Here we go, Flex@Pitt v.2.0 It is a new year with lots of promise, including the promise of vaccines, an end to the pandemic, and the return to 'life as we knew it". But for now, we will prioritize social distancing to slow the spread and protect each other, which means another term of Flex@Pitt. Flex@Pitt offers lots of flexibility (ahh, that is where the name comes from) for students, but it also puts very different demands on students: increased organizational and time-management skills, more ownership for learning content, and a lot more independence in determining how to engage in the class. Indeed, both faculty and student reported low engagement in class - sometimes making it hard to teach and learn. Why does this matter? And how can you contribute to an engaging community - even in the online format? Why engagement matters. Make the class a community. Participating in a class will deepen your experience - be it online or in-person. When you ask and answer questions, you are thinking about the material, you are challenging yourself, you are putting yourself out there, and making it easier for someone else to do the same. This can lead to community - people working together, supporting each other, and wanting each other to succeed. This makes for a class that you want to go to, want to study for, and thus succeed in! Class engagement often results in higher grades. Build your network. Engagement in a class can also have long term benefits beyond your GPA. It can be a great way to meet new friends and to build relationships with instructors and teaching assistants. That can lead to learning about great classes to take next (and fun friends to take them with), finding out about a potential research opportunity, and securing that coveted UTA position or letter of recommendation. How to engage in digital classes. Turn on the video. If you can comfortably do so. This is not always possible for so many reasons and your instructors and peers get that. But if you can - it is worth it. In some ways, zoom is superior to in-person teaching and learning student names is one of those ways. When I was in undergrad, my Bio 2 instructor had all of the students line up at the end of the first day of class and then she took polaroid pictures of groups of students, wrote their names on them, and tried to learn everyone's name. With zoom, your name is under your picture! AMAZING! Even better - when you talk in a zoom meeting, your picture and name jump to the top of the picture list. You are literally positioning yourself to get noticed. It might not come as a surprise, but instructors do notice and appreciate students with faces. It is so much easier to talk to people (and see reactions - laugh, nod, make a perplexed face as much as you can) than talk to black boxes. Go to office hours. We have suggested this before and we will suggest it again. Office hours are a great way to get to know your instructor, your UTAs, and your classmates in a smaller and usually more relaxed setting. They are also a great way to better learn the material so that you are confident enough to fully engage during class. Really join those groups. A lot of remote classes are using small groups and breakout rooms to make remote learning more personalized - putting a face on it. Group work can be hard - especially when members have different styles and goals - but it can also be great. It is a super easy way to meet new people who have similar interests. So take some time to really get to know your group mates - what they do for fun, favorite foods, favorite shape of bacterium, and favorite nucleic acid. Try to make it a fun way to be part of the class - with inside jokes and nicknames. And maybe you can carry some of those group mates forward to an in-person class in the fall. Use the class chat or discussion board. These are great and easy ways to ask questions in class (engagement level = intermediate) or after. But why not jump to engagement level = expert by answering some of those questions from your classmates? This is great practice for quizzes and exams, but will certainly be noticed by your instructor: win-win! Last semester, we all made it through Flex@Pitt. Let's make this semester the one where we own Flex@Pitt and make it work for us. And as a reminder - if you are in need of some tech to help you best engage in your classes, Pitt has computers and hotspots to lend: https://www.technology.pitt.edu/remotedevices
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Pitt Bio BlogThe Pitt Bio Blog is maintained by the Department of Biological Sciences Advising Office. Posts are authored by our students Archives
January 2022
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