This is a guest post, written by our Digital Learning Assistant, Lucie Hopkins, in which she interviews her colleague and fellow DLA, Shu Tang.
Welcome to the fifth week of Wander Wednesday, and the first week of the fall 2020 semester! I sincerely hope all your hard work this summer is giving you all some peace as we launch into the uncertainty of an extremely new kind of semester. If you haven’t yet, take a look at last week’s post featuring Tram Pham to catch up with the blog. This week, I am happy to present Shu Tang and her thoughts on student presence in the online classroom.
Shu Tang is a sophomore at Muhlenberg, double majoring in Philosophy and Sustainability Studies. She joined the Digital Learning team in her freshman year. Shu is really interested in digital humanities and participated in the Muhlenberg digital scholarship pilot summer program. She works with other DLA members to manage the DLA social media accounts and create ideas for campus engagement on digital platforms.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Shu!
“This blog post will concentrate on student’s engagement in an online platform with their peers and professors. Usually, a discussion board, readings, comments, Zoom/Google meetings, any submitted assignment can indicate whether the student is engaged in the class. In different ways, students can participate in class and it helps professors to access their student’s class engagement. Some common platforms will be Canvas-discussion board, Google-shared drive, Jamboard, Google classroom, and email.
I took some online classes and I participated in digital scholarship research this summer. I think I had an active class collaboration experience during my summer classes. There are comments and replies to the discussion board and students who have their cameras open when we are doing synchronous meetings online. I love to reply to the comment of my peers, and I think it is a great way to learn and gain different perspectives. There is always interaction going on in the discussion session. Every time I feel motivated to engage in a virtual class is when I’m allowed to share my own thoughts, when there is flexibility and room for me to expand.
My professors set class interaction as a part of our final grade, and I think this could be one way to motivate students to engage in class. There are videos and articles to watch and read which could be more fun than listening to the lecture. In this way, students might be more motivated to engage in class. A professor encouraging diversity and giving room for the topic to develop will also be a factor that encourages engagement in class.
The course can also incorporate more interesting and interactive activities. In this way, there are less “boring lectures” and more diverse visualization. Some material I feel is less likely to engage me is material that is all the same kind of format. I think on a virtual base, different media could be used in teaching–for example, articles, videos, maps, timelines games, surveys. Different visualizations for material will make the class more engaging. Moreover, if there are stories and current events that can relate to the class material, that would encourage students to engage more in the class as well. We cannot neglect what happens around us.
I think for student presence, different visualizations on the materials, and current events that can relate to the material will encourage students to engage in the class.”
You can reach Shu at stang@muhlenberg.edu if you have further questions. Have a great week!