Teaching Remotely: Shared Experiences

This session was about exploring strategies and opportunities to build connections and create feelings of community within the online learning environment. Our panel of guests shared their experiences, both failures and successes as they worked to test and implement new ways of engaging with their students.

Our panelists were:

• Peter Cockett, Associate Professor, School of the Arts 

• Krista Howarth, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology 

• Mostafa Soliman, Assistant Professor, Booth School of Engineering Practice & Technology 

• Teal McAteer, Associate Professor, Human Resources & Management 

Our shift to remote teaching and learning has encouraged us to explore beyond the physical classroom and to engage in new ways with our learning communities.  

There are many opportunities in virtual spaces to experience education from virtual and augmented reality to simulated laboratory environments—there are exciting and innovative opportunities emerging.  

Our panelists were:

• Felicia Vulcu – Associate Professor (teaching), Undergraduate Program Advisor, Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
• Hatem Zurob – Professor, Chair  Department of Materials Science and Engineering
• Pat Clancy – Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy/Science 
• Elizabeth Doyle – Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Just over a year ago we made the abrupt transition to teaching and learning online. As we consider what a return to the classroom might look like, we must also consider how the ways in which we’ve approached teaching and learning in a virtual environment has had an impact on what this return might look like.  

Together, we explored what blended pedagogical environments and spaces have been implemented across a range of disciplines and courses.

Our panellists were:

• Joanne Kehoe – Lead Educational Developer: Educational Technologies (MacPherson Institute)
• Jamie-Tyler Sewerniuk – Learning Technologies Help Desk (MacPherson Institute)
• Rosa Da Silva: Biology  – Assistant Professor, (Teaching Stream), Biology & Associate Chair (Undergraduate) – Faculty of Science
• Rita Cossa: Business – Associate Professor, Strategic Management – DeGroote School of Business
• Rashid Abu-Ghazalah: Engineering – Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream), Biotechnology – W. Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology

Relationships, studies, research and work have all been impacted as a result of the transition to a remote teaching and learning environment. These changes have also disrupted graduate student activities such as degree completion, thesis defenses, and academic research. Supervisors and mentors will need to be prepared to help grad students navigate these challenges and inevitable changes that must take place to successfully deliver on their plans, timelines, and program requirements.

Our panelists were:

• Sandeep Raha, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics & Director, McMaster Children and Youth University 
• Lorraine York, Distinguished University Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies 
• Qiyin Fang, Professor, Department of Engineering Physics 
• Karen Balcom, Associate Professor, Department of History & Sarah Whitwell, PhD – Department of History

The first panel session looked back at the hurdles, stumbles and triumphs experienced by teaching peers across campus during the spring/summer online transition.

The panelists were:

There is a growing need to consider equitable, inclusive and diverse spaces to support the holistic growth of students from various backgrounds and experiences in our learning environments.

We understand that there is a growing need to attend to accessible course design, content creation, and course delivery to support instructors in meeting the needs of  students with disabilities, as well as students experiencing accessibility issues for potentially the first time, with the sudden and disruptive shift to online / virtual learning environments.

Our fourth virtual panel was about fostering increasingly accessible and disability-inclusive spaces in your classroom, with your teaching and within student learning communities.

Our moderators were:

• Kate Brown, Manager Accessibility Program-Equity and Inclusion Office
• Jessica Blackwood, Accessible Digital Media Specialist-Faculty of Science

Our panelists were:

• Allison Williams, Professor, School of Geography and Earth Sciences
  
• Li Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesia
  
• Anne Pottier, Associate University Librarian

During this session, we experimented with a few accessibility tools. The video is captioned with MacVideo (Kaltura) automatic captioning. During the session we also used Otter.ai captioning (a paid service) as well.

We also had Ai-Media provide a human-generated transcript of the session. You can read or download it here.

As with all of the sessions, this one had a lively chat where good questions were asked and resources and links were shared. You can view a copy of that here.

There are many moving parts to consider as we pivot this Fall to a complete online teaching model for introductory psychology.

We had a discussion with key members of McMaster Introductory Psychology program transition team: Joe Kim (Course Designer), Michelle Cadieux (Course Coordinator), Thomas Samson-Williams (Head Teaching Assistant) and Joseph Oluwasola (Student).

This edition of our virtual panel series focused on transitioning a large course to an online format that includes both synchronous and asynchronous components.

In the online space we must re-think traditional methods of evaluation and testing. Fortunately, there are many individuals at the University developing authentic, meaningful and impactful ways to assess students in an online environment.

Panelists were: