How can LAs build a supportive learning community in-person?
- Introduce yourself with your preferred name and pronouns. It is also helpful to tell students a little bit about yourself so that they feel comfortable sharing about themselves. Consider wearing a nametag so that students can learn your name.
Example: “Hello everyone, my name is (insert name) and my preferred pronouns are (insert preferred pronouns). I am going to be your LA this semester and outside of class I enjoy (insert activity). - Learn your students' names and use their names naturally in conversations to make them feel valued and respected. It might help to have students make name cards to sit on their desk so that they can learn one another’s names, too.
Example: “Hey (student name) it’s nice to see you!” - Check in with students to maintain student engagement and create a sense of community that goes beyond the course content.
Example: “How are you doing today? How are your classes going, Name?” - Use body language to connect with students easier.
- Get on the students’ level by matching their height and position
Example: “How are you doing today? How are your classes going, Name?” - Angle your shoulders to include everyone in the group if you are talking to more than one person.
Example: If you are working with a group of students in a recitation, angle your shoulders so that you are not facing away from anyone in the group. - Make eye contact when talking with students to let them know you are paying attention.
Example: When addressing one person, look them in the eyes. - Use non-verbal attention cues such as nodding along and leaning in when talking with students to show you are engaged and understanding what they are saying.
Example: While a student is explaining a question that they have, nod your head to show you understand the question they are asking.
- Get on the students’ level by matching their height and position
- Remind students of expectations for the next class/assignment, reminders, etc. This can include expectations for when assignments are due or items that students need to share by the end of class.
Example: “Remember, your group needs to be prepared to share your two main takeaways from this exercise. Have you decided who will be speaking this time? - Take notes on specific issues, students, or things that occurred to look back on in preparation for the next session. This will also help you build rapport with your students.
Example: “Sam is really overwhelmed about the upcoming exam. I should remember to check in with him later this week during the recitation.”
For additional concrete ideas about how to build community and connect with your students in synchronous or asynchronous online contexts, visit this link.
How can LAs…?
Traditional lecture rooms range in sizes, but they all have one thing in common - fixed, stadium-style seating. Students sit in desks or chairs that are secured in place and usually there is an instructional area at the front of the room where the professors give instructions.
- Answer and ask follow up questions during clicker questions or time designated for group work.
- Encourage collaboration by asking students to work with others near them or posing additional questions for them to consider.
- Move around the room so that all students get equal opportunities to ask questions and get help. It can help if you divide up the room into zones so you can get to know students in your section. When possible, keep every other row or every few rows empty so that you can talk with students in the middle of the block of seats.
- Pass out materials to the students from the professors, or collect any work that the professors need from the students.
- Encourage participation of all students during a discussion. Notice who is contributing, who is being talked over, and who is not being included.
- Explain why participation and discussion are so important for learning.
- Collaborate with students by using white boards and other shared surfaces. This will help you communicate over futher distances, too.
Also see “How can LAs build a supportive learning community in-person?” above
Group settings can be found in lectures, recitations, or any other learning environment. Group settings usually consist of large tables and/or desks with moveable seating. Students and instructors can move around the environment and easily collaborate with others.
- Encourage group work by asking questions directly to students who are not engaged with the group.
- Pull up a chair and work directly with a group of students. Getting on the same level as your students helps build rapport.
- Ask additional questions for the group to consider to create cognitive challenge and help students arrive at the correct understanding.
- Explain the importance of group work in learning.
- Facilitate group bonding by initiating conversations about daily life and activities as well as the class material.
- Move around groups and be sure to spend approximately equal time with each group.
- Share your experiences by talking about challenges you faced that may be similar to those of your students and how you overcame them.
- Tell students what to expect. Office hours can either be Q&A style, review of a specific topic/skill, “Teach an LA,” or have a prepared topic or question. Make sure your students know what to expect when they attend. Examples of office hour types can be found here.
- Answer questions or review material with students individually or discuss challenges as a group, depending on the number of attendees.
- If you have a high volume of participants, it may be useful to have students work in smaller groups (this may be particularly important for review when more students are expected to join).
- Remind students of the time and location of your office hours. It can be helpful to send out a notification on Canvas or any other communication tools that you use. Be prepared to answer questions on how to get to the area that you host office hours.
- Office hours are also a great time to check in with students! Ask your students how they are doing in the class and overall, offer tips and tricks regarding both the class and how to stay on top of work, and get to know students beyond the class. The better you know your students, the easier it will be to facilitate discussion amongst them and support their learning
- Create a schedule for when your office hours will be and do your best to stick to it. If you need to change the time or location for any reason, tell your students ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.
- Have fun! Being in person allows you different possibilities than online. Try bringing snacks or drinks, or create a fun board game that will help students review the material. Let your students know about those fun opportunities and you will surely get lots of attendance.
- Encourage students who ask a lot of questions in class or send you emails to visit your office hours for additional help.
See also, Office Hours Formats for some additional ideas.
- Give feedback about lab reports/presentations. Set up deadlines for students to submit reports and presentations to you for review. This is a great opportunity for students to work on the skill of science communication. Be concise, timely, and consistent with your feedback. See also, attributes of effective feedback, here.
- Help with equipment. If your students are working with new equipment or doing procedures they are not familiar with, it may be beneficial for you to help guide them through the process and then make sure they understand the process on their own.
- Ask questions. Laboratories are a great place for students to gain hands-on experience within their fields. Asking questions about their procedures or findings helps create cognitive challenges that will help your students gain a full understanding of what they are learning. Asking your students to predict lab results will also promote critical thinking.
- Help students analyze data. Once students have completed experiments ask them questions about what their data means and explain any discrepancies they are noticing within their data. This can be done one-on-one or in groups.
- Review the procedures with your students before they begin working in the lab.
Some classes may have students in person and participating synchronously online at the same time. While these types of classes are very similar to the formats discussed in the In-Person and Synchronous Online sections, there are a few things LAs can do to make sure everyone in the class is receiving the support they need.
- Monitor the chat on Zoom to make sure you are not missing any questions from the students who are participating online.
- Use the partner system to connect online and in-person students, by assigning the students who are in-person to an online student. Then if the online student has a question, the in-person student can get the LA and/or instructor’s attention and direct them to the other student.
- Divide responsibilities with another LA or TA, whenever possible. If there are more than two people on the instructional team, one person can be in charge of making sure everything is going well online and another person focuses more on the in-person students. But switch which team members work online/in-person periodically so you are working with all of the students in the class.
- Encourage equal participation by directing questions directly to both the in-person and online students. When necessary, you can call on the group that is participating less.
- Relay what has been said in-person to the students participating online. It is often difficult for online students to hear in-person students’ responses to questions, so it helps to tell the online students what has been said in the classroom. One way to do this is by repeating questions before answering them.
- Work on surfaces that everyone can see if you are talking to the whole class. This can be done using technology in the classroom that records whiteboards (only available in some classrooms) or having the in-person students join the Zoom (with their microphones and speakers off) and sharing a whiteboard with everyone.
During Synchronous Online Contexts, as an LA you can interact with students in a variety of ways, for example: lectures, recitations, office hours, and laboratories. Throughout this, you can promote community and offer support to your students, both academically and personally.
How can LAs build a supportive learning community online?
- Change your name on Zoom to your preferred name, pronouns, and title.
Example: Name(LA) or (LA)Name (they/them) - Turn your camera on and microphone on when engaging with students. If struggling with Zoom connectivity, you can try turning off your camera to improve audio quality.
- Check-in with students to maintain student engagement and create a sense of community.
Example: “How are you doing today? How are your classes going, Name?” - Encourage students to turn on their cameras and microphones when participation is required, or ask students to mute their microphones when distracting.
Example: “Hi group 2! If you could please turn your cameras on, it will help us better communicate about math.” - Remind students of expectations for the next class/assignment, reminders, etc. This can include expectations for when the whole class returns to the main session from breakout rooms.
Example: “Remember, your group needs to be prepared to share your two main takeaways from this exercise. Have you decided who will be speaking this time? - Take notes on specific issues, students, or things that occurred to look back on in preparation for the next zoom session. This will also help you build rapport with your students.
Example: “Sam is really overwhelmed about the upcoming exam. I should remember to check in with him later this week, via email.”
For additional concrete ideas about how to build community and connect with your students, visit this link.
How can LAs...?
- Be assigned as co-host and admit students from the (optional) waiting room. In order to monitor participants, the instructor can provide the LA with a class roster to confirm participants enrollment in the class upon granting entry to the zoom meeting.
- Move between breakout rooms during clicker questions and group work.
- Manage or set-up the poll function and ask questions through polls.
- If a student needs more individual help, the Host can put both LA and students in their own breakout room while the rest of students work.
- Manage the security of the meeting by muting, turning off the camera, and/or removing disruptive/unwanted participants.
- Encourage participation by asking students to turn on their cameras, stay muted unless they have a question in the whole-class zoom, and unmute in small-group discussion (breakout rooms).
- Monitor the Zoom Chat
- Respond to student questions or concerns, individually.
- Answer a class question by sending a message to the whole chat.
- Clarify something the instructor just said and/or instructions for what students should be doing.
- Pose questions in the chat section addressing both individuals or the whole class to elicit deeper understanding and discussion.
- Private chat with individual students before/during class to welcome students and let them know that you are there if they have questions that they would prefer to ask privately.
Example: “Hey, [name]! Great to see you! Let me know if you have any questions as we go through class. I hope you’re having a great day!”
- Contribute to lectures by leading a short activity or presenting on a topic of interest.
- Get designated as the host so you can set up breakout rooms for small-group activities or clicker questions while the instructor lectures, and help instructors with other technological tasks and challenges throughout class.
See also, LAs in recitation/group work sessions, below.
- Get designated as the host so you can set up breakout rooms for small-group activities or clicker questions while the instructor lectures, and help instructors with other technological tasks and challenges throughout class.
- Keep student groups consistent throughout (at least large portions of) the semester to foster community.
Find some suggestions about how to set up groups in Zoom, here. - Prepare and send broadcast messages to the host of the meeting so that they can forward the messages to all of the participants in a timely manner, without having to keep track of the time and what broadcasts need to be going out. Alternatives include: chat within a Google collaborative doc, comment in the collaborative document, and/or message in a chat application such as Slack. These alternatives offer ways for LAs to share the information directly with students, instead of having to go through the Zoom meeting host.
- Keep student groups consistent throughout (at least large portions of) the semester to foster community.
- Be assigned as a co-host so you can move between breakout rooms.
See LAs in Lecture above. - Check in: ask how your students are doing in life, in addition to focusing on course content.
- Mute and/or turn your camera off when you join a group to avoid interrupting the discussion or distracting group members.
- Address students by name to encourage a specific student to participate. This will help you facilitate discussion and create a sense of belonging, too.
- Encourage participation of all students during a discussion.
- Ask students who are not participating, by name, to turn on their camera, unmute their microphone, and/or engage in the zoom chat.
- Explain why participation and discussion are so important for learning.
- Share your screen so that everyone can see what you are looking at. Even better, ask one of the students to share their screen.
- Encourage students to annotate your shared screen. The person who is sharing their screen can give or withdraw permission to annotate.
- Use the whiteboard function to draw out symbols or calculations. See how to do this here.
- Utilize “remote share” to give other group members access to the mouse action when screen sharing.
- Monitor a collaborative document (Google Docs or Office365 or BitPaper) to track progress between groups and see if similar challenges or themes are arising for multiple groups. This may also help you target which groups need extra support.
Some additional suggestions for sharing/showing/discussing quantitative/symbolic thinking, here.
- Tell students what to expect. Office hours can either be Q&A style, review of a specific topic/skill, “Teach an LA”, or have a prepared topic or question. Make sure your students know what to expect when they attend. Examples types of office hours can be found here.
- Answer questions or review material with students individually or discuss challenges as a group, depending on the number of attendees.
- If you have a high volume of participants, it may be useful to set up breakout rooms to group students together (this may be particularly important for review when more students are expected to join).
See LAs in lecture for more information.
- If you have a high volume of participants, it may be useful to set up breakout rooms to group students together (this may be particularly important for review when more students are expected to join).
- Send a reminder or announcement with the Zoom link before office hours begin, even if it is recurring, to remind students periodically of the time and to allow easy access to the link.
- Help your students know when/how to find you.
- Use Google Calendar appointment scheduling for short (10 or 15 min) or long (30 min) blocks of time that students can sign up for.
- Have regularly scheduled office hours distributed throughout the week.
- Schedule more frequent, shorter office hours.
- Solicit the best days/times for office hours from your students.
- Encourage students who email you frequently to meet you on Zoom for a quick chat for “on demand” office hours when you are free.
- Some courses find having a single Zoom link for all office hours is helpful, while other courses prefer to have one Zoom link per person. Consider the pros and cons with your instructional team.
- Office hours are also a great time to check in with students! Ask your students how they are adjusting to remote learning, offer tips and tricks regarding both the class and how to stay on top of work online, and get to know students beyond the class. The better you know your students, the easier it will be to facilitate discussion amongst them and support their learning.
- Record office hours and post them with a summary of what was discussed to encourage further participation from students (perhaps in a discussion board) and allow students who cannot come to have access to this resource.
- Check-in with student groups working on simulations or collecting data at home. Use features like remote share and collaborative documents to highlight aspects of the experiment or answer questions that students have.
- Provide your data from a past lab experiment if students are struggling to collect data from a lab or if multiple sets of data would be beneficial for comparison.
- Facilitate breakout rooms where students are analyzing data in real time. You can use collaborative documents and other sharing technologies to help students work through the statistical and mathematical analysis of their experimental data.
- Remotely control laboratory equipment, and/or help students to do so
- Provide personal experiences from your time in the lab. If the lab you are an LA for has online components, students may feel like they are being deprived of an essential part of the laboratory experience. By providing your insights about how you completed the lab and what occurred during that time, you can help students gain a better understanding of the material that is being presented.
- Give feedback about lab reports/presentations. Set up deadlines for students to submit reports and presentations to you for review. This is a great opportunity for students to work on the skill of science communication. Be concise, timely, and consistent with your feedback.
See also, attributes of effective feedback, here.
Asynchronous LA-Student interactions can be an excellent complement to in-person and synchronous online interactions where you can continue to connect with students and facilitate a dynamic learning community. As an LA, you can interact with students through discussion forums, instructional videos, or various chat tools asynchronously--without having to engage in the same place or at the same time as students.
How can LAs build a supportive learning community online?
- Introduce yourself when interacting with students through discussion forums, email, or other chat tools. Use your preferred name and pronouns and mention that you are the LA for the class before diving into their response.
Example: Hello, my name is (name), I use (pronouns), and I am the LA for this course! - Post introductory videos of yourself at the beginning of the semester to help students get to know you and understand your role in the class. This can be the first step in building a comfortable atmosphere and sense of community (one easy way to do this is by recording on zoom)!
- You should have an up-to-date profile picture of yourself to help students get to know their LA on Canvas and any technological tool used in the course.
For more concrete ideas about how to build community and connect with your students, visit this link.
How can LAs support group interaction by...?
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- Give students feedback.
Example: (opposition) “What kind of counter arguments have you considered?” - Pose further questions. When possible, tag the students to whom you are replying to get their attention!
Example: (creativity) “What kind of apps could have been helpful to dissolve this historic conflict today?”
Example: (problem solving) “How would you go about this dilemma? What kind of solutions have you considered?” - Compare/contrast and connect between student ideas.
Example (comparison) “@Grayson and @Dru I saw that you guys had similar ideas! What is contrasting about your interpretations? In what ways do they differ?”
Example: “@Group2, I really like your argument for this topic! Have you considered what @Group3 used as their argument? How would you defend your argument to this group?” - Foster a sense of community by acknowledging student ideas and sharing your own experiences.
Example: (positive feedback) “I like your interpretation of (concept), I personally had not considered this perspective!”
Example: (recall) “I see that you mentioned (concept) what do you remember specifically about that?”
For more suggestions for asynchronous discussion boards and some case studies visit this link.
What forums can LAs use for asynchronous group discussions?
- Canvas has a discussion board feature that can be set up easily and divided into small groups, but does not allow tagging of individual or groups of students.
- Perusall is another social/communal-learning platform and can be directly integrated into Canvas. For some concrete ways to use Perusall, visit this link.
- Chat-style tools: each small group could have a channel, and/or there could be a channel/thread for the whole class to engage in and ask/answer questions.Suggested tools: Slack, Discord, Piazza, GroupMe
- Give feedback. If students are leaving voice recordings as comments, especially for foreign language courses, as the LA, you can tag peers and ask them to listen to one of your student’s comments and provide questions for the peer to give the fellow student feedback on. This is also a good way for you to model how to give effective feedback.
- Tag multiple students who have similar or opposing viewpoints in their comments and ask them to further argue their points.
Example: “@Jeremiah and @Asija, I saw that you guys both referenced the reading from last week! What is something new that you learned from each other's comments and what is one other point that neither of you have considered in your initial comments?”
What are some video platforms available to me?
- VoiceThread replaces text-only discussions with interactive videos and allows students to leave audio/video-recorded comments or written comments on their peers’ discussion posts or lecture slides. This allows students to interact with one another and the LA on their own time!
- VoiceThread can be used in many contexts ranging from math and science to foreign language which is especially effective to give students the opportunity to practice their speech and get feedback from you, their LA, and peers!
- Flipgrid (Integration in to Canvas)
- Flipgrid is another video platform that allows students to post short, fun videos of themselves in which they can share what they have learned! Fellow students can leave comments in either video/audio or written formats and build on each other’s learning.
General discussion board practices can be applied to video platforms can be found here.
How can LAs support students one-on-one by...?
- Check-in and see how students are doing! As the LA, you can connect individually with students, helping you to gauge where each student is in their learning process, foster a sense of belonging, give feedback, or simply say "hi".
Example: “Hey (name)! How are you doing? How are your other classes going? Do you have any plans on how to allocate enough time to study for midterm week? I have some tricks on how I studied for this exam. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with or how I can best support you!” - Encourage students to ask for clarification on assignments which gives you an opportunity to pose further questions that encourage deeper thinking. This time could be used instead of having synchronous office hours as well!
Example: (sent to the entire class list) “Hey all, I just wanted to notify you all that I will be available via email for the next hour if you have any questions regarding this week’s assignments. If you would like to discuss any of the concepts further, also feel free to shoot me an email!” - Offer your help via email.
Example: “Hey (name)! If you already have a draft of your work and would like some feedback, feel free to send it to me and I’ll have a look at it!”
- Tag a specific student in your class channel or comment back to an individual in a thread and provide feedback, pose questions, or highlight a chunk of text from a student’s response.
Example: “Hey (name)! I liked your contribution to the class discussion thread, specifically this portion (highlight portion of text). Can you tell me more about how you arrived at this thought?" - Directly message a student in an individual chat.
Example: “Hey (name), I noticed that you did not make it to our synchronous class meeting. Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with or clarify to get you ready for next class!” - Students can reach out for help and contact you more easily.
Example: "Hey guys, remember that if you have questions as you complete the activity for tomorrow’s class that you can shoot me a quick direct message on here!” -
Remind students about upcoming deadlines and tasks. Some students prefer announcements via these forums over Canvas.
What chat tool can I use to connect with my students?
- Slack is a direct messaging chat tool/app that provides you, as the LA, with another opportunity to interact with students and encourage discussion or engagement. Discord and Piazza can be used similarly.
- Google Docs allows you to leave comments such as clarifying questions or feedback on a student’s draft or assignment.
Support students asynchronously in other ways
- Insert points throughout recorded lectures to have students pause and reflect or answer questions using PlayPosit.
Example: “Please take some time to write a short reflection about your initial thoughts, questions, and responses that we can reflect back on during our next class meeting” - Include hidden Easter Eggs, such as small activities within lectures or recorded videos for students to engage with along the way.
Example: “Now that you know what (concept) is, research an example and bring it to our synchronous meeting to discuss with the class”. - Remind students that you are sharing these clues or hidden Easter Eggs. This may also give students an incentive to be more engaged when reviewing recorded video material as a result.
- Set up watch parties for pre-recorded lectures in which students can interact and ask questions in real-time.
Example Canvas announcement: “Hey everyone! Remember to check out the assignment rubric (here) to make sure you are hitting all the necessary points. Send me an email if you have any questions about this assignment!”
Join your own LA resource channels (on Slack) where other LAs and faculty share tips and tricks that you can share with your class and make your students aware of through chat tools. This is also a great place to share tools that are helpful for you and your students!
Example: (resource update) “Hey everyone! I hope your week is going well! I just found another resource that the other math class uses that may be helpful for your task this week and can help us all work better as a group. Here is the link”
Tutorials
General Course Elements
- Building community as LAs
- Office hour formats
- How to make your course accessible to all students
- Health habits and resources
LAing Online
- Synchronous Online
- Considerations for Remote LAing
- Structures for encouraging student participation
- Zoom co-host guide
- Zoom host guide
- How to create a collaborative google doc
- How to create a collaborative BitPaper whiteboard
- Quantitative representations in remote learning
- How to make your course accessible to all students
- Asynchronous Online
- LAing in physically-distanced in-person classes
In-Person LAing Videos
This video is of a small / medium sized lecture class for EBIO 1010, Intro to Quantitative Thinking for Biologists.
The LA, Leah, opens this interaction by asking if the student Andres needs any help, showing that she's proactive in engaging students. She then establishes that they are on the same level by physically kneeling down to speak to Andres instead of hovering over him. Once the conversation steers a little bit off topic, she brings it back in, and also includes Brennan, who is sitting next to Andres.
In-Class LAing Techniques: Proactively engaging with students, establishing rapport, facilitating group discussion by actively inviting other students to join the conversation, using body language to facilitate discussion and connection.
This is a video of the large lecture class MCDB 2150, Principles of Genetics. There are about 150 students, with 4 LAs and 2 TAs wandering around the classroom looking for students to reach out to them.
In this scenario, the LA Lucas overhears the students Caleb and Darren struggling on a question, so he actively walks over to try and help them. He then elicits student ideas with thought-provoking questions to get them to think critically about the problem. Later on, he uses a real-world example to help make things more clear, aiding the two students in having an easier time grasping the ideas.
In-Person LAing Techniques: Actively reaching out to students, eliciting student ideas, questioning, and using real-world examples to contextualize problems.
Remote LAing Videos
This video takes place in the LA Pedagogy Course (EDUC 4610) with “motivating students for success” as the class topic of the week. The group discusses the prompt: “Why is having diverse perspectives represented (e.g. backgrounds, experience, ideas) important for learning?”
In this clip, LA Lauren helps a student, Caleb, construct a case by asking him to provide a specific example and by playing “devil's advocate”. Lauren helps ensure that all students’ voices are heard by asking a quieter student, Addison, if they have contributions. In addition, she gives feedback to Ava about her explanation, and actively listens while all students are speaking. Pedagogical techniques demonstrated by Lauren include promoting group interaction and reasoning, utilization of questioning, listening, wait time techniques, and providing effective feedback.
Remote LAing Techniques: Encouraging participation by referring to students by name, using camera and microphone throughout, and sharing her screen.
This video takes place in the LA Pedagogy Course (EDUC 4610) with “giving effective feedback” as the class topic of the week. The students in the clip are LAs who discuss how they can give feedback to their students while keeping in mind the attributes of effective feedback: focus, specificity, timing, and tone.
Pedagogical techniques of constructing knowledge, questioning, and listening are used by the LA, Logan, in this clip. He uses questioning to elicit student ideas about the meanings of “focus” and “specificity” so he can clarify the distinction between them. Then, he has the students, Clara and Charlie, apply what they have learned to ensure they fully understand it. Throughout the clip, Logan actively listens, which can be seen in his body language. This demonstrates the importance of having cameras on in small Zoom groups so that it better replicates an in-person experience.
Remote LAing Techniques: Having the camera on for the duration of the class.
Livi, an LA for a non-majors physics course about music and sound (PHYS 1240), helps facilitate group discussion about a clicker question in a Zoom breakout room.
Livi exemplifies pedagogical techniques of questioning, constructing knowledge, and using wait time. She starts off by greeting the students and asking them to connect prior knowledge from the class to the question. She then gets a sense of what the students know and asks increasingly specific questions and draws on a graph to lead students to the answer. After each question she uses wait time while the group thinks, and if there is no response after a moment she asks follow-up questions. After this clip, Livi assists the students by making sure they don’t have further questions about the class and checks in with them about if they’re staying healthy.
Remote LAing Techniques: assisting students in a breakout room, screen sharing, annotating the screen share, and checking-in with students, even though none of them had their cameras on.
This video is based on an interaction that took place in a Physics 1 Tutorial (PHYS 1110). In the breakout rooms, students work in small groups on conceptual physics problems to help solidify their understanding. During this tutorial, students were working through problems involving forces and torques by examining how a spool moves when a string wrapped around it is pulled.
In this clip, LA Lily enters one of the breakout rooms to ensure the students are on the right track. She checks in with the students both about how they are doing in life and how they are doing with the activity. Lily gives the students tips on how to succeed on their upcoming exam based on what worked well for her when she was in their shoes. Furthermore, she helps create an improved learning environment by encouraging students to turn on their cameras and mics, watch videos on a shared screen, and draw on a virtual whiteboard. Lily also maintains a positive tone throughout this interaction.
Remote LAing Techniques: Checking-in with students, using the Zoom chat, encouraging participation, giving technical help, jumping between breakout rooms as Co-host, and having students use Zoom’s screen share and whiteboard features.
This video is based on an interaction that took place in a Calculus 1 (MATH 201) breakout room during recitation. In this breakout room, students worked collaboratively to annotate graphs to demonstrate their understanding of the Extreme Value Theorem.
Calculus LA Lauren assists this breakout room’s students by giving them feedback on the worksheet they collaboratively annotated on a shared screen. Lauren fosters a sense of community in the online format by referring to the students - Ron, Terrance, Charlotte, and Elody - by name. Moreover, she finds a balance between giving the students hints and letting them think for themselves.
Remote LAing Techniques: Working in a collaborative document, moving into breakout rooms as Co-host, and referring to students by name.
Asynchronous LA-Student Interactions Examples
This asynchronous LA-student interaction took place via Canvas discussion board in an ENGL 3000 (Shakespeare for non-majors) course. The LA brought this interaction to the LA Pedagogy Course to receive feedback about their implementation of pedagogical concepts and to receive feedback about how they could improve at these types of future interactions. In this course students are expected to post an initial comment on one day, and then post three replies to other students’ comments by a later deadline. The LA’s role is to facilitate discussion and promote deeper thinking.
Sample discussion board
This asynchronous LA-student interaction took place via Canvas discussion board in a PSYC 3102, Behavioral Genetics, course. This LA focuses on getting students to think more broadly about the prompt and guiding them to the general learning goals for the discussion board. The LA also often includes resources to help student understanding so they can better answer the LA’s questions.
Sample discussion board