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Moderator: Catherine Dignam, Framingham State University

Interactive and Agile Pedagogy with the Discovery Teaching Platform

Williams Tarimo, Connecticut College
Alexia Balentine, Connecticut College

Discovery Teaching is a free interactive web-based platform that improves teaching and student learning for in-person, hybrid, and remote classrooms. It offers various interactive tools that help get students engaged and collaborating, including straightforward features for assessment, tracking, group work, and peer feedback. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate the platform and how it supports interactive teaching and learning in the classroom by incorporating feedback polling, formative assessment, forum discussions, group activities, and fun equitable, and welcoming pedagogy for ALL student backgrounds and abilities.

In this workshop participants will engage in a demo class session that is facilitated by the Discovery Teaching platform. While getting familiar with the platform and its various tools, the participants will be engaged in a variety of typical and new classroom activities that demonstrate how to create fun, interactive, and student-centered classroom experiences. We will show how to support remote/hybrid/in-personal modes, as well as synchronous and asynchronous class attendance and participation; incorporate affective and cognitive feedback in in-class polls whereby taking into account student well-being and readiness in the teaching and learning; engage ALL students as diverse learners through back-channel discussions, individual and group formative assessments, and sharing of lesson notes - all in largely anonymous framework adding to student conform and participation; and finally being able to track all students’ levels of participation, engagement, attendance, and mastery allowing the instructor to be aware, make changes, and intervene in a timely and informed manner.