Sometimes you tried to create interactive lectures where students are active and participate in the lecture, ask questions and give feedback. This can be hard even in a co-located lecture but can get really frustrating on distance.
In one of my courses, I had a lecture the I used to present with a colleague: Doing paired presentations is really nice, its easier to govern the pace of the presentations, you can interrupt each other and it creates a bit more dynamics in the lecture. When my colleague stopped working at LTU, the lesson felt much more boring so I decided to do something about it so I invented Dan the Donkey, my virtual sidekick!
A short video about Dan my virtual sidekick.
I have used him for several years and I add a bit more interactions from him now and then when I see that the students misunderstand some concepts, then it’s easy to use Dan to ask the questions that the students did not dare to ask…
Feedback from the students
The students like Dan and think that it makes the lecture more fun and feels more interactive. Here is some of the feedback from the end of the course where they have one assignment to describe the course in one Meme (the Meme idea is proudly stolen from the
ONL course).
Student memes mentioning Dan.
Reflections
Is this something you should bring into every lecture? No of course not. It is an idea that has its place and sometimes it’s just refreshing to do something silly. Try it and let me know how it went.
