Sustaining Active Learning in Virtual Classroom by Fun Man Fung, Wei Heng Chng, Hui Ru Tan, and Magdeline Tao Tao Ng
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onsidering the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and the suspension of many physical face-to-face (F2F) lessons due to the #StayHome measures, many educators have been mandated by schools and institutions to put their teachings online. Many are asking: “How do I lead my online class without losing student engagement?” and “How do I know if my students are understanding the lesson content in real-time?” [1] Despite the unprecedented disruptions to mankind, we need not be paralysed by the COVID-19 situations that besiege us as tertiary institution academics. Being educators, we should embrace this tumultuous crisis as an avenue to blaze a trail in online learning. As the coronavirus threat continues to crescendo, we have found glimmers of hope in some success to sustain active learning in our online classes.
Achieving Engagement with Students Remotely Students may be distracted by any simultaneous household hustling in their homes. Hence, as we transitioned from physical F2F to online lessons, we faced the challenge of maintaining a similar level of engagement. We found that a three-pronged approach—maintain students-teachers interactions; plant regular checkpoints with live responses; and facilitate real-time collaboration amongst learners—were helpful to actively engage learners during the online lessons. In the next three subsections, we will share how the three aspects can be achieved using the various online platforms that we have experimented with.
Maintain Students-Teachers Interactions Synchronous learning is more engaging than asynchronous learning [2]. Synchronous learning usually adopts the usage of webinar tools such as Zoom, Google Hangout Meet, and Microsoft Teams. We used Zoom because it was linked to our learning management system at the National University of Singapore (NUS). There were around 170 students and each lesson lasted for 90 minutes. The lessons were led by a teaching team that comprised a lecturer and teaching assistant (TA). To promote interactions with the teaching team, we encouraged students to engage on the chatbox. In every class, a TA moderated the live chatbox and could clarify students’ doubts instantly. If there were many questions raised on a similar point, the TA would sound to the lecturer to clarify before moving on with the lesson. Despite losing the physical interactions, we observed that students asked more questions using the online chatbox [3]!
Plant Regular Checkpoints with Live Responses Real-time responses were valuable in helping us understand students’ grasp of the knowledge. These live responses enabled us to tailor the subsequent lessons to suit students’ level of understanding of the concepts and keep them engaged. To obtain real-time responses from students, we planted unannounced checkpoints using short quizzes and polls. We found success with PollEverywhere (PollEv). We used PollEv to administer quizzes/polls and obtain real-time responses from students. Apart from PollEv, other interactive platforms such as Mentimer, Kahoot!, and Physical face-toface lesson conducted before school closure (left) and online face-to-face class lesson (right)
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Chemistry International
July-September 2020
