Five steps to successful summer school online teaching

Kat is a research student in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London.

A photo of Kat

In 2019, when I taught the Media, Gender and Culture module for the first time, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenging yet rewarding time as a summer school tutor. Teaching the course again in 2020 and 2021, in the context of the pandemic, was inevitably a very different experience. Sessions needed to be redesigned to work effectively online, and there were practical barriers to address as well, from students’ Internet connections to the availability of teaching resources in different countries. However, through testing different approaches and carefully revising the course material, I was able to create an engaging online summer school experience for the students on the course. Below are my top five tips for course design and online teaching practice in the summer context:

  1. Don’t try to replicate a face-to-face module in an online context. Online learning is an experience in itself and works best if approached as such. For instance, simply throwing in some discussion questions, as we may do in offline seminars, may not work in an online setting where engagement levels can vary (Zoom fatigue has become a term we are all too familiar with by now). Instead, I developed shorter, simpler tasks and activities that involved students actively doing something, such as watching a brief video clip and then conducting an analysis in groups.
  1. Find alternative channels for student participation and interaction. With the majority of summer school students being non-native speakers and in some cases having experienced educational systems in which speaking up in class is not always encouraged, a reticence to participate can be intensified in the online classroom – especially when students are unable to turn their cameras on due to connectivity problems. Thus, it was crucial to find other ways to enable student participation. One way was to invite my students to actively contribute via the chat. While this often meant that students wrote much shorter comments than they would when speaking out loud, I found that it benefitted especially those students who otherwise would not speak in class. Students organically started commenting and ‘liking’ their peers’ contributions, which helped foster a sense of community among a diverse group which had never met in person.
  1. Using emoji reactions, such as thumbs up or clapping hands, can be an extremely useful communication tool. Given the lack of non-verbal communication and body language, I regularly asked my students to “send me an emoji” to indicate their agreement to simple yes/no questions. For example, when working on a task individually, I would ask students to indicate via emoji if they needed more time to work on said task. Emojis can also be useful as an icebreaker activity, when inviting students to choose an emoji that expresses how they felt that day. Emojis were a shared form of communication which felt fresh, low stakes and spontaneous to students, and helped build a welcoming atmosphere in the class.
  1. Vary your platforms. Being in the same online meeting room every day, even if just for an hour, can be quite tiring. Therefore I incorporated activities on other platforms, such as Padlet, Mentimeter, or within Teams channels. The latter also meant that students would often continue discussions held during class after the live sessions had ended, including posting links to additional material. And again, these non-verbal activities were a great way for quieter students to still actively contribute to class!
  1. Be patient and flexible. There will always be unforeseen technical complications when running a course online, from students having microphone issues to breakout rooms not working as intended. As such, it is important not to overload a session with activities and to be prepared to improvise. The same is true for the asynchronous online learning that summer school students are asked to do in their own time. With most people reading everything on screen nowadays, it is important to choose short yet engaging readings (these do not always have to be academic, or could even be a website), but also include other activities, such as watching short video lectures, conducting independent research or brainstorming, or contributing to a Padlet.

Overall, my experiences showed me that King’s Undergraduate Summer School does not have to physically take place in London in order to be a unique experience. While the London location is undoubtedly an asset, there are many other contributing factors to the success of a module. As a colleague has elaborated on this blog before, we the tutors play a huge role in personifying the King’s experience. The above-mentioned steps, particularly the use of various channels of communication, as well as the general feeling of ‘we are all together in this online learning experience’, meant that I was still able to bond with my students over the course of the three weeks.

Creative experiential learning is still very much a possibility online. For example, the students and I visited Tate Modern virtually, exploring and engaging with their artwork on feminism which is accessible on their website. Even more importantly, the module benefited from a large number of brilliant guest speakers, both researchers at King’s lecturing on their areas of expertise, as well as journalists based in India and Paraguay – many of whom would not have been able to join us without online technology. As such, students got to experience London and the research community at King’s, as well as forming connections across a diverse group and participating in stimulating discussions. Whether online or not, this is what makes a great summer school experience.

Thought leadership online

Connecting with other thought leaders from the field of international education has never been more important. Though attending conferences in person has not been possible this academic yearour Summer Education Programme continues to engage with and have influence on best practice in short course learning and teaching globally. 

A virtual conference

Michael Salmon, Associate Director – Curriculum Renewal, spoke at the Higher School of Economics/Coursera eStars Conference in December 2020, sharing his thoughts on Retaining the human factor in the move to online international education. The question of how international education functions online – whether in terms of student experience, pedagogy, cultural exchange or various other aspects – is one that we continue to take a great deal of interest in as we look to create sustainable, innovative online programming for the long-term.

Michael continued exploring this theme at the British Council International Education Virtual Festival in January 2021, delivering a paper titled Virtually abroad: a useful conception for short-term mobility? This well-received session formed part of a wider workshop on innovation within UK higher education as a response to the pandemic.

In March, Summer Programmes will be hosting the 3rd TNE Hub Symposiumand we are looking forward to connecting with researchers and practitioners in transnational education. Dr Alexander Heinz, Chair of Kings Summer Executive and Hannah Bond, Associate Director – Learning & Teaching, will be speaking on the topic of Creating effective learning communities in TNE.  

Also in March, Dr Heinz has been appointed to the honorary role of e-Learning Dean for an expert course on Short Term Programming at NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 

As the world slowly emerges from the COVID pandemic, exciting new perspectives for international educators are coming into sight. We as a sector will need to be prepared. 

The impact of summer

Hannah Bond is Associate Director – Learning and Teaching for Summer Programmes at King’s College London. Michael Salmon is Associate Director – Curriculum Renewal.

The impact of a King’s Summer education can often stay with our students long after the season ends. King’s summer programmes are immersive educational experiences, a moment to connect with students from an enormously wide range of countries around the world, experience cultural exchanges, and learn new skills for life, work and study. It’s a chance to study a topic in greater depth or learn about a new subject for the first time, or take a step towards further studies at a more advanced level. In many cases, as with Aditi Sangal who joined us for a summer course more than half a decade ago, it can be the launching pad for a high-profile career. 

A photo of Aditi Sangal

Of her time studying International Relations with King’s in her home country of India as well as Journalism on a scholarship to London in 2014, Aditi recalls how the experience opened up the world for the first time:

“I learned what makes a good story, how to cover international stories and observed what I could learn from journalists like Christiane Amanpour. I acquainted myself with journalism vocabulary lede, nut graph, angle, sourcing and such. But more importantly, the course introduced me to the essential rules of news-gathering and reporting for the first time, such as being off the record, reporting on death, and reliable versus unreliable sources.”

Fast forward seven years, and Aditi is now an Associate Producer for CNN, based in New York, where she has covered US news stories like presidential elections, President Trump’s impeachment, natural disasters and mass shootings, as well as global events including the coronavirus outbreak. 

“It’s quite surprising to think back and realise the point at which I began my education in journalism, but it’s comforting to know that the King’s summer programme had me covered. It opened my eyes to what I needed to learn before I could consider myself a strong candidate for any journalism job. I went on to study at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where I further built on the basics I learned at King’s.”

More journeys like Aditi’s 

In 2020, due to the global pandemic, our summer schools went online for the first time. The online summer school experience gave students a taste of a King’s education, with collaborative project work, guest speakers, expert King’s faculty and insights into King’s cuttingedge research.  

We would expect there to be many more stories similar to Aditi’s among the hundreds of participants in 2020 summer coursesOne student on our Pre-University programme spoke of how she felt sure that the course would help her become a knowledgeable and inquisitive scientist – we will have to check back in with Carlotta in a decade’s time and see how she has got on! 

These moments of learning and discovery which shape us as people and guide our career paths will increasingly take place online. The process has been accelerated by the pandemic, but was firmly in motion long before. For university summer schools, we need to provide high-quality education and learning experiences available online for those who prefer to study in this modeAfter all, it is coming together and connecting with experts and peers  whether in person or online  that creates a long-lasting impact. 

Moments from a summer

Michael Salmon is Associate Director – Curriculum Renewal for Summer Programmes at King’s College London.

Having taken the decision to move our summer schools online this year, rather than cancelling outright in the face of Covid-19 uncertainties, it is safe to say that the last few months have been much eventful than they might otherwise have been! Dr Alexander Heinz, Chair of the Summer Executive, will suggest in a forthcoming article that one of the defining features of summer schools is their ephemerality: by nature and by design, they play out a constant tension between having only just begun and shortly to conclude, and indeed this contributes to make them special, memorable, educationally exciting.  

I would also argue that for these short summer weeks, it is easier to identify key moments that stick in the mind and reveal something about the communal experience that tutors and students shared in (compared to a degree programme, of course, or a full year abroad). Further, identifying these key moments is an important act of both reflective pedagogy and forward planning, a moment of stillness and consideration that enables momentum to be conserved. In this post I am going to describe a handful of such moments from the last few months. 

Seeing collaboration happen 

There were a number of ‘Aha!’ moments for me this summer which all involved seeing students conduct online discussions with one another. The practicalities around teamworking were a concern as we headed into the teaching period, especially as collaboration is such a fundamental part of all our courses. However, I repeatedly saw students either working together in very similar ways to how they would in a classroom or, in some cases, even more effectively. 

For example, one offhand comment a student made within a discussion channel (“wcould have a meeting here later – I think this room should be free after class”) really brought home to me the resilience of the students vis-à-vis the move online: they were able to conceptualise the digital spaces which our e-learning platforms provided as something very close to a physical classroom. I also greatly appreciated seeing students with the same mother tongue holding chats in English at a very high level of sophistication – the fact that they were able to type asynchronously rather than having to answer in real time paid dividends here. Although we had not taken student digital literacy for granted by any means, I was impressed seeing students able to navigate and negotiate the choppy waters of online group work with a great deal of flair. 

Our team found that through hosting and moderating various online platforms and working with students to ensure that collaboration was as effective as possible, we had a phenomenal insight into who students were and how they were experiencing the courses. This would not have been possible in the same way with students placed in distinct classrooms, and was an unexpected pleasure. 

Hearing the positives 

Perhaps the aspect of the course we were most unsure about, more than how we would support our tutors, more than how online social activities could be conducted, more even than how online teaching would be received, was how well we would be able to deal with student issues. Those working in summer schools of any shape or form will be familiar with the queues at helpdesks and urgent phonecalls which are an inevitable part of in-country delivery, and which need to be dealt with professionally and efficiently by a skilled team. Doing this online with students spread all across the world would be a new experience for us, and we dedicated a lot of our planning time to implementing new triage procedures, new contact methods, new communication channels, and much more. 

Running a summer school at a distance can also mean that it is harder to judge how students are experiencing the course. Despite confidence in our procedures and a strange sense of calm as the course began, everyone on the team was somewhat nervous to see student feedback, both in first impression surveys and end-of-course feedback. In particular, the two items ‘I felt welcomed and supported on the first day of the programme’ and ‘I felt sufficiently supported throughout the programme occupied prime position in my mind, for the reasons stated above.

As it turned out, the feedback received for these two questions was incredibly positive, and I think I speak for all of the team in saying that seeing these responses arrive was something that will stick in the mind when looking back at the summer. These moments when we were able to see for ourselves that essentially every student felt supported were extremely valuable.

Connecting in spite of it all 

The Summer Community of Practice has long been a fundamental part of the Summer Education Programme. It brings together tutors from varied disciplines in a collegiate network, allowing for best practice to be shared and for much informal support.

Moving online was of course no barrier to holding regular Community of Practice meet-ups, but to begin with we did find that there was so much to discuss in terms of new procedures, new class types, new digital tools and all the other new uncertainties which have characterized 2020 since March at least. For this reason, it was the final session which really sticks in my mind as a memorable demonstration of the best aspects of the summer.  

This session was held around the halfway point of the course, and the idea was for those tutors already teaching to share experiences with those yet to teach. The conversation flowed freely, with some fantastic suggestions about managing group work online or getting the best out of taciturn students, and I was able to sit back and absorb, or add thoughts drawn from my own teaching practice, rather than sticking to an agenda. It was a wonderful session, over too soon, and really demonstrated to me how a summer school can enable connectivity among staff all around the university, driving student experience forward beyond the summer into ideas for quality learning all year round, even against a background of the most unprecedented disruptions to business as usual.

Into the next phase 

These, then, were some out of many more moments that I felt worthwhile to reflect upon, and which brought a degree of sunshine to the work of the past few months. Now, the work of consolidation must begin, as we look forward to making these unexpected moments into part of the new normal