What I built to help teachers engage students online in the time of COVID
Guest Contributor: Caryn Tran
Like teachers across the country, I am gearing up for more online learning this fall, and student engagement remains an elusive challenge at the forefront of my mind. How do I ensure my students are participating in rich conversations about classroom content in this new online learning reality?
I’m a middle school computer science teacher, and also a software engineer. At my company, TeachFX, my team is working tirelessly to help educators like me harness the power of the tools we’re already using (like Zoom, Teams, BigBlueButton, etc.) in order to learn what’s working in our online classrooms to engage students and what is not. We’ve built two new features which I, personally, am incredibly excited to try out in my online classes this fall…
TeachFX Insights: gain clarity about how to boost student engagement online
Whether I’m teaching online or in-person, understanding how my teaching impacts student engagement is critical. Getting feedback on my questioning technique, for example, is even more impactful given the challenges the virtual classroom poses.
That’s why I’m super proud to announce the release of “Insights.” TeachFX Insights integrates seamlessly with my video conferencing platform to analyze my teaching and help me identify opportunities for growth in my teaching practice.
The best part? This analysis all happens automatically and is scaffolded with a guided reflection in the app, saving me so much time as I seek to continuously improve as a teacher in these difficult times.
TeachFX Insights = Data + “So what?” + “Now what?”
TeachFX provides a series of simple, actionable “Insights” about my class. The example above helps me as a teacher understand what makes my questions effective in engaging students.
Amid the chaos of this pandemic, I want to focus my attention on what really matters — creating classroom environments where students feel safe, supported, and heard, where students are engaging deeply in conversations about the curriculum, and where students feel like they and their ideas matter.
All of us probably need human connection now more than ever, and the classroom is a perfect place to generate meaningful conversations in our lives and the lives of our students.
I encourage you to set up TeachFX Insights for your classes this fall!
TeachFX Equity Tracker: dive deep into equitable participation
We know that “those who participate more, learn more” (Lotan, 2014), so you can use the new TeachFX Equity Tracker to ensure you’re providing equitable opportunities for students to participate in your online classroom discussions!
TeachFX’s new features for online classrooms provide detailed breakdowns of participation by individual student.
This is just a taste of some of the new features we’re making available to teachers (like me!) this fall to support the transition to online learning. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our product team at support@teachfx.com if you’d like to talk or learn more!