The COVID-19 pandemic brought teaching pedagogy to the forefront when universities had to suspend in-class learning and move primarily to an online environment. During that transition, I found myself being drawn into conversations regarding successful teaching methods and evolving student needs. The past three years of teaching through the pandemic and in the post-lockdown period have forced me to explicitly define my values, organize my methods, record my paths to success, and critically reflect on failures. I write this statement while actively re-evaluating my teaching practices so that they better align with or express my values. A foundational value in guiding my teaching is fostering student engagement in a way that is impactful to the student’s overall learning experience and outcomes, all the while cultivating an environment of compassion that takes into consideration universal design premised on equity and inclusion of diverse learning perspectives and needs.

What I mean by engagement

While reflecting on my teaching career, I realized that I was never taught to teach higher education as a new Teaching Assistant during my master’s degree. I simply modeled the professors whom I knew and admired, but I didn’t question systematically whether these practices worked for me or the needs of the students. However, after reflection I am drawn to and excited by the idea of incorporating active teaching methods in my classes because they are adaptive to the changing context of teaching and learning. Engagement means deploying these active methods as I’ve set them out here. 

Throughout my teaching career I have tried to foster student engagement with course material that is primarily content driven. I am excited and curious about the significance and implications of the  arguments and frameworks brought forward by the thinkers that make up the content of the course, and I encourage the students to join me in my own investigations of these thinkers. A lot of my time has been spent crafting mini lectures and discussion questions for tutorials. I guide students through the material by presenting discussion questions and having them break into groups to discuss these questions.

While the students are in groups, I listen for common obstacles to understanding the material, and my approach is to help them work through the blockages by drawing their attention back to the text. I appreciate engaging with students in smaller groups as some students have felt more comfortable asking questions in that setting. After a 15-to-20-minute group discussion, I bring everyone back as a class where each group presents on how they addressed the question or what the group found most significant or confusing. I encourage students to present the material in a way that engages all members of a group. Students are more willing to participate in this setting because they have a stake in forming an initial understanding of the material with the small group and an opportunity to re-articulate those partly formed ideas to the larger group.

When we switched to online learning, I employed breakout rooms for groups. I found myself a bit detached during this process as switching in and out of groups was clunky and more invasive than casually walking around a classroom. After reflection, I decided to incorporate Google documents to give a sense of persistent shared context to the breakout groups. Here, I provided a link to a shared Google document that allowed students to work on discussion questions collaboratively in real time, allowing me to remain engaged. The added benefit was that they kept a material artefact of the discussion that includes notes on the key points and concepts presented in the reading as they relate to larger themes in the course.

However, I have realized upon reflection that this may not be the best way to get students excited about the material on their own terms or to have them become more active in the way they work through the material. In addition, another specific challenge that I face while teaching is that there is a time limit for each session, so I am usually unable to address all the questions students have about the text and how they may apply the text to coursework. I have come to realize that I need to ration my tutorial time to address these questions and to work through the blockages of those who didn’t feel sufficiently confident to participate verbally earlier.

To address these two limitations—differing skill in working through the material and time limitations—I have started applying a more active learning pedagogy that offers greater variation in the way that I present material and more opportunities to invite students to engage with their own learning process. I am drawn to this teaching method because it encourages students to participate in meaningful learning activities and to think about what they are doing for themselves. This method is inclusive of many different learning styles, which includes reading, thinking, writing, and speaking critically while examining personal attitudes and values in relation to course content. Finally, this framework allows for regular opportunities to receive feedback from students, which allows me to adjust my teaching so that I can better meet needs as I identify them.

This pedagogy is attractive because of the many ways it creates opportunities to provide feedback, anonymously or not, and moments to identify areas where students are still struggling. Here the activity “ticket in the door” is useful. I collect questions, comments, and suggestions on sticky notes at the beginning of the session and group them with the class, noting any categories that form. This way, I am able to tailor my tutorials to address issues and highlight areas in a way that is student-led and co-designed rather than using tutorials to reframe or reiterate the lecture in a way that I find useful.

I am also particularly fond of the 3-2-1 activity. For illustration, students identify three important points from that week’s lecture, two limitations of this perspective, and one question or a point that is still unclear. Another activity that allows for direct engagement is “say something”, which is an activity that provides students with an opportunity to engage with a text and then respond to it in a low stakes situation. Typically, students read a text up to a set point (e.g., the end of section two) and pause to “say something” about what they’ve read to their partner. They may summarize the section, identify a key point, share their thinking about a new idea, or raise a question about a concept or the framework presented. 

I continue to be inspired by active teaching methods because of the iterative design and ability to engage with a diversity of needs and perspectives through various exercises that employ individual and group level critical thinking. Oscillating between semi-directed individual, small group, and class activities gives students both the space to develop independence of thought and more confidence to participate verbally. The critical part of each student’s journey happens as they test the interpretations that they first formed alone in progressively larger groups. 

Kindness through a universal design

Over the past three years, I have been part of a class that included both written and oral tests. It was a great experience because some students struggled with the written portion of the course but increased their grade through the oral exam, while others who found the oral exam difficult did well on the written work. This opportunity allowed students with different abilities to express what they had learned in the course. During this course, many students also displayed or expressed anxiety over speaking in tutorials. As a response, I posted weekly discussion questions online where students who felt uncomfortable being vocal in the presence of others could still participate online. In addition, practices like ticket in the door allowed students to not only ask questions non-verbally but also to visualize how their question is situated along key principles and their relationships to the text and course when I physically group questions on the broad along thematic lines. These practices are influenced by the idea of universal design, and this model is appealing because it allows for a class to move from equality to equity while assisting in eliminating unconscious bias in assessment and encouraging the circulation and engagement with diverse perspectives through various learning platforms. 

I take steps to foster an environment of compassion predicated on the ideas of universal design by advocating to include varied forms of assessment and engagement with the material by widening our understanding of what counts as knowledge and how that knowledge may be understood and applied. 

Concluding thoughts

I am still early in my career and in the process of learning what it means to be a good instructor, especially how to practice the values that I hold to be important. This practice is always evolving, and I am keen on staying abreast of the changing needs of students and new teaching pedagogies that respond to these needs to enhance my students’ learning experience.