With JC Penet
School of Modern Languages
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
What did you do?
Redesigned an MA module to create a blended approach for the face-to-face content by putting the majority of the learning online (2018). The face-to-face lectures were redeveloped to be delivered online while the seminars allow me to see the students every few weeks. I adopted the same approach to redevelop three modules on Translation Theory & Practice on the BA Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting to make them Covid-ready.
Completed a course on effective online teaching through Oxford University to support the development and design of a whole module to enable all students to complete the learning online.
Courses – Translation Theory & Practice modules 1, 2, and 3
Students – In total 80 students across three courses
Who is involved?
Dr JC Penet, Senior Lecturer Modern Languages
Nuala Davies, Learning Enhance & Technology Project Adviser, LTDS – LET Projects
Suzanne Hardy, Team Manager LTDS – LET Projects
How did you do it?
Ideally the online course with Oxford University on how to develop online effective teaching should be completed first but this is not essential. My past experience redeveloping the MA module for blended delivery with the help of LTDS (Nuala Davies and Suzanne Hardy) was a great starting point. The Oxford University course helped me to further unpack my own teaching and redevelop those three courses for engaging blended delivery in 2020-21.
Reviewed the learning outcomes and thought about how they can be achieved through a range of online learning activities rather than just a series of recorded lectures.
When using discussion boards, made engagement compulsory to review what other students had contributed. This really helped with students interacting with each other in better and more effective ways.
Lectures can be broken up into shorter, more manageable sessions but it also worth considering allowing students to do deeper reading on a subject, online activities, review external (professional) websites and do critical thinking to explore the learning in a fuller sense. It’s also important to give students the opportunity to get to know each other and start forming an online learning community with low stakes but subject-relevant collaborative tasks in the first week or so (e.g. “Translation Booth”). This helps them feel less isolated and more confident about their learning on the course.
Why did you do it?
To give students a more blended approach to their learning and not rely on the traditional lecture and seminar approach.
This approach has helped during the pandemic and helped support students in their 2020/21 studies.
This approach also allows other types of students to engage with learning, for example returning parents who wish to stay at home more, or students for whom full-time attendance in person is more difficult or not possible.
Does it work and Student Voice
Students have said that they prefer the online version in shorter and blended formats more than a lecture as they can be very long and it is a lot of information to take in when someone is talking at you, especially over Zoom or Teams.
Other students have commented that the online learning was much deeper and more meaningful as they felt they had more time to engage with it.
Students are engaging more with the content and are more likely to do the additional reading and research to have a deeper understanding of the work.
Comments from students have included:
“I enjoy the homework set each week, I think they’re helping me think deeply about how to translate and what methods to use, I enjoy being able to spend more time on them. I enjoyed the first few lectures where we were pushed to engage with texts and react to them. I like the structure of the lectures, with them being broken down and things to read in between videos.” (stage 1 student)
“I enjoy that the lectures have a range of activities so it isn’t just listening to a recording” (stage 2 student)
“I think the lectures are really well done since they are divided into chunks you can take your time to do them” (stage 2 student)
“I like how the materials are organised on Canvas, the seminar leader is very involved and always makes sure we understand and the self-paced sessions are interesting” (final-year student)
Graduate Framework
- Future focused (final-year module)
- Critical Thinkers (all)
- Confident (all)
- Creative, Innovative and Enterprising (final-year module)
- Digitally Capable (all)
- Curious (all)
- Collaborative (all)
- Engaged (all)