 Since the culture lesson was in a virtual environment, what was your biggest challenge while

planning the lesson?

o I think our biggest challenge was trying to find a way that students are involved.
Since there really isn’t a way that the students can ask the teacher questions
immediately, we had to make sure that our information was clear. Students could
always email questions, but you don’t have the say attention that you can pay to the
students if we were teaching it in person.

 In the planning the lesson, how did you accommodate for students since they were going to
complete the lesson independently?
o One of the ways that we tried to accommodate for students was by giving them
multiple options to write about. Since we asked them to discuss some of the
interesting facts and differences/similarities between the countries. Giving them
multiple options allowed them to pick and choose what they found to be the most
important.

 What are some advantages to having a lesson in a virtual environment?  Disadvantages?

o One of the advantages of having a lesson in a virtual environment Is that the
students can do the assignment at their own pace. Students who may be struggling
have the opportunity to watch the video or look over the PowerPoint multiple times,
which you can’t really do if the lecture was in person. One of the biggest
disadvantages In my opinion though is that students lose that relationship between
the teacher and them. They can’t ask questions as easily and if they get confused,
they can’t contact them directly. So, it becomes easy for students to just accept they
don’t know something/

 How different would your lesson have been if it was taught live in the classroom?  What is at
least one aspect that would have been completely different?
o I think the lesson would be pretty different if were teaching it live, I think we would
still use elements of having the students do independent research, but it would be
more teacher centered if we did it person. In a way that is a good thing that the
students got to do this on their own because it helps build their responsibility and
accountability skills up. One aspect that would be completely different is that the
students were all assigned individual work and if it were in person, I think we would
have used group work just so the students could interact and share what they
thought about the content.

 If you were to plan this lesson again for a virtual environment, what is one thing you would
do differently?  Why?
o I think one thing I would do different would be to screencast and go into more detail
on the slides. When we were done with the lesson it more seemed like the students
 would just be copying information down more than they were actually learning
anything. If we did a screencast, we could go into more detail about the education
system and the culture in Nepal and I think that would also help keep the students
engaged more than just reading a PowerPoint.

 Did you achieve your objectives?  How can you be sure?  Looking back, was your
assessment effective?  What is one thing you would do differently with assessment if you
had another opportunity to teach this lesson virtually?
o I would say that our objectives were achieve and that the lesson was overall a
success. I think there are definitely elements that I would change about the lesson
but based on the assessment the students seemed to have a good understanding of
the differences in the US and Nepal. I think one thing that I would do differently
would be to have the students share their opinions on life in Nepal and talk about
what they found to be the most interesting and why they thought it.