Below is a summary of my conversation with a colleague who also teaches continuous entry courses at TRU.
Q1. What types of courses do you teach?
Ecology and more specifically Animal Behaviour and Evolution
Q2. What types of assignments do you find encourage either interaction with you or between students, for example, on a blog?
- the assignments that result in the most interaction with me are ones when they are doing longer writing assignments like literature reviews or projects and we encourage students to get in contact to work out aspects of their project.
Q3: What are some digital tools in your courses that encourage students to use critical thinking?
- A series of blog posts about big questions in evolution is the main one that sticks out for me and results in critical thinking
Q4: What are some of the considerations you think are important in designing an online course?
- Ensuring academic integrity
- Making students move beyond the textboook and explore the primary literature
Q5: What are some questions that your interviewee has struggled with:
- I haven’t really had many questions that I’ve struggled with, though students will ask questions about material they are meant to review on their own which can be frustrating and challenging to word answers to.
I mainly learned that I have some similar experiences to my colleague in terms of digital tools that promote critical thinking and the assignments that promote interaction within the course. Interestingly, I have not had the same struggle with questions as my colleague and do not find my students ask me questions about course content they are meant to review on their own. I like the idea of a blog around big questions on a topic as that seems like a great way to encourage interaction and perhaps keep conversations going as students continuously join the course.