“Layering” refers to a style of virtual, synchronous classroom where students and instructors use two platforms at the same time: for example, Zoom and Google Docs. Students run video/audio through Zoom, but edit a Google Doc collaboratively. (Watching a YouTube video of puppies while on a Zoom call does not count as layering.) Most of us have probably been doing this already in our roles outside the classroom, in meetings with our colleagues and with other professionals. But, the pedagogical applications of layering are very exciting.

When I last posted here, I was already nostalgic for the time when we met face-to-face in physical classrooms. And I was lamenting the loss of those material supports for learning that I had recently begun to incorporate into my classes—those worksheets and diagrams, mindmaps and group-work templates printed out on paper. Before launching into our weekly discussions, my students tracked their thinking on the paper in front of them, and when the conversation started they had a physical map of where their thoughts had gone (and if they continued to take notes, of where their thoughts were going).

I appreciated adding material supports for learning into my classroom because: They boosted participation. They offered another way to participate for students who did not want to speak out that day. And, they ended up as physical reminders of the work we had done that day, which helped turn the often fleeting, ephemeral experience of a Humanities tutorial into a more concrete endeavor.

In the last few months, however, I have been a total sponge. The e-Learning knowledge of my colleagues on the Graduate Student Facilitation team at CTLT has been completely inspiring. I’ve seen lots of different methods of layering and I want to share a few simple ones that really made an impact on me.

1. Google Slides. The workshop facilitators at CTLT have made great use of Google Slides for layering active participation into their sessions. Participants are given an edit-permissions link to the same slideshow that the facilitators are using to run the session. The facilitators, meanwhile, created slides with templates for the activity. The benefit? Both the slides with the instructions for the activity, and the activity itself, are in the same place! Participants can see the context of their activity within the workshop by viewing the previous slides. At the end of the session, the facilitators send out the new slideshow that has been completed with participants’ contributions—a record of our notes and thoughts while we were in the workshop.
2. Stormboard / Google Jamboard / Padlet. These platforms are all for creating mindmaps. Each has its own features and functionality, but the basic mechanics are simple: users write text into a sticky note which then appears on a blank background. They can resize, color-code, and move the sticky note around. Users can also doodle and add shapes. In a recent workshop that I co-designed this May, we recreated the “Placemat” activity on Google Jamboards. We asked participants to brainstorm barriers to participating in online discussions and then help each other discover some potential solutions. Yellow stickies represent the “problems” and green stickies represent the “solutions.”

A “placemat” activity rendered in Google Jamboards

3. Close-reading on Google Docs. With a Commenter permissions link to a Google Doc, students can add notes to a copy of a text (a historical document, a poem, a passage from a novel or a speech) that the instructor has copied into a Google Drive document. These comments can be used to do close-reading of texts, and since comments can be threaded, instructors can use their own comments to suggest prompting questions, and students can reply to those questions within the thread. This would work equally well as an asychronous activity, but in a synchronous session the instructor can make connections between students’ contributions and ask students to expand or offer clarification of their comments.

The most significant drawback of layering platforms in synchronous classrooms is bandwidth limitations. Not all students—and not all instructors, for that matter!—have a strong enough internet connection to balance a Zoom call with another synchronous editing platform like Google Docs.

For that reason, layering should be a non-critical form of participation (i.e., not worth significant marks). Some of the simpler aspects of layering can be achieved with the annotation tools that are built into Zoom, and Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.

This is an ode to worksheets.

This is a song in praise of diagrams, fill-in-the-blanks, and mind-maps.

This is an elegy to the last handouts you printed on 35% post-consumer recycled paper (“this handout is made from trees”) before transitioning to online-only classes.

~

Participants in the Instructional Skills Workshops (ISW) that I have recently begun facilitating, frequently offer this piece of feedback: we use a lot of paper.

I agree, the workshop is paper-intensive. We use large flipcharts to display the agenda for the day and we often ask participants to write on flipcharts during the morning lessons. In the afternoon, participants use flipcharts to track their daily goals and we use paper handouts to get written feedback for their peers and for ourselves.

I am happy to say that I have started using paper in my classes outside the ISW as well.

Why so much paper? Can’t we reduce, re-use, recycle?

I take that feedback seriously—we probably do use too much paper—but I have also thought about the pros and cons of using digital tools in face-to-face classroom environments, and I have come out in favor of paper. Now that we are not likely to see another paper assignment, much less the inside of a classroom, for the rest of the semester, I am ready to offer an apologia pro papyro.

These are my own opinions; I have not validated them in a research environment.

Argument 1: Tasking and Engagement

A blank paper is a challenge, a question, an expectation. Placing a paper in front of students provides them with a concrete task: to fill it. By the end of the lesson, students who leave with a full paper are also leaving with a tangible accomplishment, a material representation of their engagement and (hopefully!) their learning.

Argument 2: Formative Feedback

As students put their ideas to paper, I can see those ideas flow. What I can’t see are ideas that are trapped in their heads. When ideas hit paper, I can offer feedback and guidance on thought processes that I can actually see and engage with. The bigger the paper, the better for this purpose. As I circulate and look over students’ papers, I can point them back to things they have written earlier, making visible connections between ideas that occurred separately in a series. I can tangibly point to things like keywords, and I can encourage them to use unused space on the paper.

Argument 3: Scaffolding up to non-tangible displays of learning

Not every student feels ready to answer a question verbally, to raise their hand, or to launch into a discussion. By engaging students with paper tasks, I aim to give them an opportunity to reflect, write, and sort through their thoughts before asking them to discuss with their peers. A paper can be a springboard to a verbal discussion, but it is also an anchor and a map. When wind begins to fill the room, a paper can remind students where they have been and where they wanted to go.

So far I have been energized by adding paper supports to my lesson plans, and I hope to find more ways to use paper in the future. Last week, we did close-readings of some contemporary reflections on WWI. I used a “Placemat” activity to help students record their thoughts about how these reflections displayed some of that traits that would become hallmarks of “Modernism” in arts and culture. After recording their thoughts individually, students poured their collaborative thoughts into the middle of the page, and then shared their ideas in a larger group of several other pairs who had been working on the same text.

A finished 2-person placemat

Ultimately, Arguments 2 and 3 are the most significant to me. Most importantly, I want to engage students who don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of others, and I want to be able to offer formative feedback to students while they are in the classroom. Paper supports these goals. If you love paper, or if you have ideas about how digital tools can also fill these roles, let me know!