ALC 131: Interactive Design for a large class [921 first-year students engage with Lecturers, Tutors and Teaching Assistants]

ALC 131: Interactive Design for a large class [921 first-year students engage with Lecturers, Tutors and Teaching Assistants]

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Lecturers, Prof Venicia McGhie, Parveen Paleker and Lutasha Ndesi, have created an online environment for the Academic Literacy for Commerce (ALC131) students, to allow interactive engagement between students, lecturers and tutors.

 

Structured Course Outline: Outcomes, Mode of delivery, Assessments & Weighting

The lecturers use the ‘Course Outline eTool’ and inserted the specific ALC course outline at the start. Hence students are able to gain an understanding of the course requirements right at the start of the module. The outline includes broad module outcomes and specific learning outcomes; graduate attributes; and assessments and weighting. Furthermore, the students are able to view assessment dates, important contact information and how the lectures will be delivered.

Structured Content Design: Weekly themes [manageable chunks]

The Lecturers upload their learning content in the ‘Course Resources eTool’. The weekly themes are structured into manageable folders and sub-folders, including: Lecturer welcome videos, lecture recordings, pre-reading course material, lecture slides, and other important supporting material (library information). Students are able to download the learning content, at their own pace from any geographical location.

Effective Communication with ALC first-year students

The lecturers make use of the ‘Announcement eTool’ to post information regarding their lectures and online tutorial links. Hence, the students are reminded of specific slots for their ‘online live lecture sessions’ (delivered via Zoom); and online tutorials. *The announcement on iKamva is automatically sent to the students’ email accounts.

 

Assessment and Grading

The ‘Test & Quizzes eTool’ is used to set up formative assessments (strict time-frames in alignment with specific quizzes). Students receive scores/grades on submission. The lecturer is able to view the results and address key concepts and interventions.

 

Tutors divide students into online tutorial groups

The Tutors divided the large class (921 students) into online tutorial groups within iKamva. The groups are assigned to specific Tutors and slots. *There are currently 14 Tutors and 2 Teaching Assistants in this module.

 

The tutor invites his/her specific group to a GoogleMeet/Hangouts; or BigBlueButton (BBB) ‘live online session’. *The students are reminded of the session/link via iKamva ‘Announcement eTool’.

*It should be noted that the online tutorial groups are supplemented with face-to-face tutorials.

Contact CIECT to create your interactive online environment.