Contemporary Approaches (Asynchronous Session)
Teaching and Learning Online Network View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sandra Abegglen, Mac McGinn, Martina MacFarlane, Fabian Neuhaus
In the wake of COVID-19 closures, faculty, staff and students have found themselves forced to embrace the digital classroom. Like many institutions, the University of Calgary (CA) has worked quickly to pivot to online platforms using both tried and new tools while developing creative solutions for connection and co-creation. The aim of the Teaching and Learning Online Network (TALON) Research Project was to create an interactive lexicon of resources available for remote teaching and to engage the School of Architecture, Landscape, and Planning community in an open and evolving dialogue around emerging technologies and practices. In this interactive lightning talk, the TALON team will showcase the outcomes of their work, building on expert opinion and user feedback, while reflecting on the challenges and potentials of distance education. A key feature of the paper is the presentation of the resource created and the means used to engage the design community in an exchange. As Richard Buckminster Fuller (author, inventor, architect, futurist) said: ‘If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking’.
What Is an Academic Video Essay and How Can It Impact Contemporary Historiography, Teaching, and Learning?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Roy Wallace
I argue that the new form video essay, may offer media literacy access routes to higher education institutions for the under privileged and public history potential for the under-represented in society. I discuss how objectivity functions as an interdisciplinary, blurred yet dominant concept in documentary practice that transforms to fit the academic backgrounds, interests, and critical orientations of its authors. I provide an experiential and scholarly critique regarding the organising and liberating potential of the video essay to challenge dominant representational power relationships using documentary conventions in explicit and implicit ways which promotes the positive aspect of bias in the new video essay form.
Toward Effective Hybrid Curricula: The Case of Data Science and Analytics View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Banasiewicz
Institutions of higher learning have been a part of the fabric of society for centuries, with some of the oldest universities tracing their roots to the Middle Ages, as illustrated by the University of Bologna, which has been continuously operating since 1088. As a consequence, many of those institutions ‘lived’ through anything from devastating conflicts to pandemics to crippling economic meltdowns. And while the world crumbled and changed time and time again, those institutions kept on, largely unchanged because as centers of knowledge creation and dissemination they were seen as unique and irreplaceable, which enabled them to transcend socio-politico-economic upheaval. That favored status, however, slowly began to be called into question with the rise of internet which has been slowly changing the face of learning, most notably by spurring the flow of technology-based learning alternatives that have been slowly but persistently eroding universities’ grip on all-things-knowledge. Those developments not only resulted in some degree of democratization of learning, they also opened up new avenues of instruction. Online education, once merely a sidekick to the traditional educational model, is now emerging as a viable alternative to place-bound face-to-face instructional model; it is also making possible more learning-friendly curricular designs. Within defined domains of knowledge, such as data science and analytics, thoughtfully identified elements of knowledge, framed in the context of 'conceptual know-why' and 'experiential know-how', can be used to structure an effective hybrid curriculum which combines the guided instruction of face-to-face teaching with the flexibility of remote instruction.
Student Engagement in Online Teacher-led Peer Writing Conferences View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Betsy Gilliland, Mitsuko Suzuki, Rickey Larkin, Victoria Lee, Michelle Kunkel
Teacher-led small-group writing conferences (TSWC) blend the benefits of one-to-one teacher-student writing conferences with advantages of peer response. Previous research has identified how TSWCs socialize student writers into discussions of academic writing, giving them an expert model (the teacher) and the opportunity to practice providing feedback to several peers. No research to date has considered how TSWCs work when the conferences are moved into an online environment. This study investigates students’ participation in online TSWC in three levels of English as a second language (ESL) writing courses at a U.S. university. We compare changes in students’ participation across the semester and across different course contexts. Analyzing recordings of Zoom conferences, students’ written texts and comments, and post-course interviews, we argue that the affordances of Google Docs and Zoom facilitated students’ contributions and engagement over time. We found that advanced preparation was essential for participation: students read their peers’ papers before the conference and used the Google Docs “Add Comment” tool to provide comments. Across all courses, those students who put more details in their comments had more to say during the conferences. They were able to refer to their comments in discussing each other’s writing. Across the semester, students contributed more to these comments and to the oral discussion. The Zoom platform allowed teachers and students to use screensharing to highlight specific sections of the papers under discussion and point out valuable comments. Students valued these features of the conferences, although some also wanted more teacher feedback.
Instructor Mentoring Scheme to Enhance Student Engagement in Online Classes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michelle Schilders, Eloise Perini
Adoption of online learning and the importance of student engagement have simultaneously become central in higher education settings across the world. Online learning affords flexibility and in the current global pandemic offers a safe alternative to on-campus learning. Student engagement has been demonstrated to increase learning and achievement and within an online environment student engagement is even more critical as there are fewer opportunities for student to student or student to teacher interactions. Classes and teaching practices designed to promote a dynamic learning environment that foster relationships and learning opportunities are therefore centrally important. This study investigated the degree to which a progressive and systematic mentoring scheme could be developed to support instructors to increase engagement within on-line classes. Engagement was defined as ‘the majority of students talking the majority of the time’. The findings identify that there are specific teaching practices that impede student engagement as well as strategies that promote excellent student engagement. The results highlight that student engagement can be scaffolded over the duration of the live class and that a range of engagement techniques are successful in improving class engagement irrespective of whether the academic was new to teaching or an experienced instructor. Promoting reflective teaching practices and experimenting with engagement strategies also led to a significant increase in the time students contributed to class discussions, increased the frequency of student-to-student discussions, and decreased the reliance on instructor contributions. The findings have implications for how instructors facilitate online courses as well as how classes are designed.
