The chatbox is the most overlooked tool in a live session. When used regularly, it can provide the professor quick access to student questions, comments and responses. The key to enacting the chat box is to make its purpose intentional. Below are four key strategies to activate your chat box and engage students in learning.
Access Prior Knowledge
Accessing prior knowledge is key to understanding what your students already know about the topic you are about to teach. At the beginning of the class, ask students to take 1-2 minutes to post what they already know about the topic. As students post, you can quickly scan the results and determine which topics you may need to delve deeper, or that can be removed or only briefly addressed in your lecture.
Think and Post
Most of us tend to pose a question to the whole group. The problem with the strategy is that the quickest thinkers are the first to respond. In a class of 18 students, only 3-5 students might get the opportunity to speak. That means only 16% of your students are actively engaged. Yikes! To ensure 100% engagement, allow students to pause after you pose a question and then ask them to post their response in the chatbox. Once students post, you can call on students to expand on their ideas or use the posts as an informative assessment to determine gaps in knowledge that you may need to clarify.
Post A Question
“Do you have any questions?” Whenever I ask this question, I inevitably get nodding heads on mute. Providing students with sentence stems is a quick way to jumpstart their thinking and encourage questions. Instead of asking, ‘Do you have any questions?’ ask students to complete one of the following question starters and post it in the chatbox. The list of questions is endless, but offering students a few stems gives them permission to clarify or gain more information about the content.
- Can you tell me more about ….?
- Can you explain why…?
- Why do you think …?
- How does this compare to…?
Key Takeaways
Reflection provides students with an opportunity to think about their learning. Ask students to post 1-3 key takeaways in the chatbox at the end of the live session. What did they learn from today’s lesson? How will they apply the information to their work or lived experiences? Depending on how much time remains, invite a few students to share or ask for volunteers.
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