When the pandemic forced students and lecturers to spend most of their teaching time online, Giustina Monti (Lecturer in Classical Studies, School of History and Heritage) faced the challenge of keeping students engaged, connected, and interactive while teaching Latin. Students need as much interaction as possible with the lecturer, especially with an ancient language like Latin. They need to ask frequent questions to immediately understand how the language works.
Giustina came up with the idea of using an interactive shared whiteboard where students could type and engage with the translations and the main forms of the words. The whiteboard allowed learners and teachers to use different colours which helped them to visualize the different patterns of the language. Participants also used coloured circles, squares, and arrows to highlight the connections between words and to isolate subjects, objects, and verbs.
The reaction from students was very positive. They responded and engaged with the material, they felt at ease, and they were keen to contribute to class discussion. Given the extremely positive response, Giustina decided to develop this technique for History seminars (particularly the asynchronous activities). Again, the students responded very well. Interestingly, the level of students’ interaction was higher than when using Talis Elevate. This innovative usage of the interactive whiteboard/white sheet allowed the lecturer to help students overcome anxieties related to posting comments before or after their peers, as they had no pre-set questions to answer, just comments on the readings. Finally, this methodology allowed Giustina to further develop ‘student as producer’ – students felt encouraged to do independent research and explore their own interests, thus shaping their learning paths.