Panel 3: Teaching practice

Learning and teaching @York in the Coronavirus Pandemic: A conversation (Autumn term 2020)

The third panel included short presentations from the following contributors:

Thomas Ron (Politics): Experiences of teaching synchronous seminars
Aishwarya Vidyasagaran (Health Sciences): The Infection and Disease module 20-21: Teaching Practices in the Coronavirus Pandemic
Sue Porter (Management): Taking a face-to-face module online

These focused on experiences of organising and delivering modules in online and dual delivery. The panel 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. Many of the issues raised are also focused on in the recorded contributions and supporting materials page, notably the reflection of Nicola Sinclair and Gabriel Vyvyan, a third year student in the History of Art Department on staff and student experiences of blending asynchronous teaching and learning activities with synchronous seminars, Penny Spikins's reflections on incorporating strong accessibility and inclusion practices within pre-recorded lectures, and Phil Martin's overview of how he used Xerte to build interactive resources for use in a flipped learning approach. On the same page, Lexie Fields. a first year Undergraduate student in Biology reflects on her own experiences of how the VLE was used on her modules, stressing the need for consistency, clear communication and appreciation of workload demands across the whole level.

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 (28mins 42secs).

Experiences of teaching synchronous seminars - The online flipped classroom

Thomas Ron (Politics)

Thomas provided his contribution via a recording below which focuses on his experiences leading seminars in a large third year Comparative Politics module. He describes how he organised sessions to promote engagement, activity and inclusion, drawing comparisons with experiences of in-person seminars. View in new window or play the video below (15 mins 11secs)

The Infection and Disease module 20-21: Teaching Practices in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Aishwarya Vidyasagaran (Health Sciences)

Supporting document embedded below (UofY login required) or via the following link to view the document in a new window.

Teaching Practice in Inf&Dis 20-21 in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Taking a face-to-face module online

Sue Porter in conversation with Jon Brown (Management)

View in new window or play the video below (15 mins 11secs)

Comments and reflections from participants

@Aishwarya Did you have to encourage students to use the discussion board in some way or did it have a life of its own?
- We asked lecturers to provide a set of questions based on their lectures to initiate a discussion. Many lecturers actively responded to student responses on the discussion board which kept it going.
- Tutors answering actively on discussion boards = top tip for active discussion boards then? - I would say so. Plus having a synchronous session for that week’s topic, which carried on the conversation...
- @Sue, do you think the vle discussion board would have garnered the same engagement as the Padlet?
Sue Porter’s talk: I’m hearing this from several lecturers: engagement all through term compared to f2f lectures. Has anyone in this forum experienced the opposite?
Sue - how did you keep students up to date and oriented between the various activities that you did?
Useful chat exchange on DB v Padlet, and structure and blending between asynchronous and synchronous to maximise engagement:
- Nicola Sinclair: "Re discussion boards - we found padlets (although a bit 'marmite') were more accessible and enjoyable to students and staff. This features in my reflection video with Gabriel (3rd yr student) - LINK BELOW"
- Lucy Turner-Voakes: "yes, agree that discussion boards are a challenge . There was discussion of this at the recent SoTL journal club: https://scholarshipnetworkyork.wordpress.com/ . There are questions re. how to make this kind of participation non-instrumental…one key point I think is to what extent and how we as academic practitioners ‘model’ dialogue, discussion, collaboration etc.."
- Nicola: "Also - key issue was drawing links between the asynchronous discussion boards/padlets etc and the seminar discussions. It was important to make the contributions the starting point for seminar discussions.
- Lucy: "Yep, agree Nicola, weaving asynchronous/synchronous contact is crucial"
(Ellen Roberts): Asynchronous discussions: From teaching on wholly online PGT programmes for some time, I have found that participation in asynch forums seems to be influenced by a couple of factors in particular: i) the design of the task (making clear what the purpose will be and how this will help them) and ii) by ‘tutor presence’: students seem to ‘model’ tutor behaviour. So if a tutor is actively and visibly present and responsive, students will mirror this and engage as well. Likewise, if a tutor disappears, or doesn’t appear to be genuinely ‘listening’ and noticing, then students will as well. I think this is in line with Aishwarya’s reflections.

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