It’s Alive – Breakout Rooms
It’s Alive – Breakout Rooms
Once upon a time I was teaching my students in a face-to-face setting. Then, a pandemic turned the world upside down and we all headed to our individual homes to teach and learn.
Since that time in March, I have heard from a number of my students and their overriding concern is feeling disconnected from their professor and classmates. My learning challenge is providing that small group learning feeling to all of my students. They miss the in-depth conversations we had in class, they want to explore topics verbally rather than listen while I lecture online.
From a technology perspective, I decided to use my college’s online classroom tool and within the tool to begin using “Breakout Rooms”. This tool is free, it is accessible and available to all of my students. I believe this tool will allow me to interact with the students in small group sessions to delve into topics and help everyone feel connected once again.
EMPATHY: In order to complete my empathy map, I reviewed all of the messages I have received since March from my students, looking for themes in their messages. By far, the students missed the in-depth conversations we had about the topic. They found the online class to be too much like a one-way lecture with little interaction. They lost the connection to the professor and their classmates. I considered what the students were saying/doing/feeling. The pain point really seemed to be this lack of small group conversations.
LEARNING LESSON I: I used Padlet to post the theme mentioned above, and in the process learned the benefits of Padlet.
SECTIONS MODEL ACTIVITY: This was a great opportunity to consider the policies of my college, the cost of the technology, and the access/availability of the technology tool. I hadn’t thought about aligning with my college’s policies. I took the time to access and read the relevant materials posted on my college’s site. It became clear that my desire to use the Breakout Rooms feature in Bongo would indeed meet all of the schools requirements.
LEARNER LESSON II: Using Padlet, I connected my solution (Bongo Breakout Rooms) to my original Learner Lesson I post. This step really allows me to see the challenge and the solution side-by-side and reflect on how my solution will solve my learning challenge.
PROTOTYPE PLAN: It became clear that using Breakout Rooms is not so simple as setting up the number of groups and the number of students in each group. It requires planning on my part to ensure that I create the questions/topics to be discussed in the Breakout Rooms ahead of time as they must help the students reach the learning objectives each week. It is clear that planning is the key to great experience for the students. I had to think about the amount of time I would need to prepare for my online class each week. It was surprising to discover that while using Breakout Rooms would address my learning challenge, at the same time it would help each student improve skills such as public speaking.
IT’S ALIVE: Fortunately, the Breakout Rooms feature is fully supported by the college and my students already have access to it. My summer course is going to be much more interactive and my students now have the opportunity to actively participate in the weekly class.
This technology module has been thought provoking. It was amazing to identify an actual learning challenge and identify a technology solution!
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