Yellowdig Webinar: Practical Tips for Faculty Presence in Any Modality

Bob Ertischek 0:12
Welcome to Yellowdig's July office hours and fewer people are trickling in here. As you probably already have noticed, this session is being recorded. I'm Bob Ertischek. I'm Yellowdig's Senior Academic Liaison, and I'm joined today by Dr. Brian Verdine, our head of client success. And Jon Miron, who is our Onboarding Specialist, here today. And there have been as is usually our format. These sessions, we've asked for questions to be submitted in advance, because that makes for more organized session. And there were several questions. Submit in advance, and we will address those. But I believe we will probably also have time to address any additional questions that you may have. That being said, you can ask any questions, I would actually direct you to the q&a, which should be at the bottom right of your zoom screen. That's probably the most efficient way to answer your questions, as opposed to placing them in the chat. But john will be monitoring both. So we'll figure it out one way or the other. Um, and I guess without any other further ado, we should jump right in. So Brian is running the slideshow. So we'll go there. Yeah, just go straight to the actual Brian, what's this new, exciting website you're sharing?

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Bob Ertischek 0:10
All right. So, as you'll see, as soon as the screen pops up, we would ask that you describe an instructor that you enjoyed as a student.

And let us know what qualities made it a great class.

For me, my favorite instructor ever was my high school, AP US government or US history teacher, Don Stewart, who sadly is gone now. But

he made us feel like people, I mean, he was a great storyteller. But I think the most important part was, he treated us like we were important in there, and he would joke around with us, and

he shared his passion for US history. And, you know, I don't remember ever being more into a course.

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Natalie Murray 1:08
I love said here and see from you all, like an instructor that was like really a faculty member that was just you really enjoyed and the qualities of that class, it's such a fun thing to do. We all have these experiences of these amazing teachers in our lives and mentors.

I was just thinking about two situations in college. And there are many more, but just two that are super vibrant, different courses. One was a Actually, I'm from Texas, so Texas, history and politics, and then a philosophy course. And in both cases, I loved how the, the faculty member created this, this discourse, it kind of it really made me challenge my thinking at that time, which is really powerful. But it was, I felt safe doing it like it was just a wonderful experience. And so that environment was really powerful. And those instructors just did such a great job.

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Bob Ertischek 2:12
And Richard mentions instructors are equity minded and open to challenging us and yeah, I mean, I totally agree. being challenged the student letting you know, seeing things from a different perspective, having those instructors who make it interesting and find ways to engage you in thinking about these things in new ways.

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Natalie Murray 2:37
nearfall love this. Yeah, I love the idea of keeping things riveting. Like you're on the tip of your seat, you can't wait to hear more. Thanks for sharing. I always love to hear people's stories of what's inspired to them.

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Bob Ertischek 2:55
And Matthew, also, I mean, sometimes you just get a brilliant lecture, somebody who just can do the job and you just want to be there and listen. Absolutely. All right, I think I can make Oh, hey, look, it's us, Natalie. Um, who are you Natalie, you want to tell them?

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Natalie Murray 3:13
I'll be super brave, my name is Natalie M, obviously a Texan as I've already talked about. But I've been in higher education for the last 20 years since I got the bug in, in teaching and and absolutely love adult education, and have supported that through a variety of different ways either by my own classrooms as faculty and instructor or instructional designer program development or developing great technology and supporting amazing learning experiences, as well as working at universities, University of Texas and Western Governors University, always with a focus on student success and ensuring that we have just amazing experiences for not only our students but also for faculty and staff. It's wonderful to to be here and really Bob's the star of the show. So Bob would love to have you introduce yourself and I wouldn't go that far but I saw on Barbara's track.

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Bob Ertischek 4:14
I've been involved in higher education for just about 24 years when I dove in higher education and I've done a number of had a bunch of different roles I adjunct and I've been full time faculty teaching political science, I was an instructional technologist helping instructors get their courses online way back the turn of the century. You know, right after VHS tapes people were using, and I also ran a community, a professional development community for instructors called pathology. And basically, you know, now I help our partners at Yellowdig to help get the most out of the buck. So enough about us, let's get to the fun stuff. So I don't think we need to spend on it, Natalie, these are some cool slides that sort of show what people have been saying about a little bit about Yellowdig on Twitter or social media, whatever. And, you know, we're obviously talking from Yellowdig. So, you know, I hope I hope you all don't mind that we just sort of, say a few things that are kind of nice about it. And, you know, it's some of these things it's, people are finding it that it's, you know, people are finding yellowdig hashtags, create in topics, allow their conversations to keep going. This one, I love. This one I love I went there to post my story, but got distracted, distracted reading and commenting. And everyone else's is an instructor saying, so in other words, he went into Yellowdig, just to you know, sort of put something out there. But he got he got involved in the feet, he found it interesting, he was learning from the students.

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Natalie Murray 6:08
That's one really wonderful to see how people are using tools. But obviously, there's a great deal of approach and mindset that's coming into this and how these tools are incorporated into their the overall approach for the course. And Holly kind of calls out you know, you're using so many different technologies in your courses and working with students. And, and we know everyone is so hopefully, this is really focused on those practical tips that can be used in a variety of different ways. We're also obviously going to talk about some ways to do that. And Yellowdig also wanted to share just some fun things about how students are approaching this. And it's, I mean, it's crazy to see how, you know, the students posting about a technology platform, but I think that it's a great way of, you know, seeing how, what they're thinking and feeling and love that they're talking about disagreeing and all kinds of things. Go ahead, Bob?

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Bob Ertischek 7:06
No, I just thought that one must disagree might disagree with someone on Yellowdig today and the conversation Yeah.

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Natalie Murray 7:13
Yeah, but also just um, you know, how interactive the course can be. And so just really showing some possibilities. If you're in touch tick on Tick Tock are allergic to tick tock, it's kind of funny to see students also talking about technology there and, and also understanding how they can be active participants in their in their courses. So But with that, I think it just wanted to highlight the side of social and our last, our last session was really a high level of the role of faculty presence and monitor student engagement. And, and, and we're going a little bit more tactical, practical today, just based on that response, and would love for you all to make comments and share in the chat is this, as best we can in zoom webinar be collaborative here, Bob, anything you want to highlight from last time?

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Bob Ertischek 8:11
No, I thought it was a great discussion. And we really enjoy the participation we got from the people in the in the chat and the q&a. Um, and basically, you know, I thought it was, obviously, Kathleen, thought there were some takeaways there. And I hope that you all found those takeaways as well. And we're just gonna try to dive a little bit deeper here today. And like Natalie said, maybe be a little more specific, a little more tactical in things that are going on. But But we want your input to, so please, you know, go into the chat. And let us know if you have anything you want to add. We may try an experiment for something we haven't done before. And these webinars which other people have done, but we just haven't. And that's trying to figure out a way to have you join our conversations. If you have something you want to put in the chat, we might be able to figure out how to level bring you up onto the panel briefly and then have you talk with us. So if you want to do that, let us know.

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Natalie Murray 9:12
That's great. I just want to call out one of those which was, which I love which is the takeaway, Kathleen thank you if you can, if you're out there, I loved your you're sharing all of your takeaways that that 16 students plus one teacher equals 16 or 15 teacher and 15 students plus one teacher equals 16. Knowledge creators and that's incredible to think about the community and connection that everybody has and contributing to that knowledge.

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Bob Ertischek 9:44
Awesome. So to sort of just reiterate a little bit very little bit about what you know what we talked about last time, just sharing this slide to talk about community and Community of Inquiry framework in Really these three pillars of teacher that teaching the teaching presence, the cognitive presence, and of course, the social presence, which is, you know, something here at Yellowdig, that we focus on a lot. And we often think that that social presence is assumed but isn't really happening in an online course with the discussions, they're not really true conversations, they're really an assignment for students to complete. And in face to face classes. While we're all together socially, we think of it as being a social presence. But there really is a very limited time, 15 minutes three times a week, or what have you, where instructors, where students can interact with each other and share perspectives. And most of those conversations in either of those models really goes through the instructor. So we want to open that up a little bit and create ways for students to to have agency and to surface what's important to them. And so let's see if I can. Good one, Natalie. You're muted, by the way.

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Natalie Murray 11:00
Yes. Sorry about that. Alright, so we have a quick activity post in the chat. Two things. How is your course offered? Or oop, I have lost Oh, knots coming back? I hope you can hear me. Um, how is your course offered? Is it either at your institution or the course that you're teaching? Is it online campus or hybrid? Or amp? And then are you Yellowdig user today, and if you're not totally cool, all these things apply with love to? Like, all of this is super practical for all that we're working on. Thank you, Pamela, for getting us rolling. Wonderful. Fantastic. Kimberly.

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Bob Ertischek 11:45
Right. We will

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Natalie Murray 11:49
love it.

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Bob Ertischek 11:50
Felicia, Polly Cheryl, they're going so fast, hard to read.

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Natalie Murray 11:55
Awesome. So we've got a lot of variety of way of modalities.

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Bob Ertischek 12:03
Hi Becky, just have to say hi.

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Natalie Murray 12:07
I'm Janice, teaching in in person and just started this week. Wonderful. Okay, great. Jeff, many modalities, as many of our institutions are fantastic, thank you.

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Bob Ertischek 12:23
So, um, you know, in the modality doesn't make that much of a difference in the strategies that we're going to talk about today. I mean, it makes a little bit of a difference, but I don't think that, that what we're going to talk about, and what you're going to share is really any way exclusive to one or the other. You know, in my own teaching, like I said, I came from a background where I was involved in online learning, but but I really felt the need to sort of increase engagement, increased conversation and community outside of my 15 minutes in my face to face classes. And so for years, I tried all kinds of tools to, to surface those conversations. And I think it doesn't really matter that much. The basic ideas are the same, right? As far as, as being there for students, letting students know, you know that what they're doing is important in that, you know, understanding what's expected of them, you know, that's just a start. Okay, so, here we go. What kind of learning environment is best for your students? what do students need from you, you know, asking yourself, what do students need from me? Do you want to jump in Natalie, or do you want?

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Natalie Murray 13:43
Yeah, absolutely. So we're starting off, we've got eight tips. Again, practical tips that we're all here for. And I wanted to start this first one off with really thinking about what are what our students need? What are some of the experiences that you hope that they have, and you've probably thought about this when you were doing course design, but it might have been a minute, if you've taught the same course, several times. Sometimes it's hard to reset. I know I've run into that. But this could be all kinds of different things. Consistency, your your students might need some consistency, they might need for you to listen. So thinking about your students, and you have a unique population of students that are enrolled in your courses right now. And so what do they need from you? And I saw great, I saw Heidi, you you mentioned presence in the chat. Just doing this this initial tip to think about and frame all of the other kind of practical things we'll do. It's what are those things that you can do to create the best learning environment for your students? You know, at times we really hope that we start with asking our students these questions. Sometimes that's rough, or depending upon the cycles. And hopefully we're doing more and more in that in the future. But there's taking a moment in thinking about that Cheryl, you just posted coaching and mentoring at the graduate level. Excellent. So these are going to be all cues for you, whether it be presence, mentoring, humanizing the experience, I love that Donna, you know, all these things that will kind of guide you as you're going through and showing up for your students. And and we'll use this as we go through the next few tips that we just said.

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Bob Ertischek 15:33
No, I think that's a really good point two guiding students, you know, I mean, that that's what they need, they need to know, to some degree, what you think as the instructor, what would you think is important about what they're what they're learning? And to have you have the ability to interact with them on that and clarify and move forward with that? I'm trying to make the slide go. Okay, yeah, there we go. Um, and from time to time, we'll jump into the Yellowdig platform to show you some of the ways that maybe, if you were using Yellowdig, you might want to accomplish this, and hopefully, they'll just illustrate the concepts for others to may not be using our day. All right. So use a variety of methods to connect with your students. So, you know, we talked about what they need, how do you connect with them? I mean, in my old days, you know, certainly, one thing that I thought was really important, in connecting with my students, in face to face classes, was knowing their names, learning their names, to the extent possible, depending on the core size, and, and using their preferred name talking to them the way they wanted to be spoken to. And I think, you know, that shows a little bit of caring, and that you're interested in them enough to try to learn their name. What else?

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Natalie Murray 16:58
Yeah, Bob, you know, there's, there's some things in the chat, I love this, that, you know, just really functionally just thinking about, okay, so I'm I, one of the methods I connect with my students is by posting in the LMS. Another method is through email, or our live sessions. That's three right there, the fourth one, and that is like any graded feedback. So those are the ways that you're showing up, those are kind of your channels of communication, if you will, and channels of presence. So I'm thinking about expanding that if you've got four right now, can you find a fifth? Can you have a different approach. And so I love this. And let's see Kimberly's posting like zoom, person, email through Blackboard slack conversations. Great. And so there's opportunities always to like, expand that so that you're really connecting with students and more and more places. And john has like commenting to their posts in Yellowdig. And having those weekly zoom meetings, you might also have, many of you might have like office hours, whether in person or virtual, that was always one of my favorite places to talk with my faculty members, that all of these are you think about, gosh, I've got four, can I make that five or six? And just recognize that that's a multitude of ways. Bob, are you going to pull up the platform now? Or, you know, wait, thank you. Great. And I won't go there.

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Bob Ertischek 18:33
Let me see if I can do that. Why don't just find the zoom little instructions to do that. But I think that when we're talking about connection, there's a temporal aspect to that, you know, especially at the house, I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble finding the zoom button here. Here we go. There's a temporal aspect in that it's important at the outset of your course, to to make that connection, I think, to get people comfortable to to know that communication is important here, that it's a two way street, that it's not just the instructor who's going to be saying everything. And ultimately, I think to some degree that that involves setting expectations at the outset. And by the way, for those who are new to Yellowdig Here it is, it's a single scrolling feeds social looking B that students are gonna be very familiar with, because it's like social media, but it is not social media, I feel like obligated to say that it is confined to the audience that you want to have your course your students and, and there are a number of ways that I'm not going to get into right now of how you can control the conversation and keep people on topic and of course related. But one thing I do want to point out is that when starting a Yellowdig community and starting any community setting those expectations with your students as to, you know, what's happening and why is going to make a big difference. And, you know, I think it also goes to sharing your personal passion for the subject matter that you're in. And in Yellowdig, one of the ways that we encourage getting started, you know, whether you're face to face or asynchronous is to is to use the recorded video function here, and sort of just give students a feel for what's going on here. Hi, welcome to our community, the purpose of this community is for us to all learn together to ask and answer each other questions about the course to to find what's interesting in the subject matter were discussing and to find, to share our personal experiences related to that. Here I am, I'm in the communities who I'm going to share what's important to me. And you obviously have a role here. And if you're grading for participation, you might want to say, and your participation is important too. And because it's part of your grade, but we expect to have respectful adult conversations here about the subject matter. And really just go ahead and have fun and enjoy learning, something like that. If you do that, then then they're going to instantly know that you're there for them, that they understand what the parameters of what you're talking about are, and you know what to expect from you, and what you expect from them.

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Natalie Murray 21:30
Thanks so much, Bob. And I want to highlight a couple of just functional ways. So we're talking about methods to connect with your students and those avenues to connect with your students. Not just posting and the community or if you're using if you're not using Yellowdig yet is in your LMS. But But also, you know, replying to comments that they have reacting, I'm a big reaction person, obviously, I'm quite animated, so reacting that can that's a good signal to them, as well as in Yellowdig, the awards or the accolades really give students an understanding of your presence without, without you actually saying anything, it's a really simple way of connecting there. And another way is to connect to a couple of students to mention them, so that they know that their ideas are linked together and really supporting one another. So I just rattled off five different ways that that you can use a tool to really increase your methods of engagement. And I'm sure that many of you can, can do the exact same thing in a variety of different environments. Okay.

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Bob Ertischek 22:48
So where are we next? Because Yeah, let's go.

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Natalie Murray 22:51
back to our slide.

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Bob Ertischek 23:04
Are we back to the slide?

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Natalie Murray 23:05
No. And actually, Bob, the next one is about identifying. Yep. Okay, perfect. Now, next, right, if no progress.

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Bob Ertischek 23:17
is the one.

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Natalie Murray 23:18
Yep, you got it. Got it.

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Bob Ertischek 23:22
So go ahead. Yeah.

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Natalie Murray 23:24
Thank you. And I'm loving the chat. There's great things in here. And ideas. So thank you all for to contributing, contributing to this body of knowledge and ideas and practical tips.

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Bob Ertischek 23:38
Maybe before we go on and some of those I mean, I think monster mentions teacher approachability. Absolutely. Richard, students finding relevance through current events and community issues. Definitely. I mean, having students be interested in what you're actually talking about, and finding ways that it got belongs in what their their lives is absolutely a fantastic way to make that happen. Yeah. I'm sorry, Natalie.

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Natalie Murray 24:06
Just, that's great. Thank you. Um, all right. So the next tip that we have is to reach out to unengaged students with curiosity and invite them to re engage. And sometimes we make assumptions about why students aren't attending class or participating or why they might have changed their behavior in some way. And there might be the Curiosity side is is really to ask the questions and to create that approach so that they know that they're welcome back and in identifying students who are unengaged. And that need to be a little bit nurtured back into the community is really important. So Bob, I think we're going to go into the network graph. Yeah, go ahead.

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Bob Ertischek 24:56
So what we're looking at on this slide is a feature triviality college network graph, which allows you to see the interactions between your students and I'll get to that. It's hard to switch here. And my back, right supposed to be my on the other day?

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Natalie Murray 25:16
No, I'll stop sharing.

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Bob Ertischek 25:20
Okay, that's weird. All right, well, we'll try that one more time.

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Natalie Murray 25:24
Maybe it says I'm sharing. Now you got it.

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Bob Ertischek 25:30
Okay, fantastic. So anyway, um, the other day, there are a number of tools that you as the instructor can use to inform your teaching, and to really get a gauge on what your students are doing and what they're spending time on, and how they're interacting with each other. And one of those is, as Natalie said, the network graph, which is on its way to pulling up here, and it's going to fill in in just a second, you can see that photos or whatever profile that students have, that they want to use. And by the way, I think this is pretty important. If you're in any kind of asynchronous or remote, or, you know, learning whether it's synchronous or asynchronous, having the ability when students are willing to do this, or to encourage them to add pictures to personalize themselves, and you modeling that behavior by doing it yourself as well. In any case, this is the Yellowdig network graph and it's what it's showing here is the connections between students the strength of those connections, and I shouldn't say students, I should say, the community members, including the professor here, and basically you can see who's interacted with who, what's the strength of those connections, and, you know, this guy me hasn't really been interacting in this community. Right. So that you know, I talked to two people in the entire semester what's you know, maybe there's some issue I should and this gives the instructor the opportunity to reach out and find out what's going on with that student and see if they can re engage them you know, in some of these people have never engaged You know, this is not going to be typical. But if you find students who are unengaged, you know, if you take that time to reach out to them, maybe you can do them a favor and really get them into what you're doing.



We had a professor at a particular client of ours who went into the network graph, you know, part of the way through the semester and found a student who had not been participating at all was one of these guys who's an outlier and she reached out to him and and it turned out you know, he was just feeling extremely isolated It was during the pandemic and he hadn't had community communication with anyone Tth he was really she helped them and got him back into class and he engaged and he ended up doing pretty well but the point was that you know, if he hadn't taken that time to find him who knows what would have happened to that i mean you know failing the person fight but at least have the worries in that case. So you know, this is a tool where you can see it but you can also see you know, and maybe even feel gratified that certain students are you know, well connected and finding other opportunities to to learn from each other. I'm just gonna stop that for a minute. What's next?

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Natalie Murray 28:35
Okay, this is a good one.

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Bob Ertischek 28:37
Okay, I'm gonna get there just a sec.

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Natalie Murray 28:47
Alright, to share your passion for a topic you're teaching this course and this topic for a reason share it and we could go on and on all of us have these like amazing stories and I would love for you to even share in the chat if you have a moment to like why are you teaching what you teach? What do you love about it but also not just at the beginning of the course but typically there's you know, weeks or modules or particular topics that are especially meaningful to you that that you know are incredibly impactful either for for the workforce as students go into the job and that you personally might have had no job experience with that or work experience with that. But but to share your passion not just once at the beginning but also throughout and do that in an incredibly powerful way. As a bob love would love your thoughts as well on this.



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Bob Ertischek 29:47
Yeah, I mean, to me there's nothing better for a student to any tweaking for myself having Benny student is to, to to light up my eyes is to know That instructor finds this interesting too. And when he shares that passion for that, that can be contagious. And I should say, when they share that passion for this, it can be contagious to the student. And that doesn't mean that the instructor has to dominate the discussion or anything like that. It just means that the instructor lets people know what's interesting to them, and why they're there. I mean, I taught political science. And, you know, I was always excited by the ability to be involved in making decisions that affect the community and sharing that. But but but you know, obviously, in that sort of context, there's so many different things going on every day, it was easy to be excited about things that are happening in the real world, and make those connections and then the students would reward me, I'll say, by by doing that back by making those connections right back to me by saying, Hey, you know, saw this, and the other day is a great way to do that, to add posts and articles and things like that, to for them to do that. And it doesn't have to be in that 15 minutes, three times a week. So what do we got anyone? Okay.

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Natalie Murray 31:18
Good activity in the chat. Not necessarily comments about this. But definitely take a you know, minute. And like, as you're going through preparing for your lecture, or preparing materials to share, or updating something, even before you reply to a student, and showing that your enthusiasm really comes through in that message is just super, super powerful. And hopefully it rubs off a bit on them, or at least gives them a different perspective. Cool. All right. JOHN is asking about the network graph. And I'm just simply, we were just there, I'm gonna answer this. So john, and I saw Bob, you just answered. But for everyone, the network graph is a beautiful visual. But obviously, when you get a lot of students and a lot of connections, it gets really like a very crazy spider web. So there is a list view, which you can download and install it by. So that's another option if the visual is as difficult to navigate with your with your course size, and your connections. It sounds like john that you've got a lot of good connections. So that's wonderful.

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Bob Ertischek 32:33
Yeah, fantastic. Um, so does anyone want to share some of the students can see through a nine to five teacher appreciate a teacher with heart? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I shared this in the last webinar, and I apologize if I did. But I had this one teacher in college for my empirical political science class, who literally had a pipe that was lit in his mouth, and he would mumble reading the textbook, and that was all he did in the whole class in this basement, unventilated room back in the 1980s. When that kind of thing was, and I, I managed to pass the class, but I had, I found nothing in there that I took forward, because it just was not, there was no, he wasn't into it, I wasn't into it. And nobody else in the class was into either. Oops, there was another thing in the chat that just popped up. teacher needs to be conductor of an orchestra, choreographer and a curator.

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Natalie Murray 33:37
Oh, that's such a neat segway to our next tip. Which is to create connections. If you're if you're teaching in a live classroom, and you have some sort of like, vocal discussion with everyone, you're probably doing this already, as people are connecting ideas where you might be, someone says something in the refer back to someone else. And it's important to do that in the online space as well. And just to ensure that students can see their connection between ideas or their alignment, or maybe disagreement, and in my case, I mentioned at the very beginning that this those faculty members and it was actually in contrasting opinions of students and how he handled that and that Texas political science course it was really powerful for me. And, and that was just it was very positive again, even though I was you know, I felt like Gosh, my opinions are being challenged. It was I was great. So the the idea here is to use tools, whether that be as you're facilitating, facilitating it live but but there's other ways as you see on LinkedIn or other social media and in Yellowdig, as to App mentioned, people and to call That out, you could do that in a in a LMS discussion, but it's not, we actually saw one of those points on earlier in the presentation by one of our faculty members who's teaching using Yellowdig is that they couldn't do this in Canvas. So they were really, really wanting to. So being able to add mentioned students to connect either on ideas that they agree with, or maybe disagree with. But it's a great way to collaborate. And it's also about connecting topics, from week to week or module module. And this body of knowledge, whatever you're teaching doesn't operate in a silo. And so how can you connect those things?

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Bob Ertischek 35:39
The one thing I love about at mentions is, you know, say, let's say you're in a class, and you don't always have time, at face to face class, or even a synchronous class online, to answer every question fully. And, you know, if the student had a question, and you do get given full attention, or maybe they're just way too much to go on, you know, if finding another location, like a Yellowdig, in an asynchronous platform, where you can add mentioned that students say, here's some more information for you, as well as another way that students gonna absolutely appreciate it.



Natalie Murray 36:12
Yeah, and and, Bob, I want to kind of address John's point or question in that in the chat, which is what are the best ways to challenge opinions without turning the student off, there's so many different ways, I'm going to mention just a couple and then Bob would love to hear your thoughts and anybody else feel free to jump in? So a couple of direct ways that you can, of course, asking them a question, asking a question that kind of helps them think about it deeper, or from a different perspective, sometimes it might even be a question that they don't realize that you're asking about it, but it kind of opens those doors. And hopefully, they'll walk through that. The other thing, you know, as we were talking about passion, and your passion for the topic is demonstrating how you have shifted some of your perspectives in the past, you might describe a situation in which you were considering one way and then another. And so even just that evolution, again, they have to, they have to decide to go through those some of the ways that you can support that for them and I'm big into transfer transformation transformational learning, so our transformative learning and and that is your opening those doors for those dilemmas for them to really consider and challenging their own opinions. It's, it's critical that you have a supportive relationship that you have that psychological safety, so they feel safe, that they can challenge their own. Because when we're when we feel threatened, of course, we're not really willing to change anything, we're very protective about our own ideas and things and stuff that we hold on to. So I those are my three recommendations to is you know, more tactical things that you can do. And then also just ensuring that you've created this beautiful environment for them to ultimately Of course, it's their, it's their choice. Bob, what are your thoughts?

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Bob Ertischek 38:12
Just a couple others. First of all, I want to recognize Kimberly's opening up the class and ask for opinions and feedback and also ask them explain their points of view. But, you know, I mean, I think ultimately extending the conversation, you know, getting trying to get more out of that students have to find what's going on. And one thing that is occasionally not all the time but occasionally find to do is ask that student to argue the other side to you know, put them in their shoes where, you know, okay, so that's your opinion Now, tell me about the other side, and maybe let them see that perspective a little bit.

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Natalie Murray 38:50
Which is a great segue to ask their opinion.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So great ideas here and I love the perspective of them stating their current opinion and then and then what would be the alternative opinion and kind of like look at that because there's likely a continuum there. Love the polling anytime you can take a poll, you get some data, and it's fairly anonymous. And and, you know, asking students for their responses. I also want to kind of point out that this is a great time to ask for feedback on the learning experience for them, are they getting out of it what they need that might then go back to that first tip, but you can always ask their opinion, it shows like a great deal of respect.

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Bob Ertischek 39:41
Um, my showing elevating the problem

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Natalie Murray 39:44
not yet.

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Bob Ertischek 39:47
Sorry about that.

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Natalie Murray 39:49
And Janet's asking a question about polls being anonymous.

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Bob Ertischek 39:53
So that Not now.

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Natalie Murray 39:58
Yeah, you got it, Bob.

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Bob Ertischek 40:00
for relief, okay? So in Yellowdig, polls are great, there's so many different uses for it. And by the way, students can use them too, they can create their own polls as well. And it's really hard to create a poll because you have to click a button, which I think most of you probably know how to do. And so the thing about the polls are, that you can give a lot of different options here. You know, you want to show the results before user votes, so they know what they're getting into beforehand, after the votes after the poll closes, or sometimes, if you want it to be anonymous, never show the results to users, right? So piping a ball is this, I don't have anything great to type here. But um, you know, you can make a line for it. And decide how that works. But But basically, pulling can do so much for you. First of all, it's a really easy way to get that conversation started. Maybe students don't know much about a particular thing, but they know whether they say can say yes, or no or, or this is interesting, or it's not interesting, or whatever. And I want to learn more. Paul's are great to use for formative assessment to find out where students are before you jump in, to, to to replace. And, you know, as we all know, polls can also be used to meet your agenda, too, I think it's fair to say, you can design a pole in a way that starts to move students where you want them to be or where you need them to be.

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Natalie Murray 41:44
Thanks,Paul, those are pretty fun way of just creating some engagement. And then again, students can do that too, which is wonderful. Okay. Ready for next one got two more

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Bob Ertischek 41:57
work. The hardest part,

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Natalie Murray 42:01
I'm sorry, you've done such a great job of navigating between these two environments. I apologize that

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Bob Ertischek 42:07
in my back, I'm going to say no, yes.

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Natalie Murray 42:10
Excellent. All right, wonderful. Okay, giving space for q&a. I think it was, um, oh, gosh, Donna, I found your comment about the water cooler. And your made a recommendation of just creating a Are you that you use a water cooler kind of area for students to share anything. And everything, including with their other courses and questions is anything that they want, which is wonderful. So giving that space, so that students really feel comfortable to share things that are that are top of mind for them. That is, you know, it also signals that you you care about these things, that you can also award accolades for someone who answers the question for you, and answers it correctly. There's a variety of different ways of showing up. But it gives that kind of like neutral space for everyone. That's great.

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Bob Ertischek 43:12
And going on to the q&a, part of the question that we're having here is, you know, give, give them a space for q&a. One thing that I think that you have to consider when we're talking about the role of the instructor in these communities, or in your learning communities, whether they're in your face to face class, or online synchronous class or asynchronous class, is that your role sometimes might to be might be to take a step back, to not feel the need to be there all the time to let the students interact with each other, to to make their own connections, and not worry so much about impressing you, and everything that they do. Right? Allow them to agencies, obviously, the tournament we like to use around here for that. And q&a is a great way to do this. And let's talk about what that involves questions and answers when students have to answer each other's questions, or when they're encouraged to answer each other's questions and they choose to do it. First of all, that student is asking the question, they're being brave in some way, you know, is my question, a question that is going to get laughed at or something like that, we certainly don't want to have that. And that's a place where you as the instructor can sort of set the tone for what kinds of questions are, are going to be worthwhile to ask in that environment? Um, but but let's talk about the person who's answering the question, right? If you jump into every question that doesn't give students the opportunity to try to do it themselves. And when a student asks and other answers and other students question, they have to first think that they understand the question. Second, they have to think that they know the answer. And third, and most importantly, they have to To figure out how to effectively communicate that answer to their peers. And I would argue that the person doing the learning here is probably more, the person is answering the question than the person who's asking the question. So I think this is a truly valuable role, or thing to do it in courses, and it's a great place for the instructor to take a step back. And before you know, going there, the The only other part of that piece is the only piece of that puzzle that isn't there is that students ultimately are going to want to know what you thought was the right answer as instructed. Right? And if I may, and Yellowdig, we have a way for you to do that without typing a word. Shall I? Okay. So um, if you want to fill in the blanks, or?

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Natalie Murray 45:53
Yeah, I'll just share it, you know, depending upon the type of question that the student is asking, it was wonderful. To see a student saying it's a really two other students like help, I'm having a hard time managing everything and juggling everything and beautiful responses from students about what they did and, and how they were doing those things, not really, you know, necessarily appropriate for a faculty member or that could be being on how it's worded to like, get involved in that conversation. But certainly reactions are very helpful. Another student asking about clarity on an assignment, where students are also responding. That's a great time to confirm that, that that response is correct. You don't have to answer it, because it's already been answered. But but at least showing up in some way to say like, yep, this is verified response. And we're good to go.

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Bob Ertischek 46:48
Yeah, so with that verified response in Yellowdig, if you and I encourage instructors to tell their students explicitly upfront, please don't send me an email, ask all of your course related questions, whether it's about the syllabus, or about course content, or concepts or whatever. Ask them all in Yellowdig. And then go ahead and try to answer each other's questions. When you do that, when you empower them to do that. And frankly, in Yellowdig, they're going to get social, the points that Yellowdig awards for, for doing this. So they're going to get in there and start doing that for all the reasons that we already spoke about. But to get to the point about where you as the instructor need to jump back in and point out the right answer, and Yellowdig. If you let students answer those questions for a particular period of time, a couple of days, or however long you're comfortable, all you got to do at that point is then go in and read those student responses. And add one of these accolades that never been talked about before to the answer that you think is the most onpoint. Right. And then students will know Oh, that's the instructor approved answer. You didn't have to take the word instruct the students got this great learning experience of answering each other's questions. And and they know what you say is the right thing to do. Of course, if they don't say what the right thing is, then you can go ahead after the given this time and point out what's going on and why it's not right. Um, I also want to add that monster added that some questions may not have a right or wrong answer. And that's wonderful. That's great. That's where real conversation occurs. Right? Let him let him debate it, let him argue about it. Let him let him find make those connections. I mean, that's what learning is, I think.

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Natalie Murray 48:24
Yeah, absolutely. We've also gotten great comments from and ideas from john and Victoria. JOHN uses the q&a topic and Yellowdig. And it sounds like when he gets an email from a student with a great question that others may have he posted into Yellowdig, which is wonderful use and so it kind of also overtime, students will get that signal that that's the place to ask questions, and to do so which is wonderful. And then the and, and anonymous posting could also help a student who is maybe a little concerned about posting questions such as that. Victoria also has to use uses q&a and uses the ads mentioned to tag her or to raise their hand which is great. So that's wonderful for the community together, and then also for students to signal their needs. wonderful examples. Thank you.

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Bob Ertischek 49:17
Just to speak about Vicki Hart. She's She's a longtime yellowdig user. And in fact, there's a blog that we have on our website about her talking about this, her her use case, which by the way is a stem use case for this q&a and Vicki's a superstar. So thanks, Vicki for jumping in.



Natalie Murray 49:37
All right, we have one more and a lot of good stuff to cover. So let's quickly go to the last one trying to

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Bob Ertischek 49:46
get there.

Are we there?

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Natalie Murray 49:55
Yeah, we're here. So in our webinar form, we asked for some ideas. And we wanted to share Jenny's Jenny's idea, but I don't know if we can include her today. And that really about the tip is to create clarity and surface the most important things to students and the way that they do that acapellas to encourage faculty to always have a post pinned at the top of the week, or to edit the post during the week. And so this is, depending on how you want to do that. It is a variety of different ways that you can create clarity for your students, we never want our students to be confused about the actual requirements for the course or information. So just being creating that clarity can be really powerful, it also gives an indication of presence.

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Bob Ertischek 50:49
I'm just wonder Jenny is in the audience. I'm wondering if we can Oh, great.

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Natalie Murray 50:56
to,

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Bob Ertischek 50:58
to the

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Natalie Murray 51:00
Thank you, Jenny.

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Bob Ertischek 51:03
We got to get back into space, almost as a bolton board. And again, that's going to give me just another quick shot chance to try to jump back into the platform. And hopefully I'll do that successfully. Because what Jenny's talking about I think, and guy, I know you're there, we're able to elevate Jenny into the chat into the panel. I mean, I'll take that as a, I'm sorry, but we weren't able to do it this time, which is fine. But one of the things you can do in yellow big is for those important conversations, you have the ability to pin any of those to the top of the feed. So they'll Oh, here she is.

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Jennifer Tabler 51:49
City, crashing the last 15 minutes of your meeting. suddenly get on camera. Um, yeah. So I don't know all of the really helpful tips that you shared earlier, because I had some unexpected meetings overlap this time. But I would, I would definitely say we do stress that faculty members shift from like a intensely involved facilitator role to more of a moderator role in Yellowdig, allowing those peer to peer connections to really shine. And be aware the communication happens on the board. But then that question arises of where, where is the faculty presence, where's the value add for the faculty members and the learners in that space, that pinned post functionality of the pin to the top functionality is where we really heavily advocate, the faculty members show up in the space front and center, it allows them always a platform is that first thing any user will see when they log into the board. And so it is the space where if you have a specific discussion prompts that you're going to be doing that week, and we do have curriculum that we tie in to Yellowdig, and we ask them to respond to in that space. That is the space where you can put it there. You can also add attachments, videos that are faculty members create tips for upcoming assignments, polls are exceptionally popular among our learners. But always having something pinned to the top shows learners right away. Oh, my faculty members in here, they're active, they're going to be a part of this community just as I am. And we not we ask that faculty members don't just set it and forget it, but that they have a new one every week. And then they might they moderate it or modify it rather, during the week as well. So that there's some change to it some update, maybe it's replaced by something new, at least one more time in the week. That sounds a little micromanaging. Now I'm saying out loud, but it shows that they're active, which is really the important thing. And

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Bob Ertischek 54:07
Jimmy, I think you make a really good point, you just don't want to set it and forget it, you want to remember that that post is there and then remove it at some point because while it's great to see that presence, you don't want to leaving it there can feel like, okay, it's ignored. So you have to keep that in mind that you've been doing that and to, to put it on something else or maybe even occasionally post, move a student post to the top of that feed, if that's something that yeah,

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Jennifer Tabler 54:38
if it was posted the first day of class and it's week eight, it's fairly obvious. The faculty members maybe not paying attention. So yeah.



Natalie Murray 54:47
Thank you so much, Jenny for sharing. I really appreciate you jumping on at the last minute. Thank you so much, and it's such a tremendous honor Recommendation and practical tip.

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Bob Ertischek 55:03
So we've only got about three minutes left. So let's go into this just wrap up. Yeah, let me just



Natalie Murray 55:13
say we've got some good things to share.

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Bob Ertischek 55:20
So are we back where we're supposed to be? Yep. Okay. So one thing that we thought that would be a, well, I shouldn't take any credit, all Natalie came up with is go ahead and add this yourself.

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Natalie Murray 55:37
Um, so I'm just recommending that, whether you're Yellowdig user, or a potential Yellowdig user, or you have something else, that you do something today or tomorrow, to, to show up for your students to show up in a slightly different way, hopefully, there's some tips from this that you can incorporate in and encourage, encourage that, that, that presence and that collaboration. So thank you for doing that. It's great to all I'm doing here is just make a commitment to show up for your students to be present, whether it be in Yellowdig, or in other ways. And we do have a five tips that you can go through not all eight, you can of course, this will be recorded, so you have access to it, you can always reach out to Bob or myself. But we do have a little PDF for you.

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Bob Ertischek 56:42
And want to follow us on the socials. We are. And you know, I think that it's fair to say that we are especially active on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. So if you're in those platforms, we look forward to see we're on we're on Facebook, too, but I think, yeah, and if you want to use Yellowdig, the vote QR codes can give if you're using Yellowdig. These can give you some ideas of how you can touch base with us or or find the resources that you want to do. We have another monthly office hours session next month and unfortunately can't really date right off the top of my head. I think more importantly, though, we have a demo coming up. For those of you who may have not used l&d, but maybe were intrigued a little bit today, there'll be a much more in depth view of the platform and the pedagogy behind it. If you join us on September 29, which is next Thursday, Wednesday,

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Natalie Murray 57:51
and stay up if you can go back real quick. I just want to point out there is a Yellowdig user community which is in yellow, which is our Yellowdig instructor support community. So feel free to go there as opposed. And that's something that is just across institutions. You might need it need a new friend. But it's a great resource for all of our faculty and

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Bob Ertischek 58:16
instructors. And thank you all so much for spending part of your day with us. We really appreciate it. Hope this was valuable to you please provide any feedback we can and feel free to reach out Bobby Yellowdig comm if you have any questions.

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Natalie Murray 58:30
Yeah Thank you all so much. I love the interactivity and you offering so many great recommendations as well. Appreciate it. Look forward to next time. Bye, everyone.