Environmental Planning at Master Level – my invite giving the first lecture by a guest

Singapore was one of the first countries to be hit with the COVID-19 virus after China. Stringent measures were immediately put in place in February including raising the alert level to DORSCON Orange. One of the impact of this move is that some institutions like mine went to eLearning mode.

Yesterday, 2 March 2020, was my first guest giving a lecture to my students via Zoom. I was relieved it went very well. My guest put a lot of effort in his slides so it was not an issue that we did not see him face-to-face. I also learnt that I did not have to hand the hosting over to him in order for him to share his slides on the screen. I still had control as the host.

His feedback was interesting. Bear in mind that he had not met the students before and that he could not picture the classroom. He sent me a Whatsapp message after the Zoom meeting saying, “As soon as I start on the second slide, my energy fell as im [sic] just speaking to the computer. Hope i didnt [sic] sound too monotonous or hypnotising”.

I reassured him by saying, “I know what you mean regarding energy levels dropping. It feels like talking to an inanimate object but I reassure you that 43 students are listening. This batch (of students) is quite active and extrovert. I have the advantage of having seen them face-to-face so I can picture them when I speak via Zoom. It is a challenge for all of use to deal with this virus. Imagine doing a group planning project without a site visit, and all (of the) crit (sessions), and presentations (are carried out) online.”

I will talk about the group planning project for this module in another blog entry.

Leave a Reply