Paper Title
Multimodal Expression With Artistic and Digital Tools Boosts Student Engagement

Abstract
A university professor looked for ways to maintain and increase engagement when their teacher education classes were suddenly thrown online during the pandemic. They discovered that opening up more modes of expression had lasting benefits both during and after the post-pandemic era. Many kinds of music, digital and tactile art, rhymed and free verse poetry, and audio and video responses to reading assignments and real time synchronous creation are some of the mixed modes that unfolded. The professor, too, became more creative and in turn more inspired and personally engaged. The article shares five innovative and enduring ways that the online instruction, both synchronous and asynchronous, might be used. The five techniques consist of: Setting the tone for welcoming and introductions; new options for reading responses; choosing topics and assignments that invite artistic responses; including artistic items in course materials; and co-creating group creative projects in “real time”