Meme IT - Engaging students

This activity started during COVID-19, when all students were attending lectures from home on Zoom. Of course, all cameras were off. It was horrible to teach without any sort of feedback from students. The idea was to engage students via the chat and forums on content not directly related to the unit, so it would feel more natural for them to engage on the unit’s content as well. I had a teaching assistant who had a contagious laugh (and laughed at my jokes) who would have their camera on, so I would get some feedback, and so that students would feel like they’re listening to a conversation/podcast, rather than a lecture. They would react to us in the chat, and even have discussions with each other. In order to engage students outside face-to-face hours, we also started posting memes on the forums and integrating it in our content.

Teaching is now back on-campus in my unit, but we are still encouraging memes on the forums. The unit is the biggest in the faculty, but large student numbers are actually a strength to engage students on a forum, as that means more students create content that everyone else can react to.

Aside from the benefits of engaging students, exposing students to memes related to their field of study helps students become literate about the discipline terminology and culture. I think it is a very positive and unique feature of the unit. Students are used to interacting socially online, so it felt only natural to have a “social” subforum.

There were benefits of social learning, cultivating a social aspect and building a community of learners.

Sometimes the students made the memes themselves, sometimes it is taken straight from a website with programming memes. The content could be making fun of an assignment released or something a teacher has done.

Encouraging students to communicate with the teaching team makes them more likely to openly complain, which gives me the opportunity to correct errors I may have otherwise never been aware of or provide an explanation for choices that would otherwise remain unclear to students. In general, it helps in getting better feedback. Either way, it helps provide a better learning experience. Overwhelming, students have indicated that they love the memes.

Students will have their own Discord servers or use TikTok, Instagram or what not, for more private things. But the forum has a more public aspect, and it unifies everyone. This works across the different campus cohorts, but also within a campus, as otherwise students would never have a chance to interact with other students, they do not share a class with, which is most students when you have hundreds. This activity is the thing that works best for this unit!

See examples of memes created in this unit:

1. Create a forum area in Moodle to use your preferred platform.
2. Create a forum post in Week 1 with the rules and guidelines.
3. Provide extra incentive in Week 1 to get started.
4. Give students time to set up profiles in the forum (e.g. add an avatar).
5. Wait for the students to post and start answering the posts (modelling positive feedback).

We have guidelines in the unit on how to post and a specific section of the forum called “social”. The unit content is punctuated by memes, which is a clear signal that memes are encouraged. The lecture break is a “meme review break”, during which I browse the social posts on the forum, while sharing   my screen, and react to the content they posted. To kick this off during the first lecture, all students are asked to post something and react to other students. I give rewards (e.g. stickers or treats) for good answers but also good memes during the lecture to further encourage posting.

My team and I also post and comment on memes during the week to keep the engagement up. We use the “ed” platform for both content and forums. It is a modern platform with quick reaction, post likes and endorsements, which makes all of this easier.