This practice is aimed at increasing participation in synchronous courses by creating learning alliances between students. It assumes that the purpose of meeting online is to create a sense of belonging through having shared goals that the students work together to achieve. It is not primarily to disseminate information; lecture notes, narrated Power Points, videos, and other supporting documents should be made available in the Learning Modules ahead of the meetings. Class participation is often focused on the individual and evaluated as such; this approach shifts focus from the individual to teams of learners, who collaborate on answering study questions, posting to a discussion board, sharing key learnings in class, etc. Dividing the students into smaller groups allows them to connect with each other and share the responsibility of facilitating the class meetings. Students who would like to lead the group may sign up as Group Leaders for one extra credit and report back to the professor on the success of their breakout sessions. A dynamic system of Participation Points forms the backbone of this teaching practice. But the key to creating successful learning alliances is to make the meetings fun and stimulating, which produces in the students a desire to study and learn.

As all courses moved to remote learning in the spring of 2020, it was apparent that my asynchronous setup was inadequate for synchronous class meetings. Thus, I began reading and experimenting with different methods to improve participation and student engagement. Focusing on collective learning and creating alliances between students have contributed immensely to an increased student engagement at our meetings. In the video attached, I'm presenting my course design, class structure, and the interactive assignments I use in class (25 min.). I would like to share my approach with others to open up the conversation about effective teaching practices in synchronous learning settings.

This practice is aimed at creating an online environment conducive toward learning in teams. It accomplishes this through both course design and class structure, using a system of participation points. The students work in groups to complete interactive assignments, such as answering study questions in shared Google Docs, identify main points from their weekly focus passages, share key learnings from the previous class, submit to different Jamboards, etc. By adequately presenting their work to the class, the group members earn participation points. Points are also earned in the breakout rooms when the students adequately engage with the assignments. The Group Leaders reports back in weekly Google surveys on the success of their group work, which form the basis for the distribution of participation points in the breakout rooms. By alerting me that there are students who are not engaging with the work, I can reach out to these individuals separately. The students are asked to volunteer to become Group Leaders for 1 extra credit; the more students who signs up, the better, as it creates extra commitment to the course.

Student course evaluations; both the standard evaluation form at Farmingdale State College and a google survey that specifically addresses the practices of creating online learning alliances.