Students as Partners in Implementing and Evaluating Virtual Learning and Teaching

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has drastically changed the education landscape. Within a short time and without much preparation in advance, classrooms were transformed and moved online. Teachers poured effort into utilising and experimenting with online learning tools in the hope of maintaining the same level of interaction and effectiveness as before; however, some students stayed passively on the recipient’s end. We (students and teachers) believe that students could also play an active part. To find out how virtual learning and teaching can be improved, we together with teachers and students from various disciplines carried out a teaching development grant project. We collaborated in designing and distributing online questionnaires and conducting face-to-face/virtual interviews to collect feedback from local and overseas students, and then worked out an e-learning guide for the university. To take a further step in exploring students’ role in virtual learning and teaching, we (students and teachers) have co-designed educational videos as exemplars for an innovative learning activity where students can showcase their creativity in producing multimedia teaching materials. In our presentation, we will (1) explain why student-teacher partnership is conducive to effective implementation and evaluation of virtual learning and teaching; (2) share our experience in the teaching development grant project and our findings which support a student-driven approach to virtual learning and teaching; (3) share how students in an undergraduate compulsory course contributed to its teaching; and (4) give recommendations on how to improve virtual learning and teaching. Our findings and experience shall be relevant to any discipline.