Professor Michael Liut on Keeping Students Upbeat

Professor Michael Liut of the University of Toronto Mississauga shares tips on how he keeps his students upbeat.

Connecting through virtual chat rooms and online games

I like holding live, interactive lectures. I have students do active work in breakout sessions and work with TA’s in individual rooms. I even host office hours that are not just technical office hours but more like life chats. I start them off by asking how everyone is doing and they seem to respond well to that. The students also really seem to like playing games online. Whether it be chess tournaments or playing the new Animal Crossing game.

Assuaging student fears

One of the scariest things for students has to be exams. There’s sort of the uncertainty of ‘how can I take an online exam? How will that work?’ I really like Piazza’s new Live Q&A functionality, it allows me to use this public forum to communicate with students in a live setting so that every student has access to the same information.

Sparking discussion with technical current events

I’ve been giving students weekly current events, articles about technical aspects, technical documents, or sustainability-type events. Whether it be something along the lines of data centers power impact in European countries or Microsoft and Google burying their data centers into the oceans, I post up an interesting article every week and I give the students the opportunity to provide discussion later on, and I find that that generally keeps them upbeat.