.

Stein, D. S., Wanstreet, C. E., Slagle, P., Trinko, L. A., & Lutz, M. (2013). From “hello” to higher-order thinking: The effect of coaching and feedback on online chats. Internet and Higher Education, 16(2013), 78–84.

Turk, M., Heddy, B. C., & Danielson, R. W. (2022). Teaching and social presences supporting basic needs satisfaction in online learning environments: How can presences and basic needs happily meet online? Computers & Education, 180, 104432.

Wertz, R. E. H. (2022). Learning presence within the Community of Inquiry framework: An alternative measurement survey for a four-factor model. The Internet and Higher Education, 52, 100832.

Weidlich, J., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2019). Designing sociable online learning environments and enhancing social presence: An affordance enrichment approach. Computers and Education, 142, 103622.

Xin, C. (2012). A Critique of the Community of Inquiry Framework. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education / Revue Internationale Du e-Learning et La Formation à Distance, 26(1), Article 1.

Yılmaz, R. (2020). Enhancing community of inquiry and reflective thinking skills of undergraduates through using learning analytics-based process feedback. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 36(6), 909–921.

How this will help

Identify ways that you might encourage active participation in web conferencing sessions

Know where to find resources related to creating participatory environments

When groups including classes meet in real-time online via a video conferencing tool, it’s tempting to just use the time for a presentation or a question and answer session. However, there are ways that you can deliberately use technology in these sessions to enable meaningful participation, deeper learning, and stronger connections.

There are two basic ways to encourage participation in this environment:

Utilize activities that can be completed by everyone at the same time. For example, you could post a question or prompt in the chat feature of your videoconference tool and then ask everyone to respond at the same time (called a “chatterfall” or “chatstream” or “backchannel”). Another easy technique is asking everyone to contribute simultaneously through an annotation feature or shared workspace such as a Google doc.
Break the whole group up into smaller groups. In classes larger than 5, it helps to create pairs or smaller groups using breakout rooms. Depending on the size of your class, you can also easily scaffold a series of small group conversations (e.g. first as pairs, then as groups of four, etc) by combining breakout rooms.

When planning participatory synchronous sessions, feel free to keep the technology simple: we recommend using Zoom and a tool from the Google suite (such as docs or slides). Think about activities that you’ve run in-person and then work to adapt them in order to optimize the opportunities afforded in a remote environment. Consider the essence of that activity and build out from there rather than trying to translate it directly. Although technology can often help, sometimes activities just don’t work as well in a remote environment, and that’s okay. In this way, you’ll be using technology deliberately in the service of your goals rather than using technology for its own sake.

Accessibility is another major consideration when running participatory virtual classes or meetings. Before meeting remotely, you’ll want to get a sense of any accommodations that your students may have and work to make sure that all shared materials are accessible and easy to use. In understanding the needs of your students before a meeting, you can choose the activities and/or the technologies that will work best for that particular group. Additionally, it’s important to combine synchronous meetings with robust asynchronous tools in order to maximize the accessibility of your course.

For specific ideas and activities that you might try, check out our Facilitation Guide: Participatory Sessions in a Virtual Environment. This guide is designed for those new to teaching or facilitating remotely and is built around using Zoom and the Google suite to encourage participation. It includes sections covering general recommendations (such as those found below in the Practical Tips), ideas leveraging specific tech features such as chat and breakout rooms, and an appendix that walks you through how to use Zoom if you need help with the technology.

The guide also includes full instructions for a number of activities. These activities are largely centered on Liberating Structures, a suite of activities designed to encourage better collaboration and full participation by all group members. However, these activities will feel very familiar for a teaching environment. For example, 1-2-4-All is a kind of think-pair-share, Carousel Brainstorm is a series of brainstorms that build upon one another, and Shift and Share is a set of rotations for small group presentations.

Practical Tips

If you’re looking to encourage more active participation in a remote class or meeting, here are a few of the general recommendations taken from the facilitation guide to get you started:

Build an agenda with ample time for activities and breaks.

Because there is so much to process when meeting remotely, you should be prepared for activities to take longer, and Zoom fatigue is real. You’ll want to create an agenda that includes plenty of time for all activities as well as breaks for classes longer than 60 minutes.

Create separate, shared workspaces for small groups that include all activity instructions.

If you have small groups working in breakout rooms, create a dedicated workspace for each small group that includes all of the activity instructions and space for them to record notes (called a “harvest”). This workspace helps to keep small groups on track, allows you to monitor progress, and leaves documentation for everyone in the class to use—not just that small group. See the Template Slides and Template Text Collaboration Document in the Resources section below for examples of harvest spaces.

Set clear expectations at the beginning.

It helps to give students some expectations and guidelines so that you are creating a comfortable environment for participation. Some ideas include:

Ask students to mute themselves unless speaking. Be clear that you’ll mute anyone who doesn’t abide by this expectation.
Recommend that students configure their screens so that they can keep the chat window open during the entire class, rather than flipping back and forth.
Encourage students to keep a piece of paper and writing utensil nearby.
Let everyone know that video conference tools such as Zoom are strict facilitators; for instance, they will probably be whisked away from a breakout room while in the midst of a sentence.
Acknowledge that a remote class will feel different than a face-to-face class, and that’s okay.
Enlist students to help with facilitation.

There will be some additional responsibilities and considerations when meeting in a videoconference session, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. To help with this, consider having 1-2 students act as “backchannel” moderators for the class. These students could be responsible for keeping track of questions, making sure all activity instructions are posted in the chat, and/or possibly summarizing the session at the end.

Resources

University of Michigan

Other Resources

How this will help

Understand key principles of ethical community engagement and how to operationalize them when designing and teaching online community-engaged courses

Learn concrete suggestions, resources, and strategies for addressing the needs of students and community partners during online community-engaged teaching

Discover ways that Ginsberg Center staff can support your community-engaged course, from finding remote engagement opportunities for students to helping prepare your students to partner with communities and maximize their learning

Community-engaged learning is when “students engage in activities that address human and community needs, together with structured opportunities for reflection designed to achieve desired learning outcomes” (adapted from Jacoby, 1996). In your face-to-face classes, you may have experience working directly with community partners in various ways to integrate students into community-engaged learning.

But what does this look like in an online class? Or when the community engagement is virtual? When shifting to an online environment, many community-engaged instructors at the University of Michigan have expressed the difficulty of balancing students’ needs for accessible and empathetic virtual instruction, community partners’ rapidly-shifting needs and priorities, and general public health and safety concerns. However, online instruction does not mean isolated – instead, it is possible to leverage technology as well as use it as a lens to examine community engagement.

The Ginsberg Center is a community and civic engagement center with a mission to cultivate and steward equitable partnerships between communities and the University of Michigan in order to advance social change for the public good. Our Best Practices for Online Community Engaged Teaching and Learning provides tangible suggestions, resources, and strategies that are rooted in the 6 key principles that guide our work. The guide also synthesizes research on online service-learning and community engagement with a particular focus on the opportunities available at the University of Michigan. We offer highlights from our guide below:

1. Connecting Civic Learning Across Contexts

We support students’ integrative learning across classroom, co-curricular, personal, and community settings. Reflection is a critical component of this integration throughout the partnership process.