Tag: Engaging Students

Alleviating Student Anxieties in Interdisciplinary Learning and Empowering Them Through the Telegram Messaging App

Since I began teaching in 2017, I found that there are other challenges to interdisciplinary learning unique to this generation of students. The challenges to interdisciplinary learning are more psychological in nature. In my discussions with students, I found that many have high levels of anxiety when it comes to learning something outside their intended major.

They may be nervous about potentially failing a module. Having to do a module outside what they are competent/familiar with increases the likelihood of having to experience failure. Many students in University managed to go through their prior years of schooling without encountering failure. And because of this, the idea of potentially failing for the first time induces a great deal of stress and anxiety.

Here, I wish to highlight that this problem is not unique to Singaporean students. I have encountered many international students enrolled into my module voicing the exact same anxieties towards interdisciplinary learning.

Because of these anxieties, students imagine that there are many others who are better than them, and the moment they face a struggle, they are quick to imagine that they are the only one struggling with it, which further perpetuates the stress.

The issue is compounded when the module is taught in the blended-learning format, where students learn some parts of the module in isolation at home. They cannot see their classmates or how they are doing, and the stress drives them to imagine the worst. This affects their motivation to learn as they do not see any chance in scoring well for the module.

It also affects students’ willingness to ask for help. I also encountered many students who feel that they need to get everything in order (compile all their questions so that they can ask everything in a single setting, or be able to articulate their questions to show that they did preparation work) before they come for consultations. Otherwise, they feel they may waste the instructor’s time. However, I have come to realise that because the student is dealing with a subject so alien to them, they sometimes struggle to articulate their question. And in such situations, students do not ever reach a situation where they feel ready enough to approach the instructor for consultations.

Overall, these anxieties and self-imposed stress that many students face becomes an inhibition to learning effectively. In my teaching experience, I found that these issues must be addressed if we want to assure and motivate students to learn well.

And in my years of teaching, the Telegram messaging app has become a very integral support system in my teaching, and it helps to alleviate students’ anxieties and empower them in their learning.

Each semester, I create a Telegram Helpline where students can seek help directly from me or one of the Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the teaching team. It allows me to interact closely with students and to show them that I am serious in wanting to help them learn well. I answer questions without judgement, and I collect new questions to add to a library of Q&A that everyone can access for their benefit.

Telegram is a powerful platform because students can seek help, even anonymously (platforms like WhatsApp don’t allow this). It helps with student motivation because students can see their peers working when they ask their questions on the Helpline. Students see that there’s movement and it motivates them to work as they know they can benefit from the stream of Q&A that comes in.

More importantly, students can see their peers asking questions and their struggles are made visible online. Other students see this and it makes them aware that they are not struggling alone. It helps students feel more confident about their learning and about themselves. More importantly, it greatly reduces their anxieties over learning something so new and daunting, knowing that they can come to me for help, even if they struggle to articulate the problem.

What I like about the Helpline is that it allows me to shape and foster a positive learning culture for students. It allows me to demonstrate good learning qualities/values and shift their mindset away from one of competitiveness to collaboration. As I foster trust in them and create a safe environment for them to seek help, more students begin to participate actively in helping to answer queries by their peers. I know I have succeeded with cultivating the positive learning culture when students regularly respond to one another’s questions and help each other online.

Knowing that help is just a text message away, or that there is a comprehensive Q&A knowledge base they can refer to verify their understanding empowers students greatly, because they recognise that it is possible to master something new entirely on their own (with some assistance, of course), and they would not have to face the situation of discovering that they are not good enough. This helps to greatly alleviate the self-imposed stress felt by such students.

In general, using the Telegram Helpline as a teaching tool helps to reduce the stress that students are facing when learning something outside their specialisation because they know they are not struggling alone and that there is help readily available in the event that they require it. Furthermore, the collaborative culture that it fosters also mitigates stress because students do not feel like they are competing with each other for grades. As such, the Telegram Helpline helps empower students to internalise their interdisciplinary learning.

This article is part of a series of articles on pedagogical methods and education.

How to Effectively Engage Students when Teaching Interdisciplinary Modules

In recent years, the National University of Singapore has been emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary learning as it helps to equip students with various competencies that will enable them to solve problems outside their area of specialisation, thereby preparing them well for the workforce and giving them the flexibility to engage in life-long learning. It is for this reason that the University made it a graduation requirement for students to read a few common interdisciplinary modules.

However, I have noticed that students have been apprehensive towards such interdisciplinary modules that teach content outside their major. I spoke to my students about this issue and I found that many of them do not understand the purpose of such modules. They rely on the testimony of their seniors, who may emphasise the importance of specialisation in one’s major over a breadth of outlook and skills.

As a consequence, many students do not see the point of interdisciplinary learning, and they enrol into these common modules with little interest. This is a major problem I have been facing since I began teaching interdisciplinary modules from 2017.

In 2019, I became the Module Coordinator for GET1050 “Computational Reasoning,” where I teach coding and data analytics to 700 students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences each semester. At the start of each semester, about 70% of my students do not fully engage with the course materials due to the poor perception they have of interdisciplinary modules. To tackle the problem, I have to invest a significant amount of effort to win them over to see the purpose and value of the module. By the 7th week, I estimate that I have won over and engaged most of my students, with the number of non-engaged students dropping to about 30%. This is still a problem because the content of each week builds on the previous weeks. By the time students see value in the course, they may be unable to catch up on their own.

I have since learnt that teaching interdisciplinary modules require a great deal of effort on the part of the instructors to engage students, spark an interest in them and to help them to see both the beauty and the value of what they are learning. If you can win students over and give them a positive perspective about the course, they will be happy and willing to do all kinds of things for their learning, and students will be more engaged in the assignments and tutorial activities.

Here are a couple of things that are essential to generate student interest in interdisciplinary modules:

(1) A personable instructor who can connect with students. This is essential especially for large modules on the blended-learning format, which is the norm for many common interdisciplinary modules offered here in NUS. The online learning experience can be cold and impersonal.

So, the instructor must try to connect with the students online in a very personal and warm way, through the various modes of communication. This humanises the online learning experience and makes the process a lot more pleasant to consume.

I have learnt is that it is important for the instructor to project a strong image of care (and of course, to act on it). Students are more receptive when they see that they have a lecturer who cares for their well-being and their learning. Simple things like making an attempt to remember students will go a long way.

I will also make visible all the effort I am doing to help them learn well – improving the videos or assignments, or grading their work. Firstly, this humanises me, which is very important in improving the experience of online learning. Secondly, when students see the effort their educators put, they will want to reciprocate the effort. This is evidenced by remarks that I often hear from my students such as, “I simply wanted to barely pass this module, but seeing you work so hard so that I can learn well, I feel that I must work just as hard not to let you down.”

(2) The purpose and value of interdisciplinary learning should not be communicated in a formal manner. Communicating the importance in an informal way generates the greatest impact because the message becomes very intimate and personal. One thing I do is to record a fortnightly chit-chat session which I insert as the first lecture video in the fortnightly series.

In these videos, I dress less formally to signal that it’s something different from our regular programme. I begin the video announcing the date and time just to let them know that it is not a video recycled from a previous semester. I will use the video as my way of checking in on them; talk about things in my life; and use it to address the more pertinent questions and concerns that students have raised.

This provides a platform to talk about the real-world applications of interdisciplinary learning or the applications of what I teach in my course. I share with them stories about my peers who have long graduated: how one of them could not fulfil his dream of being a journalist because he didn’t know Microsoft Excel when asked at an interview; or how half of my peers (7-8 years after graduation) are now required to learn coding at their work (even though they are working in non-technical roles). This makes a huge impact on the students, and it motivates them to take their learning more seriously.

I also use the fortnightly chit-chat video to praise and assure them that they are doing fine. It is more personal for them to see my face and hear my voice saying it, than to write it as an announcement. It makes them feel more confident in what they’re doing.

(3) Negative comments from seniors can severely affect the receptivity and openness to learning in the next semesters’ cohort of students. And similarly, if seniors have positive things to say about an interdisciplinary module, their juniors will be more open and receptive to learning. It is therefore important to ensure students get a good experience from the module since these students will very quickly become seniors themselves, and they will influence their juniors.

The efforts I invested in for the first two semesters (such as the strategies mentioned in (1) and (2) above, and the effort to ensure students enjoy the experience) started paying off in the third run of my course. My module had developed such a strong positive reputation within the student culture that juniors are so happy to learn in my module because they are surrounded by seniors who are just as happy to support them in their learning.

To aid in my attempts at shaping students’ receptivity towards my module, I have found it very useful to have a website showcasing the value of the module and students’ feedback about it. I also curated testimonies/feedback about how students secured their internships, or how they found their learning so applicable to their internship/work. This is important because students will search online about the course once they know they have been pre-allocated the module. If we are able to make a strong positive first impression on them, they will be more open and receptive to learning when the semester begins.

The efforts I discuss above proved very successful, and I was able to achieve significantly higher initial take-up rates, with about 60% of the cohort fully receptive and engaged in all the learning activities at the start of the semester. Overall, that cohort was a lot more receptive, and almost every student came to class well-prepared. And by the 7th week, about 80% were fully receptive in their learning.

Overall, students were won over by the expressions of care and concern for their learning, and the personal stories of how their seniors have to engage in work that demands an interdisciplinary mindset or approach. These help to generate interest in students to be fully engaged with the course.

This article is part of a series of articles on pedagogical methods and education.