Posted by Cynthia Brame on Tuesday, February 22, 2022 in Events, hybrid teaching, learning assistant program, Learning Communities, News, online teaching, Resource.

Learning Assistant Instructors 

Learning assistants, or LAs, are undergraduates who serve as peer educators in courses that they have previously taken. Supported by training in pedagogy, they extend the reach of faculty members implementing active learning components in a course and help provide personalized experiences that increase students’ sense of belonging.

In this learning community, faculty who are currently working with LAs or are considering doing so in the future meet via Zoom on the first and third Tuesday of the month, 1:30-2:30, to discuss challenges, successes, and the approaches they are trying. Email Cynthia.brame@vanderbilt.edu with questions or to request the Zoom Link.

Online and Hybrid Teaching Working Group

In this series of three meetings via Zoom, our group will explore experiential teaching online through the lens of telecollaboration, online community engagement, and online course design. Join us for one, two or all three of these conversations in which we will explore resources and challenges associated with experiential online and hybrid courses.   

Tuesday, March 1, 3-4pm

Telecollaboration and Virtual Exchange

Virtual exchange and telecollaboration require students from different countries, cultures, or contexts to collaborate to accomplish a task online, typically using video conferencing. For this meeting, we will prepare by listening to an interview with two experts in virtual exchange, then meet together at 3pm to discuss how this form of experiential online learning might apply to our contexts. 

Tuesday, March 29, 3-4pm

Online Community Engagement 

Online community engagement allows students to engage in service and practical learning experiences even when they cannot be physically present in a community. For this meeting, we will prepare by listening to an interview with experts in online community engagement, then meet together at 3pm to discuss how this form of experiential online learning might apply to our contexts. 

Tuesday, April 19, 3-4pm

Experiential Online Course Design

 There are a variety of existing models for designing experience-based online courses. For this meeting, we will prepare by reading an overview of the most widely used experiential models, then meet together at 3pmto discuss our challenges and next steps in designing experiential online courses.