In the past year, so many of us have moved our classes online. We may continue to be online through coronavirus and beyond, as some instructors are considering continuing to offer online classes from now on, in addition to in-person. We’ve discovered that online classes can help make our classes more accessible to people from a broader geographic area, to people with limited transportation, folks who don’t want to deal with commuting to and parking at a class site, folks with disabilities, parents on bed rest, and more.
How do we make our online classes as engaging and memorable as possible? Here are lots of ideas for interactive birth class activities. My examples will go in order from pregnancy topics through the stages of labor and into postpartum and baby care. Most of the techniques can be adapted to many more topics than I address in my example.
Healthy Pregnancy
Due to my state’s Medicaid requirements, we have to cover several specific topics, including substances (alcohol, drugs, tobacco), healthy nutrition and food safety, exercise, sexuality and more. To address these topics, you could create an online Jeopardy game, or create a quiz in Kahoot to use in class, or use Zoom polls to quiz them during class. Or you could use Google Forms to create a quiz to send to the students as “homework.” You could use these wellness cards for ideas for questions and answers to include. You could adapt a grab bag activity by having a slide show with pictures of items and asking them to talk about them.
Anatomy Pictionary
Sharon Muza has a great icebreaker activity where she has students draw anatomy. You can easily adapt this to online classes by splitting students up into breakout rooms, have them use the Zoom whiteboard to create drawings, then screen capture those and return to the main room to share.
Jamboard Signs of Labor
This is an interactive bulletin board type activity, where there are post-its listing symptoms that labor may be starting. Students sort them into possible, probable, and positive signs of labor. Find it here, and make a copy for your use: https://jamboard.google.com/d/1a_zy4wqWA6koO0bfuQ_6aAbZIWjekdMjinHLaO_mjdo/edit?usp=sharing
On a Zoom call, the way you would use this is: paste the link into chat. Everyone goes to the link and they can all manipulate it together, and you can talk them through it. (Learn more about using outside apps with Zoom.) If you’re meeting in-person, I’ve got an old school version of this activity where you print the cards and they sort them.
Comfort Techniques Chat Storm
Tell them “I’m going to ask you all to type some ideas into chat… First, I want you to think about when you’re sick – what helps you to feel better?” They start typing, then you can prompt them more… “It may help you to think – when you were a kid, what did your parent do to help you feel better? Or what did you wish they had done that you think would have helped.” As all the ideas pour in over chat, you can read some out loud, affirm them, comment on how these might be used in labor. Then do another storm for “what helps you to relax?” (more questions)
Comfort Tools Scavenger Hunt
Either during your presentation on comfort techniques for early labor, or in a discussion of “what to pack for the hospital”, send students off to find something in their house that helps when they’re in pain, or sick, or feeling worried. Have them do show and tell, and talk about how you could use those in labor.
Virtual Background for Hospital Routines
When you discuss arriving at the hospital, you can use a photo of triage room as your virtual background. (Learn how to use virtual backgrounds in Zoom.) When you discuss moving to the hospital room, change your background to reflect that.
Word Cloud – what will labor be like?
During in-person classes, I’ve used a worksheet where people can circle words that represent what they think birth will be like (words like: messy, excruciating, beautiful, long…). Then they discuss – if your birth is like that, what support will you need? (Or if you’re providing labor support, and the birth is like that, how will you best support the laboring person?) In a virtual class, you could do this as a word cloud, where all the students add their words, and you’d see common themes arise, as words that multiple people type are shown bigger than those only added by one. I have directions on how to do a word cloud in mentimeter here: https://janelledurham.com/guide…/use-other-apps-with-zoom/
Jigsaw Puzzle Stages of Labor
Take your favorite poster / infographic of the Stages of Labor, and convert it to a jigsaw puzzle, as Mallory Emerson describes here: https://www.lamaze.org/Connecting-the-Dots/Post/series-brilliant-activities-for-birth-educators-solve-the-puzzle-of-virtual-teaching. For copyright purposes, you should only use images that you otherwise have the rights to use in your classroom. You can purchase a variety of images. I like the Road Map of Labor from Childbirth Graphics, but there’s also good stuff available through Plumtree, Better Birth, and Birthing with Guinever. (Find links to those products in my post on Where to Find AV Aids.)
You could either use this as homework – send students a link to do at home after class, or you could do it collaboratively during an online class – maybe as a warm-up before starting class or as a breaktime activity. It’s low key, interactive, and good for the visual and kinesthetic learners to review labor stages by interacting with the images.
Continuum Exercises
In a classroom, I have used a continuum exercise for something like: “If you have TONS of experience taking care of lots of newborn babies, go to that end of the room. If you’ve never held a baby under 6 months old, go to that end. The rest of you array yourself somewhere on that continuum.” It’s helpful to me to see the range of knowledge and helpful to them to see that they’re not the only ones… I have never done this for topics that I feel like people can be judgmental about… “oh, I knew she was one of those people.” But online you can do this anonymously. Have a slide showing a continuum like the pain medication preference scale, and you can have them annotate it to mark where they are. (You could also do this a poll or using another – rate on a scale of 1 – 10 type tool.)
Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down Reactions
They can use Zoom reactions to vote. Could be used for something like: “is this normal or is this a warning sign?” Or “is it time to go to the birthplace?” Or “True or False.”
Show and Tell
Sharon Muza suggests having students bring to class session: something they’ll want nearby when they’re nursing, or something they will use for newborn care. Learn more.
More Ideas / Training
For more general ideas you could adapt to perinatal topics, check out my Zoom Guide for more ideas on Demo Physical Activities on Zoom, Games and Interaction on Zoom, Use Other Apps with Zoom, Using Zoom on Facebook Portal, and more.
If you’d like to learn more about exactly how to use virtual teaching techniques in the birth class setting, I highly recommend the Creative and Confident classes offered by Sharon Muza, FACCE and Mallory Emerson, LCCE.
Transition to Parenthood 