Encouraging students to contribute to a community glossary on moodle (or any similar website). This pedagogy supports the creation of a community of learning, particularly within the virtual setting.

Use of polling software such as Vevox to promote engagement. Being able to utilise software that encourages the whole classroom or lecture hall to engage can be an effective way for staff members to gauge progress and participation. But also, students are able to take part in an enjoyable and creative exercise that diverts from the traditional didactic teaching method. Furthermore, it is an inclusive approach that allows students who are less willing to e.g. putting their hand up, to participate, generally in an anonymous fashion.

To be used in lecture classes of around 100-130 students but also with class sizes of 14 students. In two hour sessions, the teacher delivers the first half of the session, pauses and gives the students a choice as to whether they would like to take a break, and for how long, or whether they would like to continue so that they can finish the session early.

A one minute video is created using PowerPoint with attention to colour, text, animation, and music. This video is shared with students to update them on new resources available on Moodle as well as upcoming teaching sessions. The intention of the video is to provide important information in a lively way, therefore working as an alternative to email. The videos are also personalised to include featured messages to encourage our students.

Dr Bryan Brazeau has a background in various cultural and linguistic academic settings, which has helped him devise this concept and subsequent pedagogical practise. The idea seeks to encourage learning across ‘neighbourhoods’ or linguistic boundaries. In an academic setting, this looks at tapping and utilising the existing pool of linguistic and cultural variation within the classroom on a given topic. Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of this practice tied with the idea of linguistic hospitality, coined by Paul Ricoeur, the notion of welcoming foreign cultures and languages into one’s own. This practice is very much in the embryonic stages, but presents the opportunity to take a different perspective on language in western education while merging the borders of subject-based teaching.

To support students when reviewing material, presentations are accompanied with an audio recording and transcript. During the pandemic, when video recording became more common, these were also accompanied with a transcript of the presentation. A transcript is important for inclusive and accessible learning as it allows students to read the presentation.

Online Intercultural Exchanges offer a form of computer-mediated learning whereby students from geographically remote classes work together online (in pairs or small groups) on learning tasks developed by teachers or educational facilitators. They allow students to have a meaningful intercultural experience as part of their education, increasing mutual understanding and global citizenship. Besides, our students’ feedback has also shown that this pedagogy has helped them to boost their mental health and wellbeing. This was particularly evident during the Covid-19 lockdown.

This is a very straightforward and easy practice: stay behind for a few minutes at the end of a lecture in case any students have any questions they’d like to ask individually.