{"id":7045,"date":"2021-02-26T10:19:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T10:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/?p=7045"},"modified":"2021-02-26T10:20:49","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T10:20:49","slug":"7045","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/2021\/02\/26\/7045\/","title":{"rendered":"Organising a Peer Review Event of Synchronous Online Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vicky Collins<\/p>\n

v.collins@reading.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

International Study and Language Institute, ISLI<\/p>\n

Overview<\/h3>\n

Each year tutors on \u00a0the Academic English Programme [AEP] run by ISLI participate in an internal show case of tips and best practices as a Peer Review event. This year we \u00a0chose the theme of \u2018Managing synchronous online teaching\u2019<\/em> \u00a0given the level of challenge it presents and creative solutions emerging \u00a0to these. \u00a0The event included a pre task, live demos and talks throughs, an external list of resources for participants, and a final compendium of curated videos (recorded from the live delivery) for wider dissemination in ISLI.<\/p>\n

Objectives<\/h3>\n

The main aims of the annual Peer review event are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • To draw out good practice and reflect on experiences of teaching on the Academic English Programme [AEP] from the previous year or term<\/li>\n
  • To foster a team environment by providing for a network to exchange ideas and experiences<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Whilst acknowledging that there are many tutorials and training videos available widely to support online teaching, for this peer review on \u2018Managing\u00a0 synchronous online teaching\u2019 we were keen to draw out \u00a0tips and practices developed in situ.<\/p>\n

    Context<\/h3>\n

    Since September 2020, the whole AEP team has been involved in regular live online teaching. This includes all aspects of the Academic English Programme from discipline specific courses to webinars on particular aspects of academic language and literacy. \u00a0Prior to this most of our experience and training for the transition to online T &\u00a0L\u202f was\u00a0around asynchronous delivery, so we thought a review and reflection of online synchronous teaching was timely<\/p>\n

    Implementation<\/h3>\n

    I started by researching sub themes within \u2018managing online synchronous teaching\u2019 and developed a list from which to solicit ideas for tips and practices from the teaching team:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Opening and closing a session<\/li>\n
    • Spaces for collaboration<\/li>\n
    • Tools for live interactivity<\/li>\n
    • Multitasking during sessions<\/li>\n
    • Working with longer texts online<\/li>\n
    • Teaching to the void: finding ways of connecting to students<\/li>\n
    • Staging & organising of activities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Soliciting, categorising and developing initial ideas in advance with colleagues helped avoid duplication and also meant I could allocate suitable timings to presentations\/demos . \u00a0The event was scheduled for 3 hours with rest breaks and question times and held on Teams. Given the commitment of time required, this peer review event takes place in January each year- before the Spring term gets underway and also to boost\u00a0morale on return from the festive break.<\/p>\n

      Prior to the event I set a pre task on the topic of \u2018What does live online learning look like for our discipline?\u2019 . A discussion thread was set up and colleagues contributed voluntarily .<\/p>\n

      I also developed a list of external resources on the topic of online synchronous learning to share with participants after the event.<\/p>\n

      The Peer review event itself was recorded, with permission, and I then curated the individual presentations into 18 \u00a0bite sized videos.<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      Impact<\/h3>\n

      A feedback \u00a0survey was issued once all resources had been released. This was completed by 8 out of 12 participants.<\/p>\n

      The aim of the feedback survey was to gauge satisfaction with the event and impact it had on participants preparedness for live online teaching this term [Spring 2021]\n

      In terms of satisfaction, all participants strongly agreed that the event was effectively organized.<\/p>\n

      All participants strongly agreed [5] or agreed [3] that the event and resources helped them to feel more prepared. Varying levels of confidence in live online scenarios are reflected in participants\u2019 familiarity with ideas presented by their peers. Most reported that between 25-50% of the activities were new to them, and two reported a greater percentage.<\/p>\n

      Participants listed a range of the tips and practices presented by peers that they would like to try out this term [Spring 2021]\n

      Reflections<\/h3>\n

      One of the most significant outcomes of this was that despite the plethora of tutorials and training vignettes on you tube for example, which \u00a0teaching staff can consult, a genuine account of these tips and practices \u00a0in situ<\/em>\u00a0 is still much \u00a0valued.\u00a0 My\u00a0colleagues\u00a0 were\u00a0able to discuss with sincerity the pros\u00a0and\u00a0 cons\u00a0of practices they had tried in the past term, and how they hoped to continue building on these.\u00a0 Comments to the pre task \u00a0discussion question were insightful and I feel I learnt much from these as I\u00a0compiled them into a summary. I felt this approach to peer learning was particularly conducive\u00a0i.e\u00a0giving peers a space to contribute to a thread, time to read through other contributions, and then for the facilitator to summarise this so we have a meaningful record of our thoughts and ideas. Not everybody in the team had the confidence to\u00a0present\u00a0 or\u00a0demo tips and practices, and indeed there was no pressure to do so,\u00a0but the pre task allowed for them to contribute to the event in\u00a0a another\u00a0form<\/p>\n

      Follow up<\/h3>\n
        \n
      • The feedback form included\u00a0an\u00a0area for participants to share what ideas from the event they would like to put into practice this term. I will informally review this at the end of the term[Spring 2021] and have set up a discussion thread for peers to comment on these<\/li>\n
      • Participants have given permission for their videos to be used more widely in ISLI for teacher development purposes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Read Vicky Collins approach to addressing the challenges of remote learning, student engagement and new technology within ISLI. This article details an internal peer review event on the theme of \u2018Managing synchronous online teaching. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[14],"tags":[592,477],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7048,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045\/revisions\/7048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}