Technology and opinions in the classroom (Jessica Wax-Edwards)
My first class of the year was, as expected, focused on introducing students to the course. Beyond simply highlighting the upcoming core texts, deadlines and resources, the aim of the session was to start everyone off on thinking about complex notions regarding culture and identity. Frankly, I am not a fan of such broad discussions. The idea of approaching a room of thirty students without a clear prepared definition of the concepts and risking fifty solid minutes of silence is something that most definitely triggers my anxiety. However, I was excited by the intention of the class (to get everyone participating and reflecting on these ideas) and saw an opportunity to emancipate these lofty discussions from the usual ‘same people talking’ or total silence style debates.
I had recently learned about Mentimeter an online tool for interactive presentations and was keen to find a use for it in my classroom. The platform allows you to create interactive PowerPoint presentations that students can engage with in real-time using their phones or other digital devices. I created a few slides, mixed in with my Microsoft Powerpoint, to help encourage participation and get students thinking and sharing their ideas. The first slide proposed a closed (yes/no) question – ‘Have you ever been to Latin America?’. Starting off with such a basic question provided an opportunity for those unfamiliar with the platform to learn how it works without intimidating them; it also gave me an initial understanding of their existing experience of the cultures we would be examining during the course.
Crucially, with the help of the interactive presentation I was also able to pose more challenging and broad questions such as ‘What is culture?’ without alarming the class into silence. Each student was able to contribute ideas and examples without fear of exposure or intellectual shame and by stripping those risks away and simplifying the nature of the question, students were able to contribute universally. Once all responses were received we could then examine the results as a class. No one needed to be singled out and yet together they had responded to the question and we were able to discuss the significance and overlap of their responses as a group.
Response:
Hi Jessica! I have read with much interest your post about how you used Menti in your introductory lesson. I appreciate that it was a great idea to start the session with an easy question specifically to help students familiarise themselves with the platform and to ease both students and yourself into the lesson. It seems that it was also an effective entry point into a high-level discussion of complex abstract concepts and I can see that you used it as a useful stepped approach to raise the level of the discussion. I am so glad to read that students were facilitated into making a contribution where otherwise they might have been ‘alarmed into silence’. The anonymity of Menti is a real boon to avoid students feeling reluctant to expose their opinions out of the risk of embarrassment or lack of confidence. I also appreciate how you used the Menti page as a collaborative document that became a tool for open discussion. I’m guessing that you posted this before the pandemic. Your use of Menti during Covid would probably have had even more beneficial effects in a hybrid lesson because it would have gone some way to integrate remote learners into a collaborative learning environment. I will take away your experience with Menti to inform my own. Thank you. (Kate Ferry-Swainson, Languages, Literatures and Cultures)
Response:
This is a very interesting post and I had not heard of Mentimeter before – I will definitely incorporate this into my sessions. Have you found that interactive tools such as these help students to speak up more in later sessions? I would imagine that once they see their anonymous responses have had a positive reaction they would be more confident to take ownership of these views in future seminars. (Alex Lloyd, Psychology)
This is an excellent post, and it’s stimulated me to think a bit more about how I can incorporate technology into the seminar room. I’m quite a fan of using simple questions at the start of the seminar as a way of opening up discussion later, but I usually settle for more traditional ways of approaching this (e.g. hand-raises). I’ll have to give this a try when I get the chance though, thanks for sharing! (David Ventura, Philosophy)
Hi, Jessica: Thank you for introducing me to the new multi-media software Mentimeter. Disengagement and silence always occur in the lessons of management, since there are just too many students attending one class, so it is difficult for the lecturer to attract the attention of all the students. It also causes me anxiety to face the embarrassment of silence since most of the students are reluctant to participate in the class and answer the questions. With Mentimeter, I can receive an instant response from the students and supervise how much students are participating in the class at the moment. (Jieya Lyu, Management)
Hi, Jessica, thank you for this excellent post. Another way to use Mentimeter is to help engage students when presenting research findings. You could get the students to respond to the research question and only then present the findings, comparing them to the responses of the class. Once the students had to think about the issue themselves, they are much more engaged with the research question and open to discussion. (Elitza Ambrus, Psychology)
Using technology to foster an inclusive class climate (Katie Docwra)
Translation studies naturally attracts students of diverse educational, cultural and dispositional backgrounds (Thomas and May, 2010). In such culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) learning spaces, fostering collaborative learning prevents students working in silos based on their common language. Students from different linguistic backgrounds are a rich learning resource (Barker, 2012), especially for encouraging peer-to-peer collaboration and knowledge sharing. This is particularly relevant in a translation setting. Embracing linguistic differences in the classroom can help to break down barriers between students who experience shyness or anxiety when speaking their second language. In our classroom, emphasis has been placed on fostering an inclusive environment through the use of different learning techniques.
In professional practice, translation is seldom a group exercise. But for beginners, working collaboratively is useful for tackling difficult texts and building confidence. Using technology in our classroom has enabled a collaborative approach to translation, encouraged intercultural interaction and developed a class climate which moved away from individual learning models to a more social approach (Holland, 2017). Using the shared editing tool Google Docs (a link was provided to all students in the class preparation instructions), students were divided into groups of three or four by the course leader. Each group was assigned a paragraph of a longer text to translate directly in the shared Google Word document which was projected at the front of the class. Each group’s contribution was anonymous, allowing more anxious students to participate without fear of judgement. Seeing their peers’ contributions appear in real-time prompted students to self-assess their work and adapt it accordingly. Students were more engaged in the translation process because they felt part of a group that was working in collaboration and not in competition, which reinforced inclusivity as their class membership was validated (CTL, 2018). Importantly, it allowed the tutor to provide instantaneous feedback on the translations produced and offered the opportunity for an open dialogue between students. Students responded enthusiastically and reported that they would like to use the format again.
Works cited:
Barker, M., 2012. Teaching International Students. University Teaching in Focus, pp. 199-213.
Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), 2018. Guide to Inclusive Teaching at Columbia. Available at: https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/inclusive-teaching-guide/. [accessed 18 February 2019]
Holland, B., 2017. To Ban or Not to Ban? Technology, Education, and the Media. Ed Tech Researcher. Available at: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edtechresearcher/2017/10/to_ban_or_not_to_ban_technology_education_and_the_media.html. [accessed 18 February 2019]
Thomas, L. and May, H., 2010. Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education. Higher Education Academy.
Response:
The fact that it prompted students to self-assess is really positive, and I agree that it allows more anxious students to participate through anonymous contribution. My biggest concern, in my experience of using collaborative files or spaces, has been that element of competition. In ways I’ve used it, to encourage students to share notes or create collective notes, I think that feeling of competition over collaboration has still lingered. After reading this I’m going to try and think of ways that I can use this on tasks that are more clearly a collaborative effort! (Lyndsay Galpin, History)
The method used is very interesting, because its outcome is threefold: (a) it develops a sense of collectiveness within students, which make them aim for group excellency instead of individual; (b) in diminishing unnecessary competitiveness and allowing for anonymity, students are encouraged to collaborate with each other; and (c) it builds up confidence among the group, while also promoting positive and healthy criticism through peer-review. I have never thought of using Google Word document in my classes before; however, it could be useful to increase individual contribution and feedback after small-group activities. As I teach International Relations theory, I could create a continuous activity, where students fill out a table of key concepts, history, factors and case studies linked to each theory. This could not only increase their confidence and sense of belonging to a group, but also produce more critical reflection about theories and serve as revision material for their exam. I will definitely try! (Gleice Miranda, Politics and International Relations)
‘Exercices étymologiques’; or, a return to the study of roots (Dylan Sebastian Evans)
In the context of my own teaching, I recognize and understand the plight of students in my French language classes, who constantly struggle with the pronunciation and spelling of words like ‘doigt’ (finger), ‘poids’ (weight), and ‘temps’ (time), whose unsounded or ‘silent’ letters they find perplexing and nonsensical. Here, I believe, etymology or the study of the origins and development of words can help.
In their zeal to standardize the language, early-modern grammarians and philologists ‘corrected’ the Old French spellings ‘doi’, ‘pois’, and ‘tens’ — from which, incidentally, the modern English word ‘tense’ developed — in order to demonstrate their (in the case of ‘poids’, erroneous) association with the Latin root-words ‘digitus’, ‘pondus’, and ‘tempus’. Crucially, knowledge of a word’s etymon, its ‘true’ or original form and signification, can be considered ‘meaningful’, ‘a quality of learning which is related to prior learning, and thus is more likely to be retained and generalized to other learning’.(1) This is because, although they may not fully or immediately realize it, students are likely to have come across words belonging to the same word-family before.
From the same source that ‘doigt’, ‘poids’, and ‘temps’ spring, for example, we get the following French words: ‘dactylographie’, typing, ‘digital’, of or pertaining to a finger or fingers, and ‘digitaliser’, to digitize; ‘apesanteur’, weightlessness, ‘impondérable’, difficult or impossible to estimate or assess, and ‘penser’, to think, literally to weigh (a matter, words, etc.) mentally; ‘contretemps’, an unexpected mishap or hitch, ‘intempestif’, untimely, and ‘temporiser’, to play for time.
As well as making a ‘meaningful’ contribution to students’ learning and understanding, by connecting new learning with what students already know, actively encouraging students to discern meaning, discover connexions, and speculate as to which other words come from the same common root-stock can, I have found, be potentially ‘transformative’, ‘allowing things formerly not perceived to come into view’.(2)
In an age, what is more, where the meanings that we assign to words are keenly contested and, increasingly, distorted, the need for a new radicalism in scholarship — a return, if you like, to roots — could not be more compelling. Alors, revenons à nos racines !
(1) Herbert D. Pierson, ‘Using Etymology in the Classroom’, ELT Journal, 43 (1989), 57–63 (p. 58) <https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/43.1.57> [accessed 20 June 2019]. (2) Ray Land, Jan H. F. Meyer, and Michael T. Flanagan, ‘Editors’ Preface: Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning’, in Threshold Concepts in Practice (Rotterdam: Sense, 2016) pp. ix–xlv (p. ix).
Response:
I think this is a great idea. In my own education I definitely remember instances of struggling to learn things and try to memorise them without understanding why they were the way they were. I think understanding why certain letters are silent will really help people to remember that they are when putting things into practise – and encourages ‘deep’ rather than ‘surface’ learning (Gibbs 1990). (anon.)
Positionality as a teacher (Nemo Martin – they/them)
I have long battled with the idea of positionality. This is something I would like to change, through the thinking done in, of all places, fan studies. Pande asserts that ‘the possible discomfort’ of white fans is often ‘privileged over and above the ongoing discomfort’ caused to fans of colour, and that this discomfort prioritisation reinforces the white supremacist mindset that would rather cause harm to communities of colour than break a guise of ‘neutrality’. Hornsby argues that participants in interviews ‘assumed that because I am a Black female, I aligned myself with certain ideologies […] I worked incredibly hard to maintain a neutral presence online to avoid any perception of bias; however, for some [participants], the color of my skin automatically caused me to seem biased.’ I would argue that if Hornsby had been a white woman, even if she did carry bias into her research, her participants would not have made the same assumptions of ideological bias. Without scrutiny, this behaviour is then replicated without consequence, repeating and upholding structures of power that privilege whiteness, all the while claiming to endorse an apolitical neutral.
My status as someone who is both British East Asian and transgender are factors I cannot ‘mask’ to appear more objective within a classroom setting. Unless I were to create a false persona who did not use the pronouns they/them, the same assumptions made about Hornsby’s impartiality will have an effect on my teaching. I have, throughout my life, masked my disabilities: autism and ADHD are often seen to be those that you can ‘conquer’ if you try hard enough to ‘fit in’. Murphy asks us to reframe subjectivity from an undesirable side-effect of the researcher’s unmaskable identit(ies) to a desired, purposeful one, arguing that cis/straight whiteness has long been deemed an objective and desired control when it is, in itself, just as subjective a position. I hope that in being clear that cisgender, neurotypical and white are not synonymous with impartial and objective, we can shift how students take control of their own education, especially developing critical reasoning skills.
Hornsby, Elizabeth R. "A Case for Critical Methods Sense Making, Race, and Fandom" in Pande, Rukmini. Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices. University of Iowa Press, 2020.
Murphy, Amy Tooth. “Listening in, Listening out: Intersubjectivity and the Impact of Insider and Outsider Status in Oral History Interviews.” Oral History, vol. 48, no. 1, 2020, pp. 35–44.
Pande, Rukmini. Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices. University of Iowa Press, 2020.
Response:
Thank you for your reflections on the positionality of the teacher. I find intriguing how you reflect on the tensions between how we present ourselves, how we want to be perceived, and how others perceive us. In 'Teaching to transgress', bell hooks has written on the significance of the mind-body-split in the classroom, and how a professor's mind is prioritised while physicality is being dismissed. Perhaps you find this an interesting read.
Visual Disability and the Inclusive Classroom (Kate Ferry-Swainson)
Since working with a student and a prof who are blind, I have realised the need to make teaching and presentations accessible for attendees with a visual impairment. As PowerPoint presentations are an intrinsic component of talks and lessons, this seems a conundrum, however. Moreover, visual aids in the classroom assist all learners and are crucial in making education inclusive for students with special learning needs (Sperotto, 2016). However, their benefits ignore the barrier to learning that reliance on visual media represents for students with a visual impairment (Taylor, 2016). While screen readers increase accessibility for blind students, listening to one in addition to following handouts and presentation slides and taking notes imposes a workload and cognitive load greater than that of their fully sighted colleagues (Taylor, 2016, p. 201).
Students with disabilities, including visual impairments, are one of the fastest growing populations at university (Walters, 2010). Within UK higher education, in 2017/18, 3,170 students were registered and identifying as visually impaired (Croft, 2020). Attending to their needs needs to be accomplished without stigmatising them (Taylor, 2016). Disability is no longer seen as the individual learner’s responsibility but as a social issue which requires an inclusive curriculum (Borland and James, 1999). Indeed, learning should not distinguish between disabled and non-disabled students (Madriaga et al., 2011). Notwithstanding, Thompson consciously highlights blindness through her content and delivery, to help students question their assumptions and those of society about disability and to learn that blindness ‘is simply a different way of being in the world’ (Thompson, 2013).
A curriculum may be made accessible by relatively minor changes and a proactive teacher (Taylor, 2016). Practical and achievable tips on audiodescribing presentations help make delivery inclusive (Vocaleyes, 2018). While Ocalicon advises that purely decorative images do not need audiodescription (Ocali, 2021), such images are a wasted opportunity. In my own presentations and lessons, I have striven to select images that add content value, not just decoration, and to describe them in such a way that their significance enhances the learning of all attendees. In this way I have found that inclusivity benefits all learners.
References
Borland, J., James, S., 1999. The Learning Experience of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education. A Case Study of a UK University. Disabil. Soc. 14, 85–101.
Croft, E., 2020. Experiences of Visually Impaired and Blind Students in UK Higher Education: An Exploration of Access and Participation. Scand. J. Disabil. Res. 22, 382–92.
Madriaga, M., Hanson, K., Kay, H., Walker, A., 2011. Marking-out Normalcy and Disability in Higher Education. Br. J. Sociol. Educ. 30, 901–20.
Ocali, 2021. URL https://conference.ocali.org/up_doc/2021_Tips_Audio_Description.pdf (accessed 5.8.22).
Sperotto, L., 2016. The Visual Support for Adults with Moderate Learning and Communication Disabilities: How Visual Aids Support Learning. Int. J. Disabil. Dev. Educ. 63, 260–63.
Taylor, M.A., 2016. Improving Accessibility for Students with Visual Disabilities in the Technology-Rich Classroom. Polit. Sci. Polit. 49, 122–27.
Thompson, H., 2013. My Blind Spot, My Students and Me. The Guardian. (accessed 5.8.22).
Vocaleyes, 2018. Making Your Conference Presentation More Accessible to Blind and Visually Impaired People [WWW Document]. URL https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ (accessed 5.8.22).
Walters, S., 2010. Toward an Accessible Pedagogy: Dis/ability, Multimodality, and Universal Design in the Technical Communication Classroom. Tech. Commun. Q. 19, 427–54.
Response:
Hi Kate, thank you for a thought-provoking and interesting blog post. I particularly appreciated the time and care you spent establishing the tensions between meeting the needs of disabled students and providing effective teaching to non-disabled students. I find your assessment of the importance of a social response to disability and of facilitating learning for all students, including those with disabilities, very convincing. I also appreciate your provision of a practical solution that draws on what you have found effective in your own teaching and will definitely strive to incorporate this in my own presentations. Thank you for sharing your experience. (Aine Bennett, Politics and International Relations)