Having their video off did not inhibit student participation after all. In our brick-and-mortar classroom, they would have done this by writing notes on the whiteboard or passing notes to their partners in the inner circle. Students in the outer circle, who typically would be evaluating the participation of their peers in the inner circle, used the chat feature to echo powerful comments they heard and ask questions of the inner-circle group. I conducted a virtual Socratic seminar in which the outer circle turned off their cameras and only the inner-circle students spoke with video and cameras on. Following the lead of this group, however, I was inspired to embrace an experiment. Initially, I had abandoned replicating a Socratic seminar virtually. One group submitted a video even though students’ cameras were off nothing was lost in my ability to assess their ability to hold a discussion. Running video-optional Socratic seminars: For small group discussions, I allowed students to meet on their own time-but asked that they submit a video recording to check for understanding. Here are some ways I’ve found to maintain community during virtual learning-while allowing students to make a choice about whether or not to turn on their cameras. I realized that I needed to reassess how I determined students’ engagement: by looking at their faces. In conversation, it became apparent that these students wanted to remain engaged with learning-but didn’t want cameras on. One student stopped attending synchronous class meetings, and another stopped submitting assignments. During a guest lecture on Zoom, several typically engaged students had their cameras turned off. As remote learning became the norm, some of my students began to not-so-subtly indicate that something was wrong.
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