Dr. Helen Chang, Faculty Development Lead, College of Medicine, Regina Campus, shared with us a collaborative approach to Bridging the Distance that is near and dear to our Distance Education hearts. In this post Helen describes an Arts & Humanities Writing class that brings together students from both Saskatoon and Regina, uses the discussion boards in Canvas to share work and create opportunities of peer-to-peer engagement and partners with local community RADIO to go beyond the classroom “walls” and hit the airwaves!
By Helen Chang, Faculty Development Lead, College of Medicine, Regina Campus
Our College of Medicine Arts & Humanities Writing class is bridging the distance in several ways:
Bridge #1: Distributed Sites – Regina and Saskatoon students in the same group, brought together over Zoom. This allows us to see each other’s friendly faces, breakout rooms give the students a chance to share their work in smaller groups, and the everyone can annotate the whiteboard at the same time.
Bridge #2: Discussion Board – on Canvas, the A&H Writing group has a discussion area in which they can create written posts based on weekly prompts, and comment on each other’s posts. It’s a great way to encourage these aspiring writers to take a small step towards sharing their work with a larger audience.
Bridge #3: Radio – partnering with CJTR, 91.3FM Regina Community Radio, the students submit their written work for approval, then record a WAV file. Files can be pretty big, so they can send them through email or using Wetransfer. Our producer puts all the segments together into an hour of spoken word community radio, featuring the writing of CoM Y2 medical students.
Feature image by Photo by Ron Lach from Pexels