Courses: SOC 427 – Indigenous Perspectives on Canada; SOC 540 – Special Topics in Indigenous Studies
Strategies: Discussion board feedback videos.
In person, Damien’s classes focused on exchanging ideas through discussion. His challenge when transitioning to remote delivery was how to keep the conversation alive and, at the same time, switch his class to an asynchronous model.
To do this, Damien started with discussion boards on D2L Brightspace to give his students a platform for asking questions and discussing topics related to the course material. However, he didn’t stop there.
He went out onto the land, with his dog and his phone, and recorded short video responses to the discussions each week. The videos were recorded in a casual, social media style, and the setting provided a refreshing change of scene.
From there, Damien developed Google Forms to ask for feedback on the videos from his students.
While this approach may not have fully replaced a live in-person discussion, it gave him and his students the opportunity to learn from each other while still having the flexibility he needed to deliver the course from home.
