LAUSR

Against the backdrop of fear and uncertainty during the pandemic, the unprecedented shift to online learning has proven difficult for students and educators alike. A recent survey found the majority of students felt online learning was worse than in-person schooling, largely due to the challenges of staying engaged remotely and the absence of meaningful connections (Wronski, 2020). Many educators are also feeling burnt out by the demands of teaching online. Teaching to black screens and muted audios is hard, and almost 45% of educators said that strategies to keep students engaged and motivated is a major need (Hamilton, Kaufman, & Diliberti, 2020). Like many other educators, this was the predicament we found ourselves in as we began teaching interactive online workshops to middle and high school students in a pandemic summer. As a team of researchers, educators, and social workers, we had felt the painful silence of Zoom classrooms before and wanted to leverage communication theory to enrich our practice of online teaching in a time of crisis. Initially, we thought technocentrically – believing the problem could be addressed with a more diverse set of digital tools (Salomon, 2002). Yet, despite adopting digital learning “solutions” from break-out rooms to Google Jamboards to engage our students, the “gloom” of Zoom persisted. Talking with students, however, helped us realize that the remedy to the emotional distance of online learning lay in the human art of connection, rather than multi-tech mastery. What our students were craving was not another teaching tool, but rather the humanization of the digital classroom. We wondered: how should we use technology to create opportunities for meaningful connection within digital space? We found comfort and guidance in knowing this is not a new problem. A similar challenge emerged in the late 90s, when computer-mediated distance learning was first made possible (Tolmie & Boyle, 2000). Educators asked to teach online were worried about how to translate strategies for student engagement designed for pens, paper, and lecture halls to a new digital modality. For such moments of technological upheaval,