The third “Brown Bag Lunch & Learn” was held. (June 18, 2020)

The third “Brown Bag Lunch & Learn” was held online on June 18. The theme was “Reflecting on Your Experience This Spring Term.” Professor Ikoma, CTL Management Committee member and FD Committee member, served as the facilitator. The Brown Bag Lunch was attended by ten faculty members and five staff members from CTL and the IT Center.

Listed below are excerpts from the responses that participants gave to the question “Reflecting on your experience this term, what did you learn?”

• Since it is not possible to establish eye contact with students, I am paying more attention to communication.
• Going about doing mathematics exercises online smoothly is an issue going forward.
• There are a great number of existing resources on the Internet like MOOCs. In such a context, I was made to think what lectures that can only be conducted on the spot and that can only happen at ICU are.
• In online classes, questions and responses take a written form. I feel that this was beneficial for students whose mother tongue is not English.
• I noticed that students sometimes approach you and ask questions or speak to you individually when you remain on Zoom after your class, so I intentionally tried to remain on Zoom after class. It seems students find speaking to you like this easier compared to speaking during class.
• The importance of student engagement is increasing further.
• It is also important to maintain students’ motivation. I deliberately incorporate time for activities, quizzes, and reading material on Moodle, among other things.
• After doing group work using breakout sessions on Zoom, I asked students to write their responses simultaneously on a Google Doc etc. that had been shared with everyone. I think this method could be used effectively even after face-to-face classes resume.
• I set an assignment about the coronavirus. Students were greatly interested and reacted well to it.
• When we did group work using breakout sessions on Zoom, I saw students in upper years giving advice to new students on how to do group work and student life. Students were communicating with one another.

At CTL, we will solicit from faculty members examples of the things that were learned or good practices like those presented above, and offer support so that they can be utilized for future learning and teaching activities. The “Brown Bag Lunch & Learn” is scheduled to take place a total of three times in the Autumn Term in September, October, and November. It will be facilitated by CTL Management Committee members and FD Committee members.