The hyflex and online teaching formats have altered our approach to teaching and engaging with students as well as raised questions on how to enhance student learning in the age of COVID. September’s resource of the month briefly addresses one of these concerns, how to sustain emotional connections with students.

In the article “Cameras and Masks: Sustaining Emotional Connections with Your Students in an Age of COVID19,” Howard Aldrich, professor of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, offers several suggestions on how faculty can enhance engagement in the classroom and online. Of those, Aldrich suggests faculty lecture less and utilize more structured discussions, polls, and in-class videos in an effort to “replace yourself as the chief talker.” He also suggests having a brief “check-in” at the beginning of every class “during which students can share some of the difficulties they’ve encountered in learning under the constraints imposed by COVID-19 restrictions.” Aldrich offers additional suggests on how to teach while practicing social distancing and how to handle student cameras when teaching online. This article is the first of a two-part series on how to foster and sustain student engagement during this time.

Author Howard Aldrich is a Kenan Professor of Sociology in the department of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill. His article is published in Tomorrow’s Professor Postings sponsored by the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. This publication seeks to foster a diverse, world-wide teaching and learning ecology among its over 65,000 subscribers at over 1,000 institutions and organizations in over 100 countries around the world.

Interested in learning more about the scholarship of teaching and learning or accessing more of these resources? Belmont and Bunch Library offer the SoTL Resources at Bunch Library that provides information on SoTL professional organizations, research journals, conferences, etc.

The purpose of the Resource of the Month is twofold:

1) To encourage the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) by providing examples of high-quality research.

2) To provide faculty with innovative ideas that promote effective pedagogy.

Most of us would readily agree that professor-student rapport in the classroom affects student learning. What is more difficult is determining how to establish and sustain this rapport between teachers and students.

March’s resource of the month offers some guidance in this area. In the article, Making Connections: Student-Teacher Rapport in Higher Education Classrooms, researcher Roehl Sybing uses ethnography to examine how a teacher establishes rapport and facilitates understanding with first- and second-year undergraduate students. He considers the impact of differing personal backgrounds and circumstances as well as growing class sizes and concludes that through rapport, professors can validate student knowledge and participation while mitigating identity differences between teacher and student.

Author Roehl Sybing is a Language, Literacy & Culture doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His work is published in the December 2019 issue of the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Founded in 2001, the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (JoSoTL) is published by Indiana University’s Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching. The journal seeks to “address contemporary issues bridging teaching and learning in higher education, philosophical approaches to teaching, current research, and praxis.”

Interested in learning more about the scholarship of teaching and learning or accessing more of these resources? Belmont and Bunch Library offer the SoTL Resources at Bunch Library that provides information on SoTL professional organizations, research journals, conferences, etc.

The purpose of the Resource of the Month is twofold:

1) To encourage the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) by providing examples of high-quality research.

2) To provide faculty with innovative ideas that promote effective pedagogy.