Top 5 ways to optimize your teaching methodology using cisco WebEx
The education system is undergoing disruption with the classes moving online and pedagogical shift towards student-centric models. These models are showing a flip side to the traditional approaches where the focus is on delivering the material rather than ensuring that it is adapted and understood by the learners. Newer methodologies are being adopted by teachers to makeover themselves as moderators and facilitators more than just teachers. This also means that newer resources are being leveraged that are far fallen from the legacy resources. One such resource is Cisco WebEx.
Cisco WebEx is one of the leading enterprise solutions for online meetings and video conferencing with particularly altered solutions for specific industries. Cisco WebEx has a custom tool for teachers and schools which can be harnessed by these parties for conducting their classes on the virtual platform of Cisco WebEx. It also has several features and functions tailor-made to be utilized by teachers to make these classes more realistic and interactive. According to UCtoday, Cisco WebEx hosted almost the entire population of the United States on its Webex platform, reporting 324 million Webex users in March, it also saw close to 240,000 online sign-ups in 24 hours in March. And it hosted over four million meetings in a single day. It is being used by a lot of teachers and students for keeping the learning processes going on.
Let us look at the top 5 ways in which you can optimize your teaching methodologies using Cisco WebEx.
1. Project Work
Teaching a class means ensuring that there is sufficient collaboration amongst the students and they possess the capability of coming together and working towards a single goal. With the use of Cisco WebEx, teachers can divide the class into smaller teams and let them brainstorm to decide upon a topic of their choice which they want to pursue, discuss, and work on it collaboratively in teams. Each team has a separate chat which the teacher can supervise in a glance and step in whenever there’s any need for help.
2. Schedule Hours
When there were regular in-class lectures, there was a set timetable for school hours. Cisco WebEx allows teachers to set a schedule, communicate it to the students, and also schedule time-specific meetings. This can include classes of different subjects, lunch break, breakout hours, and office hours. During the specified hours’ students can enter the sessions and conduct activities.
3. Forum Discussions
Discussions stimulate the brain to think more. Therefore, Cisco WebEx has a functionality where the teachers can host forum discussions. These are great from the learning point of view as well as for being well-informed. These forum discussions can be hosted by the teachers but students can be given the lead where they can share their opinions without hesitation and develop a healthy ecosystem for discussions. It can prove to be beneficial for equipping students with the confidence to put across their points.
4. Use Whiteboard
Boards have been used in the classrooms since forever now. That doesn’t have to change. Cisco WebEx gives teachers and students the ability to make use of a virtual whiteboard and share their screen for better explaining their concepts. This attribute is interactive and can be co-edited. It can also be combined with digital polling to make comparisons about the opinions of the class and draw conclusions. It helps in better understanding and delivering.
5. Integration into LMS
One of the most distinctive features of Cisco WebEx for education is that it can be integrated into the Learning Management System of a school. It is compatible with various LMSs such as Sakai, Moodle, D2L, or even Canvas. The students can log in and choose if they want to attend a live lecture or watch a recorded one. It is quite an engaging functionality that can be utilized for maintaining a constant flow of educational resources.
Cisco WebEx is quite popular within the education markets because of its significant capabilities that can be specifically leveraged for this industry. It is student-driven and aids the teachers in providing the class with an exemplary experience.
