The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools around the world to move online in 2020, including my home institution University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (UB). Months into online learning, many students started to suffer from either social disconnection in asynchronous settings or Zoom fatigue in synchronous settings. How can we effectively include our students online to feel meaningfully connected yet not overwhelmed by long lectures and presentations? Liberating Structures (LS) are simple, concrete tools that can be used to organize learning activities and facilitate transformative experiences in classrooms, or for that matter any meeting in any organization, in ways that include and engage all participants. Since I joined UB faculty in Fall 2010, I have been part of a global community of LS practice, and one of the first to apply LS in academia and higher education. As detailed in the attached publications, the theoretical premise of LS can be traced back to the Socratic method of encouraging dialogue, allowing for unpeeling ever deeper layers of insight in a sequential and iterative manner and can also be derived from the classic works of the likes of Bruner, Dewey, Freire, Montessori, and Piaget who argued that collective and collaborative learning emerges not from the one-way transmission of content from an expert to a student, but rather through a process where members of a learning community can interact, dialogue and experience self-discovery. The implementation of LS can also be viewed within the growing movement in higher education—the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning which favors pedagogical tools that make learning more participatory, engaging and student-centered. Lipmanowicz and McCandless, who codified and systematized three dozen LS protocols, credited complexity science as the conceptual background and inspiration for LS. They emphasized that LS distribute power and influence more widely by including everyone, invite self-organization to flourish by letting go of over-control, expand and connect networks by breaking down silos, increase transparency and the rapid reciprocal flow of information, and build new sets of feedback loops via many new forms of interaction; and increase diversity by engaging more people and perspectives. Each LS specifies five interrelated structural elements:(a) The structuring invitation to focus attention, (b) spatial arrangement that allows participants to stand, move freely and be face-to-face, (c) participation distribution to ensure everyone participates at once and equally, (d) group configuration to ensure one works with pairs, quartets and whole group, and (e) the sequence of steps and time allocation for effectively executing the above. Detailed instructions and examples are available on LiberatingStructures.com. Although Fall 2020 was my first official online teaching experience, I was able to adapt LS through weekly synchronous Zoom meetings to include all students in the learning process. My undergraduate course was about social network analysis. There was no way for the students to gain better perspective about social networks without networking in my class. Here are four examples of how I adapted LS for inclusive online learning in this context. (1) 1-2-4-ALL is a popular LS to engage everyone simultaneously in generating questions, ideas and suggestions. I adapted it in at least two ways for online learning. For any quick check-ins or simple questions, I would pose the question during the live Zoom session by asking it verbally and popping it in the “chat” box, give students a minute to consider their answer and type up their response in the “chat” box but wait till my signal to press enter so we can a “text waterfall” with everyone’s contribution. This adaptation makes it 1-ALL. Another way I adapted this LS is to pose the question live, give each student appropriate time to come up with their individual answer, then randomly assign them into “breakout rooms” in pairs or a group of 4, often with instructions and templates on Google Slides to facilitate and document this round of small-group discussions for no more than 10 minutes depending on the topic and task, then bring everyone back to the main room for each group to share their best insights with the rest of the class. This adaptation makes it 1-2ALL or 1-4-ALL. (2) Drawing Together is a LS that helps reveal insights and paths forward through nonverbal expression. I had assigned the students to watch one of the six episodes of Netflix documentary Connected as a way to discover and appreciate networks. In week 2, I adapted Drawing Together for each student to create a drawing based on their understanding of the episode they watched, capture their drawing as a digital photo to share via Google Slides in “breakout rooms” then the entire class to showcase the insights they discovered on their own and with their peers. (3) Celebrity Interview is an LS that connects the experience of leaders and experts with people closest to the challenge at hand. I was able to bring in two social network analysis experts to our Zoom classroom, one senior expert in Canada (a founder of the international network of social network analysis) and one emerging expert in Holland (a newly minted PhD and co-founder of New Momentum Foundation specializing digital network analysis for youth engagement). Students were enthusiastic to suggest interview questions and also had excellent reflections after the interviews. It provided them rare opportunities to meet someone they wouldn’t otherwise have access to, get a personal connection and deeper understanding of their professional journey, and inspirations from their work about real-life applications. (4) Critical Uncertainties is a more advanced LS that help develop strategies for operating in a range of plausible yet unpredictable futures. Set up four scenarios based on the quality of social connections and the amount of time alone during COVID-19 for the students in “breakout rooms” collaborate and generate coping strategies for surviving and thriving in one of these four plausible yet unpredictable futures. This adapted exercise gave them a platform to contemplate on their personal social networks, interaction patterns and gaps, share what was working well for them, and discover new ideas and coping strategies together.

https://LiberatingStructures.com

I co-designed and co-facilitated the LS Immersion Workshop at the International Communication Association annual meeting and it is featured on immersion workshop page: http://www.liberatingstructures.com/immersion-workshops

I represented UB and co-authored the first academic publication on LS featured on http://www.liberatingstructures.com/education/
Lipmanowicz, H., Singhal, A., McCandless, K., Wang, H. (2015). Libreating Structures: Engaging Everyone to Build a Good Life Together. In Wang, H. (Ed.) (2015). Communication and "the good life" (International Communication Association Theme Book Series, Vol. 2, pp. 233-246). New York: Peter Lang.

I provided detailed comments on the first journal publication on LS, named in the acknowledgement on page 16:
Singhal, A., Perez, L. E., Stevik, K., Monness, E., & Svenkerud, P. J. (2019). Liberating structures as pedagogical innovation for inclusive learning: A pilot study in a Norwegian university. Journal of Creative Communications, 1-18. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0973258619875600

Additional writings about LS:
http://www.liberatingstructures.com/km-articles

I appeared in the follow three LS instructional videos:
What are Liberating Structures: https://vimeo.com/93875308
1-2-4-all: https://vimeo.com/93869810
Appreciative Interview: https://vimeo.com/111063771

Despite the high level of stress, almost all students attended the class via Zoom for 14 weeks, with attendance ranging from 90-100% and averaging at 96.7%. The attached “online interaction network graph” shows that throughout the semester, a total of 191 connections were created through the LS activities on Zoom among the 30 students enrolled in this class. Each student had the opportunity with 8 to 19 peers on various learning tasks in the “breakout rooms”, with an average of 12.73 peers per student. And here are some of the comments from the students regarding the learning experiences they enjoyed the most.

"All of my classes were online this semester; however, this is the only one that I actually met for at a specific time. That being said I feel like I got more out of this class than any other class this semester."

"For me the most enjoyable part of this class was when we broke into group sessions as I feel like I actually connected with people in this class. Despite only seeing everyone once a week, I feel like I know this class much more than all of my others."

"I also enjoyed the guest speakers throughout the class and learning things from them too. Overall, I liked the different aspects of class and how the professor tried to make class interesting instead of just giving out lectures the entire time."

"During my time in COM 360, I truly enjoyed every moment spent within the class. Professor Wang was truly invested in the class and in making us feel as involved as possible. The guest speakers were one of my favorite parts of this class because it allowed us to hear perspectives from those within the profession and gave us the opportunity to ask questions to help us better understand the topic at hand. I am very happy that I chose this class and hope others can share this feeling as well in the near future."

"The one thing I enjoyed the most for this class was having the guest speakers for class. I found this very cool because due to social distance learning many classes did not have any guest speakers. I thought it was great that you invited guest speakers to talk to us about topics we were learning about via zoom. It made taking classes online more interesting and fun. It was also great to learn about our topics in class from other researchers in the field. The guest speakers were really the highlight of my semester."

"What I enjoyed most about this class was the way Professor Wang made almost everyone in the class get to know each other by constantly using breakout rooms since we are online this semester instead of in person."

"The guests that we met over the semester were the best part of this class for me. It is hard to interact and communicate well with people online. The best online interaction was when someone new (like the two guests) appeared to speak. Both interviews were very entertaining and interesting to me. I would continue to have guests come on and speak."

"The thing I enjoyed the most in this class was actually the group activities we did every week. In a pandemic setting where we lost some of the interaction, we would have with each other in a physical classroom, it was very nice to have that in the form of Zoom breakout rooms."