I am from Singapore and the government recently increased its border control in order to minimize ‘imported cases’ of Covid-19. I am teaching a class of international students, so this news has a direct impact on some of them. They worry that they will be unable to continue with my course if I were to conduct face-to-face learning because a few of them are from countries from which Singapore has either banned visitors, or those with visa holders are given a ‘Stay-At-Home’ notice once they return from a trip. In times like these, I am glad I am prepared for eLearning. I just reassured them that I will continue to conduct the module via eLearning mostly synchronously via Zoom meetings.

I started planning for this Semester since last November so I could not have predicted what was going to happen in January 2020 onwards. Fortunately, I learnt how to use Zoom when I attended a webinar with the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects last year. I found that it is a very intuitive, flexible and very easy-to-learn tool for having online lectures, seminars, and student presentations. This settles the lecture series. However, the challenge for me is that this is a project-based module. After discussing with my Teaching Assistant, I decided to do a vLog for the field trip to the project site. I took the students for a ‘tour’ by talking while walking at the site and recording it. I also encouraged the students to explore the site using Google Earth in both map (2D) and 3D views.

The students are also provided with a Microsoft Powerpoint template at A1 with a print-screen of the map from Google Earth and Google Maps, which they can use to annotate when they carry out site analysis. The template sets up the map at A1, which can immediately be exported to an A1 sized pdf file and sent for printing immediately. They can also export the A1 maps into Adobe Photoshop to work with layers of different analyses, or to a GIS Platform such as Esri’s ArcGIS. Once they have completed their site analysis, they then present their work via Zoom while I host the presentations. The advantage of Zoom is that the students do not need an account. They just need a link to a Zoom meeting from me. The disadvantage is that I have to upgrade my account with Zoom to extend the meeting beyond 10 mins (under a free account). This is a small investment when compared to the value of being able to teach online as the need arises, which, in our current world, is not just for convenience, but rather a necessity and emergency to combat the spread of Covid-19.