Education Faculty: Chat Rooms, Live Lectures, Break-away Rooms & Student Opinion Pieces

Education Faculty: Chat Rooms, Live Lectures, Break-away Rooms & Student Opinion Pieces

Friday, August 28, 2020

Education Faculty lecturer, Ruben Daniels has utilised the iKamva platform in order to support student-educators enrolled in the year-long EDC 301 module. The lecturer has made effective use of the environment by incorporating various content, communication, and assessment tools to support teaching and learning during the national lockdown period.

‘Chat Room’: Informal discussion space to address student challenges

The lecturer makes use of the Chat Room tool as an informal discussion space, whereby students can respond to various topics set up by the lecturer (in the form of chat rooms). Students also used this space as a platform to discuss course work, concerns regarding teaching during the pandemic, and other related issues.

BigBlueButton (BBB): Live lectures and Group Discussions

The lecturer has made use of the meetings tool to engage with the students for live lectures. 

In addition, he split his lecture time slots and setup live discussions with students groups.

Discussion Forum: Formative assessment - Opinion pieces

The Discussion Forum tool was used for formative assessment purposes. Topics were created, and students were required to post their opinion pieces in the forum. Students were required to comment on another student's response; either to agree or disagree and substantiate accordingly.

This type of assessment allowed students to reflect deeply about the teaching profession and the challenges, especially during a pandemic. Hence, students could voice their opinions while simultaneously collaborating with their peers. Students have also submitted assignments online whereby the lecturer could download and mark accordingly.