Saleem Alhabash is a professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations within the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at MSU. He teaches a variety of courses including consumer behavior, digital media strategies and communication research. He also teaches in the online M.A. program in Strategic Communication. He is a core faculty member of the StratCom program and teaches CAS 827: Digital Media Strategies.

 

I have been teaching online for over a decade, both synchronously and asynchronously. Teaching online has further enhanced my pedagogical thinking as an instructor to articulate realistic learning objectives and design specific activities within the course to achieve those learning objectives. Unlike an in-person class, where the instructor can be attuned to students' needs and interests in real time, teaching online requires an ability to develop a deep understanding of students' needs and weave that thinking into a series of course activities that demonstrate acquiring skills and reaching learning goals.

With a background in graphic design, I work diligently to develop visuallyappealing experiences for students. I am very intentional to leverage visual communication to explain course concepts in a way that addresses the challenge of limited attention when viewing a video lecture. I also ensure that students can see me.

I've recorded my lectures with the help of TechSmith's Camtasia that allows for a seamless integration of the instructor's video with the lecture slides. As online environments limit in-person interaction, I feel that having my video embedded into the lecture slides gives a richer experience for students. I also try to be as natural as possible during my video lectures. While I do edit my lectures, I try not to overdo it in a way that makes video lectures sound/look scripted. I intentionally leave pauses, ums and ahs, to ensure that students experience the online lectures as naturally as possible. Fourth, I structure my courses in a way that ensures students understand the link between the content, assignments and activities, and achieving the learning objectives. Finally, I leverage two core values of my teaching philosophy in every activity in the class.

First, I approach teaching with a humanizing pedagogy framework that capitalizes on the importance of understanding the historical and cultural background of all students in the class to ensure that I'm meeting them where they are, rather than setting arbitrary expectations without understanding the lived experiences of each and every students. The second core value is emphasizing the importance of failure. I tell my students that in my class, FAIL = First Attempt In Learning. I structure different activities to allow room for failure without having those experiences determinately influence student performance and achievement. Students have ample opportunities to submit their work and revise it before the final grade is recorded. This has allowed students to take risks in their learning and experience failure as an important aspect of every learning journey. 

My attempt to make the experience as seamless as possible pays off and ensure that students focus on learning and not figuring out the course structure. I follow a consistent structure to every lecture and module in my courses, which helps take away some of the confusion that student may have. On the other hand, realizing my philosophy of emphasizing failure requires some re-learning and un-learning by students. Students of all backgrounds, ages, and experiences have grown up in a culture and society that emphasizes success and stigmatizes failure. 

In my class, I talk about failure – A LOT. I weave it into the very fabric of the course, because the nature of our current environment, especially when it comes to the dynamic changes in the industry, require professionals to develop the skills needed to fail forward and rise from challenging situations. For example, when students submit their first milestone assignment for the final project in my class, I forewarn them that my feedback is going to be tough, and might be perceived by some as harsh, yet I assure them that the grade they receive will only be a draft grade, where they have the opportunity to revise their work and resubmit for a better grade. 

Students take some time to adjust to this style. They are tremendously oriented toward grades as a sole metric of learning, and my teaching style tries to confront that and situate learning to the journey each learner has and the amount of growth they experience over a longer time period. Students eventually absorb this philosophy and affirm that the feedback has been so important to their understanding of core concepts and applying them toward achieving the learning objectives.

I'm a visually oriented person, so I try my best to make the lecture engaging by integrating various media modalities and ensure that the production value of my lectures are good. I also ensure that I'm constantly communicating with students through video. I send them a weekly brief video summarizing the week's activities to ensure that I built a connection with them. Finally, being intentional with my expression and practice of empathy goes a long way. This is not to say that my empathy is unique. I think all my colleagues are super empathetic. Yet over the past few years, I've ensured that I'm intentional with my empathy and that my empathy is not on-demand. What I mean by that is I listen to students and I try to look at the bigger picture of their learning rather than following the structure that I arbitrarily created. For example, I have built wiggle room in my course calendar to ensure that if students needed more time with an assignment, that I am able to accommodate that and offer it preemptively to all students. This goes a long way. Showing that we care is so important to building rapport with our students.

Taking out the guessing and re-learning part ensures that students focus their time with the class on learning rather than figuring the class out. I'm also deliberate in ensuring students learn the course's core concepts and can apply them through a variety of activities and assessment techniques. Offering that variety is important to accommodate for varying learning styles and student objectives.

I truly enjoy teaching online. It is a very different experience that teaching in-person, as it requires the ability to be consistent and flexible at the same time, and above all, be intentional in listening to students and offering them accommodations that are geared toward their success. Finally, the most important aspect of teaching is seeing students learn. Often my students communicate with me a few months and sometimes years after they have taken my class and tell me that what they have learned helped them in their careers. In the midst of the learning experience, it is sometimes hard to see the value, and I'm so grateful that my students can relate their learning to their own progress and growth beyond the time they spend in class.

This was adapted from a story that ran on the College of Communication Arts and Sciences website.