My Experiences with Online Dialogues for Enhancing Learning

In this blogpost, I would like to reflect on my experience as a supervisor of 3rd-year BA students. Although the supervision was supposed to take place as a meeting in my office, many students asked me to schedule a Skype or Handouts for the support sessions. The meeting occurred more frequently closer to the submission of their BA thesis documents. Some students lived in other cities and could not always attend the guidance session in person. We thus agreed to communicate online and used a video chat to discuss the progress of their theses.

Helping students to complete a BA 

My prior knowledge on online dialogues with students stems from supervision sessions with BA exam candidates. Skype and Handouts proved to be very handy, because it was possible to share the screen or a document instantly. Some students struggled to find books or journal articles which were on the reference lists of the courses they had attended. I could for example show students a search in the university library catalogue by sending a link. In doing so, I could make sure that they could quickly access journal articles and e-books, which was helpful a few days before the submission date. While the meetings in my office helped build trust with students, I realized that the distance that the video chat helped many students to open up. It was often possible to talk more directly about weaknesses of the submitted chapters and agree on ways of improving the texts. Based on my initial experiences with online dialogues, I wish to explore further ways of integrating online dialogues in my teaching.

Using video conference systems with students?

I engage in many conference calls with colleagues. Since I collaborate with colleagues who live far away from my city, I often end up using video conferencing technologies. The Play&LearnDigiMedia module on online dialogue inspired me to use these technologies more with students in the future. This could also help students from different countries to get acquainted online and learn from each other. I think that a graduate conference could be a nice playground for such an online happening. I hope that there will be an opportunity to get involved in organizing an online conference for graduate students. Engaging in communication on a video conferencing platform would provide students with many transferable skills.