This brief refereed-paper presentation would be one professor's story of being highly reluctant to leave the classroom and enter the world of online synchronous education. He believed that his student-centered and dialogue-based pedagogical style of long duration was not amenable to the small screen, that too much would be lost in translation, that failure was likely. The shift to synchronous teaching via Zoom was made, however, and the results highly surprising and dramatically positive. I've summarized this true tale in a six page paper, and emailed it to Curtis & Bert on 12/29.22.
Here is the abstract: "Abstract - A student-centered and dialogue-based pedagogical style is suitable not only for the in-person university classroom but also highly adaptable to the synchronous online learning environment. The core dialogue values and practices of Warmth, Empathy, and Genuineness can establish a safe container for meaningful synchronous classroom dialogues around central course subject matters. Cohesive, caring, and supportive synchronous human learning communities are achievable by and for today’s students in this era of heightened challenge."
I would like to present this refereed paper at a 25-minute session. Who would be interested? Probably other educators who have either adapted really well in their own transition to synchronous online teaching, and maybe want to hear a fellow educator's success story; and also perhaps some educators who have not fared well at all in their transition to online, and want to find out how to better address this challenge. This presentation would be about high educational quality and active student engagement, and how to increase the likelihood of achieving these using a student-centered and dialogue-based pedagogical approach within the synchronous online medium.
Ron Gordon