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Communication Department of Communication

Teaching Tips

SEPTEMBER 2020

Scott Burgess shared the following upon his new teaching adventure out of the country: "I never realized how American my lectures were (or how American so many textbooks are with giant sections that are unusable) until I moved to Dubai. As I prepped for my classes, I pulled up old power point lectures to build off of. I use lots of samples of good and bad journalism to show students what works and what doesn't. Wow. Everything in them was so culturally specific to the U.S.A., and predominately white U.S.A. None of the names in the examples were names of my students. None of the photos resembled their lives. I get that I used many Detroit media examples at Wayne and those can easily be replaced with examples from the Gulf states. But the names were very noticeable in my examples. The only person with a foreign sounding name here is me. With as many Middle Eastern students as I had at WSU, there should have already been Amsals, Dalias and Omars in my lectures. They are there now."

Amna Hussain: Remote Teaching Tips: Connecting with students and creating a sense of Community

  • Giving out my cell phone took out a lot of anxiety and feeling of isolation for students as they were able to reach me directly. It also helped build the one-on-one rapport with them. I strongly recommend that and didn't for once regretted sharing my number. Students were respectful; more than they are in emails. They also were considerate of my time. So, all in all, it was one of the best things I opted for.
  • Spending a good amount of time in the first class on informal introductions and just talking about how life is right now worked nicely as an icebreaker.
  • What I am doing differently this semester: I spent about half an hour discussing my expectations and requirements for the course - technology, how to get in touch with me, late work policy, Zoom, etc. I also opened the floor to hear from them and ask what their expectations are and what I can do to make this experience easier (remote instruction). Of course, I said a word or two about what is fair for them to ask...lol. I heard from 2-3 students that during summer they had instructors that went basically overboard with technology. It seems some instructors were more into technology and trying to overcompensate by giving too many options or incorporating too many tools that end up making it more complicated for students. These students said that they just want to learn, use one platform, and not navigate several tools to do something simple.
  • I had due dates and deadlines but in the COM 1600 course, several of my students had either an issue with the internet, hardware, or had family tragedies. These were all legit because they sent me screenshots, funeral info, webcam receipt, etc. One student's uncle died of COVID in Miami and he had to attend the funeral there. Another one's grandma died, and she then prepared a eulogy for her special occasion speech. So, I had to work with their challenges and give them extensions or meet them over Facetime for speech delivery.

Chris Gilbert: A list of helpful videos about remoting into a computer to help students.

Friendly advice from the Business School

  • If you are recording your virtual class sessions and it includes video images of the students and their conversations or other student information shared in the class, please be aware that these recordings could lead to privacy intrusions and should be used for your instructional purpose only.
  • If you share the recordings, they should be shared only with enrolled students.
  • Additionally, the recordings should be shared with all students not just the students who are unable to attend.
  • If you intend to use these recorded virtual class sessions for some other purpose, you will need to obtain permission from each enrolled student.
  • At the end of the semester or the culmination of your class, you should disable the recordings.
  • Please see attached documents for instructions on disabling.
  • Recordings done in Zoom and then uploaded to Echo360 for student viewing via Canvas.
  • Recordings done in a Microsoft Team class session.