Adding Spice to Your Online Teaching and Collaboration: Tips and Tricks from Applied Improvisation

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Our rapid transition to online teaching has prompted us to rethink the ways we engage students in our courses. Online platforms offer many tools we can use to make our sessions more inclusive, productive, and fun. By integrating applied improvisation, we can cultivate trust and engagement and foster a human connection that supports a rich learning environment. This session will incorporate didactic elements and interactive exercises so participants can practice the science and art of connecting with others in an online environment. Participants will leave with a collection of ideas they can try right away in their classrooms and in collaborative meetings.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the importance of connection as an essential component of learning and collaborating in online environments.

2. Understand the shift in paradigm that online environments require for productive learning and collaborating.

3. Describe how to cultivate this connection using online tools, facilitation strategies, and play.

Darcy Scharff, PhD

Professor, Director of Public Health Practice

Saint Louis University

Dr. Scharff has spent the majority of her academic public health career working with and in the community to help support their work in improving public health. She works with several local public health organizations to support them in organizational management and public health actions, including strategic planning, board development, grant reviews, assessment, planning, and evaluation. She directs the Office of Public Health Practice that assures that students and faculty have opportunities to work with and in the community on public health practice and practice-based research. She currently works with Generate Health, a non-profit organization with a goal of eliminating disparities in infant mortality, serving on committees and reviewing grants. In addition, she supports Nurses for Newborns, an agency that provides home visitation for pregnant and postpartum women, by evaluating their program and serving on the research advisory board. Finally, she is a co-developer with the St. Louis City and County health departments on a jointly formed academic health department that assures collaboration between the organizations in areas of research, policy, workforce development, and student training with the goal of improving the public health infrastructure.

Nancy Weaver

Professor

Saint Louis University

Weaver applies communication sciences, analytics and public health principles to promote positive parenting of young children and adolescents. Whether encouraging nurturing relationships between caregivers and kids or working with institutions and health care systems to adopt effective programs, she advances strength-based messages that are easy to understand and are highly relevant to diverse audiences.