Enabling student participation online
Class description
Course Name: Academic Reading (Political Science)
Student composition: 1st and 2nd year domestic university students
Challenges faced by teacher:
Having taught this course for many years, controversial topics have always come up. The course is in English for non-native speakers, and the themes discussed vary every semester. Usually, I give students the flexibility to identify topics (loosely related to political science) that they find interesting and present/discuss it with their peers. These topics ranged from GMOs to LGBT issues. I always noticed students communicated with their body language more than verbally, expressing their agreement or disagreement, but an in-depth conversation (or even a debate) has not materialized over the years.
The purpose of the class is to develop students’ vocabulary within the discipline, help them read professional and academic texts and familiarize with academic English. In doing so, however, students must acquire some analytical and critical skills, which has been a true challenge over the years. Students tend to summarize articles with no elaboration on the topic and have hard time criticizing arguments. Often criticism is mistaken for personal opinion. During the course, however, in order to allow everyone to conduct some research within their own area of interest, students choose a topic individually and prepare a presentation. Many students choose “classic” topics for political science – elections, diplomatic relations, etc – but some find their own niche and choose to talk about gay rights, academic freedom, discrimination, oppression, colonialism and other topics.
Promoting student participation online was challenging. Some controversial topics, especially those overly-politicized in the country, often evoked strong emotions and disagreements, and in anticipation of an uncomfortable class-environment (with the lack of a debate culture, disagreements can easily feel uncomfortable), most students were silent. Based on my interactions with students from other courses, not many have the courage to speak up – having been raised in a frontal educational system, students tend to sit and listen, rather than engage, ask and discuss. Lack of participation was even more apparent in online environment.
Due to the pandemic, however, we had to switch all education to distance learning and I used one of the recurring topics – bullying in schools and discrimination – as one of the exercises for my students. This topic was brought up in class a few times; discussions were particularly interesting because there was a Roma student in the class. A possibility to discuss this topic with someone who can relate to it from a different perspective was unique, and I decided to use this opportunity to encourage students to talk and participate in class discussion more.
How to address this situation?
Since in-class discussions were not possible due to the pandemic, I decided to engage with each student individually through an online exercise. I chose this method because it allowed for one-on-one, albeit not personal, communication with students, assuring that everyone will express their opinion. I knew that this was a topic everyone should be able to comment on. My concern using an online communication platform to discuss sensitive topics was to avoid a situation similar to the classroom: a few students dominating the conversation and the rest sitting silently.