20 Interactions Outside of Synchronous Lectures

Piazza is an online Q&A tool with several capabilities. It is already used by several Math and Science courses and can be integrated within a Canvas course (you can activate Piazza in your course by going to Settings > Navigation).

• Students, TAs, and Instructors can all pose and respond to questions and the TAs/Instructors can also endorse student answers.
• Given the data is stored on an external server, it’s important not to include personal information in order to protect your privacy. This is also important for students and TAs to know as well.
• You could use this platform to pose questions about the course content and some informal questions to help build community (i.e. what are you doing to stay healthy? what did you do this weekend?)
• Summer instructors found that if introduced and managed well, students had significantly higher engagement with Piazza than in face-to-face classes. The instructors suggest assigning 1 or 2 TAs to help manage the discussions and to highlight any pertinent issues or questions to the instructor. One instructor actually assigned participation grades if students read, posted, or replied to messages within each week of the course. There was high uptake and engagement from students as a result.

The Canvas Discussions is embedded within the course shell and as such, is FIPPA compliant.  Within online education, a discussion board is often used to create interactions and conversations among students surrounding course topics and assessments. Students contribute posts related to specified course content/questions and then respond to a few of their peers post. Student posts and responses can also be assessed if you want to make this part of your course assessment.

• Please note that some instructors and students find the Canvas Discussions clunky. As such, they opt for Piazza for general Q&A and only use the Canvas Discussions for course activities and assessments that need to be tied with student IDs.
• One summer instructor we spoke with said that while the features of the Canvas discussion board aren’t as fancy as Piazza, this forum worked well for her class. They did an initial activity with students to get them used to the platform and then TAs were assigned to monitor the discussions. The instructor created folders where students would submit posts and responses related to homework assignments and then had other spaces where students could ask general content questions and share fun/random info with one another (e.g. memes, info about local food, good movies/TV shows).

The UBC Blogs (WordPress) is another platform that can be embedded within a Canvas course and that is FIPPA compliant. With the new UBC Course Affiliation plugin, your course can now be associated with a blog site, which will allow you to automatically register your students to the blog as authors, so that they can contribute to the content by publishing posts and pages.

The blog can be made private for students within the course or could be made public (up to the instructor and students). Within these blogs, students can post reflections and respond to their peers, create e-Portolios, build community, and gain experience with digital/web literacies. This platform might lend better to courses with assignments/assessments related to science and public communication.

Given the remote nature of the course and that students are not able to introduce themselves face to face, it would be useful to assign students to study or working groups within Canvas. Students can then submit group assignments and can communicate with one another. Students can also choose their own modes for communicating outside of class.

Students appreciate no more than one to two e-mails and/or announcements each week. They also appreciate that important information sent by e-mail also be announced via the Canvas Announcements or Discussion forums to ensure students receive the information. See the Keep Teaching website for information about how to send announcements and messages in Canvas and to e-mail students via the FSC.

Many instructors are having virtual office hours using Zoom. You and your TAs could attend and there could be Breakout Rooms to address individual or small group questions if need be.