Online Peer Teaching in Medical School during a Pandemic Period: A Reflection

Peer-teaching has been rapidly adopted throughout higher education institutions, including medical schools, to provide students with a diverse learning environment and to enhance academic development. Peer assisted study session (PASS) is a peer-teaching program implemented in Monash University Malaysia and was conducted virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perspectives from the viewpoint of peer tutors during the pandemic period are presented in this paper. Throughout the year, peer tutors were confronted with the unique challenges of teaching virtually. Various factors which contribute to changes in the dynamics of group-based discussions in online classes are discussed. On online platforms, students are graced with more privacy and freedom, a double-edged sword that can translate into reduced student engagement. Nonetheless, the practical skills acquired by adapting to the abrupt switch from on-campus to online peer-teaching can be employed in our future practice as health professionals. Copyright © 2021 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

Online engineering tutorials: Investigation into tutors' use of technologies for learning

The transition to online teaching and learning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates scholarship regarding the affordances and challenges inherent in this transition. A wealth of such scholarship has already been produced, most of which focuses on this transition from the perspective of students and/or lecturers. However, a relatively under-explored perspective has been the experiences of peer tutors with regard to online teaching and learning. This paper addresses this gap, by examining how peer tutors in a first-year introduction to engineering design module make use of technological resources to undertake their tutoring activities. Two teams of two tutors each were given a digital, pen-enabled device with which to conduct online tutorial sessions, which were recorded and observed. In addition, the tutors completed personalised questionnaires via email. The results of this study reveal that the tutors demonstrated high levels of professionalism and technological fluency, but that moments of struggle with the technologies still occurred. In addition, tutors also experienced challenges with regard to encouraging student interaction and participation in the online environment. There is a need for additional tutor training and development with regard to promoting student interaction, and strategies to make use of the various affordances offered by technology. Moreover, in a resource-constrained environment such as South Africa, where this research was conducted, tutors may experience additional needs over and above devices for tutoring, which higher education institutions will need to accommodate. © 2021 IEEE.

Work in Progress: Engaging First-year Students in Programming 1 during COVID-19

During the Fall 2020 semester, it became even more important than before to engage students in the “classroom” whether that be in-person, online, or a hybrid model. This paper will introduce various entrepreneurial mindset (EM) techniques to engage students that could be adapted to any engineering course. All the techniques have suggestions for adapting to a fully online course as well as working for an in-person or hybrid class. The first activity presented will be name signs with badges that will promote (1) setting, evaluating, and achieving goals, (2) self-reflection, (3) considering a problem from multiple viewpoints, and (4) seeing the values of others. Example badges include: Being Brave, Stump the Professor, Discussion Board Guru, Peer Tutor Extraordinary, and Nominator. The second activity presented will be Tik-Tok-ing the student's way into learning concepts. This activity focuses on students' creating course content via videos that will promote (1) being able to teach and learn from peers, (2) modifying a product based on feedback, and (3) connecting life experiences with class content. The third activity is using Play-Doh to make connections with material. In this activity students use the Play-Doh as a medium to present technical information effectively to a wide audience and make connections with life experiences and class content. Each activity will be explained with examples from introduction to programming along with methods to adapt to other engineering courses. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021