Technological and pedagogical aspects of a communication tool: An immersive learning experience

Abstract

The lockdown restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in educational institutions moving to remote teaching. Teachers needed to adapt their traditional face-to-face instruction to an online mode. The four week, hands-on workshop titled 'Transition to Online Facilitation' was launched under the aegis of National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning in May 2020 to up-skill teachers with knowledge of technical tools and learner-centric pedagogical strategies. This paper highlights the manner in which design drivers like learner-centricity, immersivity, pertinency and transfer of ownership are embedded into the pedagogy design of the sessions on the Slack Platform. It documents and compares the orchestration of the instructor facilitated session and group-facilitated sessions where participants first experience the features of a tool as a student before using the features as a teacher. The level of adoption of design drivers is analysed. This study identifies three kinds of learner profiles namely, Innovators, Adaptors and Emulators. The research reports the Near Transfer of Learning as there was a high degree of similarity between the instructor facilitated session and the group facilitated sessions.