About the student experience

Reflection on the virtual classroom experience from another perspective, focusing on the student experience.

About the student experience

As a Virtual Classroom Assistant I have been helping and supporting online sessions since our school had to rapidly move to online teaching. Couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post about my first VCA experience; now I would like to reflect on the VCA experience from another perspective, focusing on the student experience.

A month ago, my executive MBA cohort had its first online module delivery. It was one of their core courses. I was managing the week as the programme manager of the cohort, and we were fortunate to have an additional VCA to support the running of this online module. A VCA colleague from a different department of the school came to support the week as a VCA. As running an online module week is a true collaborative teamwork, it was very valuable to have an additional support for the week. As VCAs, our main task is to support faculty with the online delivery, by helping with the Zoom setup, monitoring the chat, helping to manage the virtual breakout room, and helping to sort out unexpected technical issues. The support VCA’s presence during the module was a tremendous help not just for the course leader faculty, but for myself also, as this arrangement allowed me to be able to focus more on helping and supporting the students. As the virtual classroom environment is very different from the physical classroom, it requires different ways of engaging, communicating and supporting the students: answering questions in the chat, helping to moderate class discussion, helping to find materials on Canvas, helping with technical issues in the Zoom room, helping with resources and helping them with the various programme related questions they have.

During this week I could experienced how valuable and important it is to have a VCA supporting the online course delivery, as this way I had more time to help and support the students. This was especially valuable, as this was the first online module for this executive MBA cohort.

The student feedback regarding the arrangements of their virtual classroom was quite favourable. Even though the students had not been overly happy about switching to online teaching, they appreciated the hard work put into the arrangements of their first online module. Just an example of the feedback we received from the students:

“I know it is a less than ideal situation for everyone and the first situation week of online learning for the cohort - I feel it was much better than initially expected and that was greatly due to the support and programme team working hard to maximise the experience.”

I have experienced during this online module week how important it is for both faculty and for the students to have a “comfortable” and accommodating virtual environment. As VCAs we primarily support faculty during the online delivery, but I think it is worth keeping in mind, that by supporting faculty in the virtual classroom, VCAs add a lot to augment the student experience. At the end of the day we are here to support the learning journeys of our exceptional students. Thank you all for this memorable collaboration!