By Saskia Kusnecov, Daily Targum Rutgers
Professors use discussion forums to implement alternative strategies to teach, expand student interaction beyond classroom. In a coffee shop, in a dormitory bedroom and overseas, students and faculty are gaining different perspectives on online courses. Patricia Bender, associate director of the University’s Writing Program, brought China to the United States and a piece of America to China last semester in her online “The Ethics of Food” course. Students communicated consistently in an online setting — even though they were divided by thousands of miles — to create a large virtual classroom. “I team-taught it online using Sakai, with a friend and colleague Chunyan Xu, who is from Jilin University in China,” she said. “We had 10 students from Rutgers and 10 from Jilin.”
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