If you're teaching writing or literacy online, you need a second screen

There was a time when I often wrote about using audio or audiovisual tools to respond to student writing (1), and to reinforce one point about the importance of these technologies for teachers, I would draw a comparison with roofing nailers, and how, since their development, asking people to crawl around a roof with a regular old claw hammer would be inhumane; while writing teachers don't risk falling, the repetitive writing and typing of comments could lead to crippling and career-disrupting wrist and hand issues like tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome.

I'm starting to get to the same mindset of conviction with second screens. If you are an online writing or literacy instructor, a second screen should be standard operating procedure. I have had a second screen for years, but only recently, driven by my pandemic at-home work schedule, have I really started using that second monitor for all of my online teaching and other work.

As many of you know who regularly use a second (or perhaps third) screen, it is indeed work- (and thus, life-) changing. 

For online teachers, a second screen is especially valuable if you teach with complex asynchronous discussions. Using discussions well is a central piece of my faculty development work, and a front-and-center question from participants is how to moderate and manage these conversations. I describe a straightforward process that involves having a Word notes file open while I am reviewing student discussion posts and threads, and I use those notes to cut-and-paste student comments and help prepare my individual responses and overall thread synthesis posts. 

I would like to see a biological eye fatigue study, but anecdotally I'm sure many people would reinforce my experience: It's a whole different experience simply to glance up or over at another screen that has these notes vs. using the ALT + tab (on PCs) to move among different windows. 

This isn't purely about ease of work or eye fatigue, either: It's about being a better teacher. It's kind of like moderating an onsite class in which the students make a bunch of comments and then you must exit into another room and then return to moderate the conversation. There would be a hiccup.

With the second screen open, it's all in front of you. You don't lose track of your place.

Also, and the same goes for responding to student writing, when we're tired we can become crabby, terse, and perhaps unfocused. Students might not be getting our best selves when we're clicking through various windows on our screens. We might want not to see a great point they made, for instance, so we don't have to click back to the notes screen to compose a response.

Second screens should also be standard operating procedure for remote synchronous teaching. I have done many presentations and workshops using a small Surface screen. I like my Surface a lot and it functions well, but to have available slide note files or the Zoom gallery of faces on a separate, larger screen--such functionality makes me a better teacher and workshop facilitator.

Many people in higher education believe we will not go back, ever, to pre-pandemic teaching practices. We will all continue to incorporate more technology-driven approaches. We need to have the proper hardware to do so, and a second screen seems to me to be such an integral piece of pedagogical equipment.

Note

1) For example, “Streaming Media for Writing Instruction: Drexel’s Streaming Media Server and Novel Approaches to Course Lessons and Assessment” in Streaming Media in Higher Education, edited by Charles Wankel and J. Sibley Law (2011), or "Responding to Student Writing with Audio-Visual Feedback” in Writing and the iGeneration: Composition in the Computer-Mediated Classroom, edited by Terry Carter and Maria A. Clayton (2008).