Connections Seminar Series
Scientia Education Experience: Feedback and Dialogue
"Engagement" has become ubiquitous but elusive term in contemporary university pedagogy and teaching practice. Beyond behavioural definitions, its underlying meanings have been 'weakly theorised' which has generated pedagogical research to develop more 'reflexive' (Kahn, 2014) and 'multi-faceted' (Fredericks, 2004; Zhoc, 2016) understandings of the term. There is growing evidence that online engagement strategies significantly elevate student experience and satisfaction levels (Martin and Bolliger, 2018) and a number of practical, transferable and scaleable 'online engagement frameworks' have been developed (Redman et.al, 2018). I argue that a further step in our understanding is required to situate these approaches to student engagement within the rapidly changing, and necessarily online, university learning and teaching environment brought about by COVID-19 (Burns, 2020; Jandrić, 2020). To demonstrate these pedagogical principles and practices of within a dynamic institutional context, I will discuss how I have used the interactive voice-over tool VoiceThread as a dynamic online engagement tool. Using the resource for the purposes of introduction, presentation and peer review; my aim was to build academic engagement to the course material while building the online community. The online engagement strategy aimed at developing cognitive, collegial and critical modes of relatedness.
About Dr Gavin Mount
My area of research expertise is in critical international relations theory with a focus on ethnic conflict and nationalism. As an Education Focused academic, I have cultivated a passion and enthusiasm for designing, developing and delivering innovative approaches to Higher Education teaching and learning. I have received several Teaching Awards, including the 2019 Faculty Award for Excellence in Online Teaching.
UNSW Staff who cannot attend this online seminar are able to view the recording it via the Connections Moodle site (self-enrolment key: unswconnections)