The Conversation Aaron Chia Yuan Hung

In this season's finale, I talk to Jonathan (@jonathandehaan) and James (@cheapshot), who are professors in Japan teaching English language. Confronted with the challenge of remote teaching without a robust learning management system, each of them have found their own innovative pedagogical approach to teaching, using the pedagogy of Multiliteracies and Connected Learning. Jonathan and James are also co-editors of the Ludic Language Pedagogy, an open-sourced journal exploring games and play in language teaching contexts. To hear more about them and their journal, check out their podcast!

Clara and Aaron talk to two international students, Grace and Yan, about their experiences with remote/online learning. Both of them are taking courses that have had to make a sudden pivot to remote learning. They are also enrolled in an online course designed to be delivered online. That course also happens to be about online learning, and for that class, they had to design an online mini-unit. ((insert Inception theme)). In our conversation, we ask them to compare their experiences and to share their perspectives about what worked and didn't work for them.

In this episode, we chat with Nafiza, alumni of our Educational Technology program, and now working as Educational Technology Specialist at Teachers College, Columbia University. Together, we discuss tips that we think may help anyone new to online course design and instruction. Our topics include: How is online teaching different from face-to-face teaching? What communication tools work best for us? How do we build community? How do we design discussions? How do we present instructions? What mistakes did we make?

Our guest this week is Brandon Dove, the Coordinator of Virtual Campus and Online Services at the Learning and Writing Centers. Brandon discusses what these centers are, and how students can take advantage of them to succeed and become better learners.

Our guests are Professor Matthew Wright, chair and professor of Adelphi's physics department, and two of his students, Carissa and Ravyn. We focus on the importance of getting support from our peers, and of fostering a community in an online class. We discuss the different ways that the instructors stay in touch with students and share ideas on how to best communicate with peers and colleagues. Should instructors put up a front of strength or show students their own struggles? How do students feel about that?

Aaron and Clara are joined by Adelphi University professors Devin Thornburg, Ionas Sapountzis and Lisa Minicozzi on the topic of social-emotional learning (SEL) in this time of remote teaching. Our guests offer perspectives as school psychologists and educational leaders on how we might be able to support children and parents during this time of crisis.