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Educational Excellence

Morales further indicated the importance of simulating, to a certain extent, a face-
professor, she required that her students “ Different tools and digital
to-face structure within the students’ virtual reality.
Curet
The third video was presented by Dr.

applications can enrich the
Nahomy Curet, who offers courses in
public relations, advertising, research, and
teaching-learning process in a
writing for the media. As a communications

record their participation in the online creative and challenging way for
activities in her classes. Curet also the student.
motivated and enriched students’ learning
by encouraging them to become involved in nonprofit projects and by inviting ”
guests to her online courses. Curet noted that participating in this project led her to
share experiences and to learn about her colleagues.
Curet argued that virtual education does not have to be boring and
unidirectional. Different tools and digital applications can enrich the teaching-
learning process in a creative and challenging way for the student. As the project
took form, Curet shared some of the strategies that she implemented as soon as
the “lock down” commenced. She created for her students informative capsules
incorporating “virtual tours” of locations worldwide containing touristic value, and
she also worked with her students on the design of blogs to discuss topics of social
interest. During her course, students produced podcasts on diverse topics. Her
students managed to fulfill all these tasks using free applications available to them
via their mobile phones or computers. Curet replaced PowerPoint presentations
by having students create avatars with the Voki application (www.voki.com). The
concepts studied were reviewed with gamification tools, such as Kahoot (kahoot.
com) and Quizizz (quizizz.com), which generated enthusiasm and participation.
Curet emphasized that, “to transform virtual classes into creative and entertaining
ones, I recommend training, creativity, and discipline.”

Garcia
Professor Kimberly García presented the fourth video of the series. With
extensive teaching experience in a variety of online platforms, she offered valuable
information regarding the importance of the socio-emotional aspect of online
teaching and learning, especially from the student’s viewpoint. Garcia favors a
humanistic approach to lower students’ anxieties about learning English. Reflecting
on working her online courses from a socio-emotional standpoint, Garcia noted,
“Let’s get our online students interested!” When I asked Garcia what her approach
was to make her students interested, I was expecting a philosophy, a theory, or
specific activities…but she answered the following: “I reveal to my students that
I am human.” She continued by saying that students should see that teachers go
through the same situations. García said humorously, “I work with students’ socio-
emotions spontaneously.”
Garcia is conducting doctoral research on students’ anxiety—work she began
when she realized she was contributing to a student’s anxiety levels and recognized
that working with anxiety is as simple as emphasizing socio-emotional learning.

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