Report on the September and October 2020 sessions of Brown Bag Lunch & Learn (BBL)

Brown Bag Lunch & Learn (BBL) sessions took place on September 4 and October 15. Continuing from the Spring Term, faculty and staff members are meeting online once a month this term at the BBL to network and exchange ideas.

September 4 BBL session (BBL #4)

Theme: Let’s exchange tips for Zoom lecturing

Host: Prof. Kei Nasu, CTL Steering Committee Member

Prof. Nasu, who taught a class with more than 80 students in the Spring Term, presented 10 tips for lecturing large classes on Zoom. Many Autumn Term courses are being taught in online or hybrid mode, and more than 15 members of faculty and staff attended the session. Since a considerable amount of useful information that could be applied directly to conducting classes this term was given, we decided on the spot to make a video of the talk available to all faculty members.

Prof. Nasu described how he worked carefully to engage in mutual communication and build trust with students — some of the things he did included asking all students to enter something in the Zoom chat box each time they joined a Zoom meeting for the class (just typing “Hello” sufficed), building a sense of connection among students by using the quiz (polling) feature, and implementing measures to conduct final exams remotely.

A video of the session is available here (ICU faculty and staff only).

October 15 BBL session (BBL #5)

Theme: Digital literacy in the world of disinformation

Host: Prof. Stephen Nagy, CTL Steering Committee Member

This session took the form of a lecture given by Prof. Nagy. It was attended by 20 people, many of whom were participating in the BBL for the first time. Part-time lecturers and teaching assistants (TAs) were among those who participated in the session.

In the lecture, Prof. Nagy explained that disinformation is deliberately being used on social media and on the internet, and discussed concrete ways to identify disinformation. The lecture was followed by a lively question and answer session, and it was suggested that it would be good to have a lecture on digital literacy for students as well.

A video of the session is available here (ICU faculty and staff only).

In November, a BBL session will be given by CTL Steering Committee member Prof. Aoki.