I'm a student: break me out of here!

Douglas, Shonagh

Abstract

Comparisons can easily be drawn between landing in a jungle and the move to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lecturers had to adapt to new surroundings and fight to survive. Whilst Ant and Dec replaced the Dingo Dollar Challenge with the Castle Coin Challenge, lecturers had to quickly find replacements for tried and tested pedagogical tools. One challenge for lecturers was maintaining student-to-student dialogue, an essential component of learning (Alexander, 2020; Laurillard,2013), traditionally achieved through in-class small group discussions (Postholm, 2008; Skidmore and Murakami, 2016). Going virtual, breakout rooms often provided a replacement. However, informal feedback from students indicated that breakout rooms were problematic and they were indeed thinking "Get me out of here!" This presentation will share the results of data collected from a questionnaire to Year 2 Aberdeen Business School undergraduate students (n=115) to evaluate the effectiveness of breakout rooms in achieving student-to-student dialogue using Laurillard's (2013) Conversational Framework as a framework for analysis. Lessons learnt in running effective online breakout rooms will also be disseminated.

Citation

DOUGLAS, S. 2022. I'm a student: break me out of here! Presented at the 2022 RGU annual learning and teaching conference (RGU LTC 2022): enhancing for impact, 21 October 2022, Aberdeen, UK.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: 2022 RGU annual learning and teaching conference (RGU LTC 2022): enhancing for impact
• Start Date: Oct 21, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 3, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 3, 2023
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Virtual meetings; Online meetings; Virtual learning; Online discussions; Undergraduate students
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1898834
• Related Public URLs: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1839941 (Full Proceedings)