Teaching Online at UTAS

Are you looking for a way to track student engagement and participation in tutorials? Maybe you just want to know whether the ‘quieter’ students understand the unit content?

Smith (1992), cited in Jacques and Salmon (2007) provides one possible solution. Students were told to provide a brief note (1 – 2 sentences) of something useful that they had said or thought in class, and hand this in to the tutor at the end of the session. A small grade was associated with each contribution (1-3 marks), but only if the contribution was a valid one.

The tutor would record the grades, then hand back the slips in the next tutorial with some brief feedback. As an alternative, general feedback could be provided to the whole class. To inspire contributions, a ‘contribution of the week’ could be shared with the whole class. A selection of slips could be read back to the class as a ‘recap’ of the previous week’s activities.

Reference

Jacques, D & Salmon, G 2007. Learning in Groups: A handbook for face-to-face and online environments, 4th edn, Routledge, New York. *This text is available at the UTAS Library.