Monitoring Student Activity.

Challenge – It can be difficult to monitor student activity while in break-out rooms. Moving between break-out rooms is time-consuming. Most students do not have lap-tops which makes the use of shared documents problematic. The solution presented here is to use an online ‘backchannel’ for direct communication with students.

• 

• 

• 

Examples of task, student answers and teacher feedback all sent via a WhatsApp backchannel.

---

Activity Outline

This method is intended to work anytime you want to communicate with students who are doing groupwork in break-out rooms. In this example students were asked to complete a gap-fill in groups. The teacher monitored the progress of the task and provided feedback via an online back-channel.

Instructions

Before the Lesson:

1. Make sure your activity is in a format that can be shared via your preferred back-channel. For example: PDF files are easier to share via WhatsApp than Microsoft Office files, especially if your learners do not have access to personal computers.

Lesson:

1.  Introduce the activity using share/screen and concept-checking. Students will be working independently of teacher in break-out rooms so it is important that they understand the task.
2. Tell students that they will need to write their answers on a piece of paper. Demonstrate by writing an example answer and showing it to your camera.
3. Create the breakout rooms (do not open them yet!)
4. Nominate a ‘photographer’  for each group. You can even change their name to reflect their role – e.g., Karim (Group 1 Photographer). On Zoom this can be done by clicking on ‘participants’ followed by ‘change name’. Explain that the ‘photographer’ must take a picture of his/her answers and send it to the teacher through an online backchannel on behalf of the group. This could be via WhatsApp, Google Classroom or email.
5.  Open the break-out rooms. If needs be, share task material with groups through back-channel  or by pasting it in break-out room chat.
6. Monitor and mark student work as it comes in via back-channel. Feedback can be given through same backchannel or, if a group needs particular attention, you can join their break-out room.

---