Topic: How can you adjust your planned learning activities to meet the needs of your learners if an unexpected event occurs? 

Because the learning design topic for our group is to enhance learners’ English comprehension, the planned learning activities are expected to be face-to-face interactions. So that learners can have more discussion and engagement during the learning process. But we are also able to assure the learning quality if unexpected events occur. Just like our current situation, all people are stuck at home and can only work online due to this pandemic. Then we will have to develop a learning approach that can make our learners all be able to work at home safely.

The first essential thing is that we need to make sure all of our learners have accessible devices for online learning. Considering who might not have computers or laptops, we will try to make our learning resources and software are also accessible on mobile phones to ensure everyone can work from home. To adapt to the new study form, we will introduce the software or website we will be using in advance to let learners take time to get familiar with them. And the majority of the learning content will be delivered by online meeting applications such as Zoom. By using an application like this, we can also divide the learners into small groups and give them time to have discussions during the class. The instructor will take turn to enter each discussion room to see if there are any questions during the discussion.

Furthermore, online learning requires a high level of learning autonomy. To make sure all learners can master the knowledge well, some assignments and quizzes will be assigned to them base on a phased process. But due to the particularity of this situation that we are dealing with, we will not assign a heavy work for learners in order to help them stay in a healthy mental status in consideration of that they cannot continue with their normal daily affairs. As instructors, we will keep following up with each learner’s learning progress and be ready to solve any problems that both about learning difficulties or anxiety caused by this pandemic.

Regarding to Yiwei’s post, it is a good point that the online learning content can be flexible according to learners interests under this particular circumstance. Learners can have more interaction with peers and develop more interest in learning content during this topic exploration process.