| Popis: |
The academic year 2020/21 posed many challenges of moving much of the teaching activities which are usually held in-person to an online environment. The priority was to do justice to our students and deliver our usual high quality student experience. A major concern was that students will miss out on the positive spill-overs of interacting with each other, which is an enriching experience. There is evidence of the benefits of group discussions among peers in higher education (Eg: Drouin, 2010; Cambre et al, 2014; Nicol, 2010; Roehling, 2010).\ud The discussion and findings in this article are from the experience in a Postgraduate course, Growth and Development, course coordinator being Prof Sai Ding. Because the programme either started in September 2020 or January 2021, there were many lockdown restrictions resulting in students being unable to interact with each other. All learning outcomes were delivered online. There were 84 students enrolled in the course, who came from many countries. Each unit had recommended readings, lecture slides, videos by the lecturers to complement the slides, discussion questions for online forum, tutorials and weekly online live sessions. This design worked very well and can be continued not only in this course but in other courses. The focus of our analysis in this article is about the design and delivery of student interactive opportunities. |
