Online Teaching for Class 1837 (Composition) on April.10, 2020

Date: April 10th on Friday, 2020 from 8:00 to 9:30 (9:00 – 10:30 in JST)

Course: Japanese Basic Composition 2

Used app: Streaming on DingTalk, Presentation by Powerpoint with 57 slides

Numbers of Students: 26 out of 28

90 minutes attendance: 19 students

Shorter participation: 71, 48, 35, 35, 33, 4minutes, and the shortest was 52 seconds.

completely absence: 2 students

Responses to my requests like Quiz answers onto BBS:

Attendance check: 28. But two students were recorded as “Completely Absent” on the system.

Quiz 1 through 5: Students were asked to submit 5 answers in the form of text right after the class. Only 18 students sent me the answers. 9 students got 5 points and 9students got 4 points.

Teaching:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday. I wanted to change PPT slides for  part of the feedback because it used class 1836 students’ compositions. For this 1837 class, I might have changed that part from 1836’s  to 1837’s. However, I knew that I could not spend much minutes for the feedback, I just left that part. As I predicted, I couldn’t spend much time for that part in the class.

Homework:

The same as composition class for 1836 on Tuesday. That was to write the second draft of advertisement of home electric appliance and to fill the quiz sheet with appropriate particles. I gave 1837 students a feedback a little for the quiz sheet. Even though I warned about use of Wa-ga in the class, still many of 1836 students filled the blanks with wa and ga in this order.

Issues and Problems:

The issue is how to check students’ participation during the class.

In other classes for listening and conversation, I ask students to write an answer on BBS for quiz during the class. This is to check their participation on the way of class because some students just leave a comment of “attendance” at the beginning and then leave the online class. This way of quiz and answering gives responses from the students to me instantly. However, there is a problem that most of students just type the same answer as first and second answers that are answered by the top level students. So, this can be a check for participation, but doesn’t work for quiz that should make students think of the right answer by themselves.

Last week and this week I took another method for checking in composition class. I asked student to have a sheet of paper with numbering 1 through 5. I gave them five questions during the class. And at the end of the class, I asked them not to write the answers on BBS but to send them to me as an individual message. In this way, students would not refer to other students answers unless they contact each other. But this way also has a defect that I cannot get an immediate responses from students.

Maybe it would be better to combine two methods, but I am afraid that that would be confusing for students which to write an answer on BBS or a sheet of paper. I am just trying to figure out the best way. Perhaps it would be case by case basis.