Ben Rentler

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

About

Benjamin Rentler is a English lecturer at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. He has been working in English education for over six years teaching in junior high schools and universities in America and Japan. His research interests include willingness to communicate, CBLT, understanding technology acceptance, translanguaging, and independent learning.

Sessions

Show & Tell Presentation Increasing interactivity with Nearpod: Strategies for effective online teaching more

Sat, Jun 5, 10:00-11:15 Asia/Tokyo

Teaching online makes it challenging to encourage student engagement and interaction. In this workshop, I will share how I utilized Nearpod, an online teaching platform, to enhance my online English teaching practices. Research has shown that using Nearpod in English classes aids in promoting active learning by facilitating collaborative participation between students, teachers, and lesson content (Amasha et al., 2018, Hakami, 2020). My workshop will showcase how Nearpod can be used for effective discussions, reading activities, vocabulary activities, student-paced assignments, informing future instruction through its post-class reports feature, and more. Teachers will receive opportunities to test the functions as well. Finally, I will share the results of a quantitative opinion survey of 197 students’ self-reported perceptions of Nearpod, which indicated they felt an overall positive effect on their motivation and interaction in classes. Regardless of teaching online, hybrid, or face-to-face, the Nearpod lesson platform contains plenty of tools to increase interactivity and engagement in language learning. It is my hope that educators will leave this workshop feeling more confident in their ability to use this technology to facilitate interactive classes.

Ben Rentler