The Faculty Workshop on Great Teaching Practices was held on September 11, with Professor Hari Venkatesan (of the Department of English), the winner of the FAH Best Teacher Award in 2018/2019, sharing his expertise in the incorporation of E-learning tools in the classroom.
Prof. Venkatesan pointed out that in the digital age, classroom teaching at the university level would no longer need to focus on giving information or factual data to students. Instead, a variety of E-learning tools can be used to facilitate information sharing and collaborative learning. He demonstrated that with accessible online tools like Google Docs and Google Survey (among others), students could participate in the problem solving process, critique each other’s work, and provide synchronous as well as informative feedback to the instructor. Prof. Venkatesan advocated the approach of “problem, discussion, and feedback” in teaching, which, he argued, could be applied not only in content courses, but in language courses as well. The E-learning tools are very handy in the implementation such an approach.
During the workshop, Prof. Venkatesan also showed the participants how a regular in-class discussion document could be shared and commented on by generating a QR code. He added that such tools and Google-related applications complemented and enhanced Moodle, which many colleagues are already familiar with. The workshop was well received by FAH colleagues and PhD students.
