Virtual classroom enables wide-reaching approach

We chatted recently with Sowmya Somanath, an assistant professor in UVic’s Department of Computer Science, who is teaching during summer 2020. Like so many instructors in our faculty, Somanath is finding engaging and effective ways to teach online while COVID-19 restrictions are in place.

It’s not surprising that UVic’s Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) course is so popular. After all, focusing on how people interact with computers requires delving into a fascinating range of fields, including computer science, psychology and design.

Knowing that the course – called Software Engineering 310 – would be online this term, Sowmya Somanath decided to treat her students to as much variety and as many perspectives as possible.

“This term, I’mhosting a virtual speaker series, with people from various international institutions in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Canada, including UVic,” says Somanath, an assistant professor with UVic’s Department of Computer Science.

“These are short 10-minute cameos, mostly designed to expose students to the breadth of topics within HCI and introduce them to researchers who are pushing the boundaries of these topics.”

Each speaker provides a paper in advance. Speaker and students then gather for a short online discussion during regular class time.

“Students are exposed to topics that are beyond what could reasonably be covered in a 12-week class and get to learn from people besides the instructor,” Somanath says. “The virtual classroom enables a more wide-reaching approach than would be possible if I were hosting speakers on campus.”

Since the class wouldn’t be meeting in person, Somanath was also determined to figure out a way to get students talking to each other. But with large classes, traditional icebreaker activities weren’t an option.

Initially Somanath tried using the Slack online platform to create an introduction channel in the hopes that students would all start chatting.

“But it ended up with only me liking all the introductions and few students replying to others,” she recalls.

Finally, she hit upon the idea of creating a classroom task where everyone would participate. Students had to read an article on the history of HCI and select six cutting-edge examples and six representatives to present them.

“The students had to collaboratively select these examples and their representatives as an entire class,” says Somanath. “Slack’s analytics shows a peak of activity at that time, with about 100 people posting, reacting or reading.”

Somanath views SENG 310 as a hybrid class, in which she sometimes provides pre-recorded content and other times schedules live lectures. Some students have told her that having access to recorded content that they can replay multiple times if needed has been helpful.

“Then I use my live class time to hold discussions and activities,” she says. “So far, these have been very insightful and active.”

2020Jun02 AT