What’s the best part about living in Switzerland? I don’t know, but the flag is a big plus.
When the news came that our local colleges were switching from face-to-face courses to online modalities, I let out a little silent scream… “Noooooooooooooo!!!”
Classroom culture is a big part of what I do. To create classroom participation, I reach into my teacher toolbox, where I grip some fantastic “mindset” instruments. One of them is dad jokes.
You read that right. Dad jokes are quick: set up, punchline – just like that. Boom. Boom.
So, yes. I challenge my students to be erudite, to think critically, to become terrific analyzers, to break down complex materials and synthesize their own original thoughts around them.
But hey! That’s hard. Nothing wrong with lightening up the mood.
Thus, dad jokes.
It works like this:
I stand at the podium with index cards. I shuffle them prior to class starting. Once the class is underway, I may pause the lecture from time to time to check for understanding. I pull a card and call upon a student to refresh us. We practice this during the first week as part of the orientation to the course and how it operates.
There is, however, one rule: you can never say “I don’t know.”
Instead, you must do one of three things:
Answer the question
Bluff
Give a dad joke
I know this may sound a little unorthodox but. . . I have had students admit to me that my class was hard, but they stuck it out because . . . yep, dad jokes.
Anyway, my Multicultural American History class was amazing. The learning culture had been firmly cemented. Student attendance was high, scores on the written assignments improving, and laughter or moans and groans (depending on the delivered wit) was – you guessed it, prompted by a bevvy of dad jokes.
Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom? Because the “pee” is silent.
But that class (and all the others) came crashing down due to a virus called Covid-19. A world pandemic had broken out ala 1918 and colleges and universities across the country switched from face-to-face to online modalities faster (hopefully) than this spreading virus. My multicultural class, with its propensity for laughter and learning so meticulously cultivated, was pulled out from under my terrific scholars in training and me.
I shook my fist at the universe, initially, anyway.
Soon, though, the classroom was back up and running in cyberland. Not face-to-face, more of a facsimile and not a very good one. What to do?
As a college teacher who DOES teach online, who has created online courses, and who has witnessed online students vanish around weeks three to five because – who knows – has learned a trick or two to prevent these unwanted drops and disappearances. After all, I want my online learners to be successful, gain some skills, and move on to earn their degrees. That cannot happen unless they attend and do some work.
A small epiphany struck me about a year and a half back. A revelation that appeared when I asked this simple question: Why am I losing online students when so many of them spend a huge amount of time online steeped in social media?
The answer is startling simple: they spend time on their TikToks, Spotifies, Intsagrams, and whatevers because they’ve formed communities.
If I want to hold students for the duration of a semester, I then need to create on their online Learning Module System (LMS) a community of some sorts.
Nothing brought this home to me more than losing my well-honed, meticulously groomed, and well-functioning face-to-face Multicultural History course to the Covid-19 virus. How do I keep the classroom culture that existed?
Answer: dad jokes.
My wife gets mad at me frequently because I have no sense of direction, so I packed my bags and right!
Our college’s LMS is Canvas which has a “decent” Discussion Board functionality (truly, Canvas, it’s only decent).
I created – “Dad Jokes” on a Discussion Board, made a little icon (fish included), and within minutes of announcing was rewarded with my first student submission. The “Dad Jokes” on a Discussion Board was born.
The implementation of using discussion board functionalities to develop a “community” came to me as I wrote instructions for my Fall 2020 online Modern World History survey course. Instead of “dad jokes,” however, I was asking students to find music.
An online database, “Songs Based On Historical Events,” houses music of the political genre. Run by a firm called “Genius,” the idea was to create a music- and politics-centered collection of songs powered by a “community” of some “2 million contributors” to assist in the maintenance of a dynamic and growing database which merges music, history, and politics.
The kicker, here, was to make specific that any participation on this discussion board and any submissions to the Genius database remained voluntary. I will award points, but they are extraordinary points. Participation in the grade book is registered as zero, thus any points I add help a students grade, not detract from it.
In theory, students come to such an online “community” and then while there – oh, yeah – I’ll stay and get some work done.
So far it’s working with the “Dad Jokes” Discussion Board. I’ll keep you updated.