The first panel included short presentations from the following contributors:
Steve King, Jill Webb, Tom Cantrell (Faculties of Sciences, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities): Reflections of Associate Deans in dealing with Covid19: working with departments in our Faculties, and at institutional level.
Sally Quinn (Psychology): Structure, communication and transition; a whole cohort approach for years 1 and 2 in the pivot to online learning.
Richard Waites (Biology): Working with students to develop COVID teaching plans - The student engagement experience in Biology.
The recording is provided below followed by longer recorded presentations or supporting materials from each of the contributors providing a more in-depth reflection on their practices. The comments and reflections on each panel from session participants have also been included below.
You can view the session recording on this page (make sure you are logged in to Panopto first) or by following the link to view the session in the Panopto viewer (24mins 53secs).
Tom, Steve and Jill began by providing an overview of their work with Departments and through the Academic Contingency and Faculty Learning and Teaching groups. They focused on their attempts to flexibly respond to policy changes, often at very short notice, and of the need to strike a balance between flexibility and standardisation of approaches whilst navigating through the demands of consumer regulation. They also provided some insights into the student pulse surveys, stressing the importance of belonging and connection. This echoes some of the key findings from the pre-pandemic student engagement project and a summary of the finding related to community can also be found on the recorded contributions and supplementary materials page.
Supporting document embedded below (UofY login required) or via the following link to view the document in a new window.
Sally provided a summary of the approach taken in the Psychology Department to responding to the Pandemic focused on years one and two of the Undergraduate cohort. She highlighted the actions taken to increase and improve structure, communication and transition support and reflected both on how these were linked to developments pre-COVID and to post-pandemic planning. An expanded presentation to support her summary is embedded below [View in new window or play the video below (15 mins 35secs)].
Richard provided an overview of attempts to improve communication and involve students directly in planning across the Biology Department. He highlighted large-scale online polling to ask students how they are getting on and elicit their feedback as a key element of the approach to establishing rapport, building trust between staff and the 1400 students in the Biology Department, and supporting staff in responding to student needs.
View in new window or play the video below (10 mins 45secs)
A 'live document' was used to record comment, reflection and discussion during the panel. These are captured below for reference:
Sense of belonging and community is so important to include when planning for engagement with students. Thanks to Jill for these wise reflections. I experienced a staff online pub quiz yesterday that made me think it would be a great ice-breaker or social event for departments to run.
The point that Jill made regarding the importance of human connection (with staff and fellow students) to learning also came out strongly in the (pre-pandemic) Student Engagement project. Results from this are summarised in an article here (also available in the supporting resources section of the programme).
Sally’s coherent and structured approach across the dept is very interesting (and inspirational) and I wondered how this was handled across staff members who wanted to do things their own way, and how you managed the workload for VLE structures with staff of different levels of comfort in this space.
Further response from Sally: We found that explaining to staff the benefits of taking a structured approach was really important to get them on board. Thankfully, they trusted our approach and could see the benefits so we didn’t have any staff who wanted to do their own thing
Sally Quinn’s talk - “consistent structure” is something that really helps students, expressed by students in many focus groups. Wish all departments would get on board with having a department VLE template. #accessibility
Sally : I really like this structured approach across modules and there is some learning for other departments/ Whatsapp a great idea (would like details of how you did this)
Response from Sally: re the Whatsapp group idea, it was left to the students to arrange between them but it was suggested by their academic supervisor and the students were generally quite grateful to have the opportunity to talk to other students on their course albeit virtually
Sally - several students have commented that they really like planning their own schedules, did you get any push back on the one module a day approach?
Sally - love the idea of a transition video produced by students
Isn't it interesting that colleagues being further apart has actually brought some depts / programmes / colleagues much more together. We are discussing the value of community because we have to think more about maintaining it. Maybe we take the department community for granted when we are around each other all the time.
Sally’s talk: Amazing how after years of proposing flipped approaches that it is finally adopted overnight and that it works. I hear students are also more engaged throughout a term (reported by academics who have kept track), although I hear some students have yet to engage in some modules! How are people monitoring engagement, generally?
Reflection: Some of the changes made by departments to cope with Covid are now going to be part of the programme design going forward.
