Keep it Active: Engaging Students in Virtual Classrooms

Rena Levitt

Speaker

Details

Many institutions of higher education have transitioned to online teaching over the past few weeks in response to the novel coronavirus. As a result mathematics faculty are being asked to rapidly translate their courses from brick-and-mortar classrooms to virtual environments. These online modalities require faculty to reassess how they engage students. We faced a similar challenge five years ago when founding the Minerva Schools. In the time since we have taught hundreds of college students math in real-time virtual classrooms. In our experience, synchronous classes are most effective when students are actively engaging in well-defined tasks throughout the session. In this seminar, you will take the role of a student in a portion of a Minerva calculus class session. After the class simulation and debrief, we will have anopen discussion about translating active learning techniques to synchronous, virtual classrooms.