Mona Eikel-Pohen is an assistant teaching professor of German in the College of Arts and Sciences. With teaching experience ranging from elementary to advanced German, she uses a wide array of methods, strategies and technologies to instill confidence and communicative competence in her students.
ITS recently asked instructors to share some technology-related changes they’ve incorporated in their teaching during the last year. In addition to “treating the syllabus as a living document that students and I occasionally re-negotiate,” Eikel-Pohen offered the following ideas and insights.
- “Exit tickets for each lesson. I ask one question not only relating to each lesson goal but also to learning strategies, emotional temperature/mental health, workloads, etc., and I use Google Forms, asking students to submit their exit tickets by midnight of the class day (so they can revise or look up things and I can incorporate the results into the lesson the next day). The exit tickets help me respond to students’ individual needs but also give me an overall impression of how their semester is going.”
- “I ask students to create a trailer for a movie the plot of which they developed in class. Their level of creativity is amazing, especially when I tell them to keep it brief and not to spend more than 20 minutes on it (so they do not go above and beyond with tech options but focus on its content).”
- “Rehearsing new words, pronunciation or even a whole presentation with cameras on in Zoom. This could be with all students’ mics on at the same time (loud but not awkward) or with their mics muted (bizarre but engaged).”
- “I use Google Docs not only but mainly for breakout rooms, so I see when students are progressing on projects, where they struggle and when to join their individual breakout rooms or give everyone more time.”
- “Voicethread.com is a nice tool for pronunciation exercises in the language classroom or for students to narrate or present in a framework where they can rehearse in advance. I can give immediate feedback, whether written, audio, video or through attached documents.”
- “GroupMe or Discord helps students to communicate with each other individually or in groups outside of class.”
Would you like to share your own good ideas? Send them to itscomm@syr.edu.