School Holds Workshop on “Rain Classroom + Tencent Meeting in Foreign Language Teaching”

On the morning of December 7, 2022, the Sub-Center of the School of Languages and Communication Studies under the Beijing Jiaotong University Teacher Development Center, in collaboration with the Public English Teaching Department of the School, jointly organized a workshop titled “Rain Classroom & Tencent Meeting in Foreign Language Teaching”. The three main speakers for the workshop were E Mingcheng, Head of the New Media Group at the University Teacher Development Center; Wang Yuntong, a core member of the New Media Group at the University Teacher Development Center; and Zhang Jianqun, Head of the BOPPPS Effective Teaching Structure Group at the University Teacher Development Center. The event was hosted by Ding Yan, Deputy Director of the Public English Teaching Department, with over 50 frontline teachers from the School participating.

E Mingcheng delivered a presentation on “Rain Classroom Functions and Usage Techniques”, covering its overall features, interactive functions, and practical exercises. Starting with a Rain Classroom survey as an introduction, he detailed the toolbox of Rain Classroom and demonstrated how to implement flipped classrooms before, during, and after class using Rain Classroom to enhance student engagement. After experiencing the tools, participating teachers actively shared their feedback on the interactive features of Rain Classroom through live comments and submissions.

Wang Yuntong gave a thematic presentation on “Six Interactive Tools in Tencent Meeting to Enhance Online Teaching Effectiveness”. He introduced six interactive tools available in the enterprise version of Tencent Meeting: screen sharing, interactive annotations, meeting documents, breakout rooms, online polls, and online beauty filters. Wang led the teachers in practicing these six interactive functions, allowing them to experience firsthand how these tools can improve teaching outcomes.

Zhang Jianqun shared her experience using Rain Classroom and Tencent Meeting in English teaching. Based on the patterns of student attention during classes, Zhang pointed out that the BOPPPS teaching method is an effective model to address this issue, while Rain Classroom and Tencent Meeting can provide more effective participatory learning experiences for online teaching based on BOPPPS. During her lecture, Zhang explained the specific implementation steps of the BOPPPS teaching method and shared how she used the testing function of Rain Classroom in her Intercultural Communication course.

The three teaching facilitators enthusiastically addressed the teachers’ technical questions regarding the specific use of Rain Classroom and Tencent Meeting. After the lecture, the lively discussions moved from Tencent Meeting to a WeChat group, where Wang Yuntong and Zhang Jianqun generously shared templates for Rain Classroom test questions for the teachers’ reference. All participating teachers expressed that they had gained valuable insights from the event.

Through this workshop, the teachers from the Public English Teaching Department have enhanced their proficiency in using online tools and feel more confident in their online teaching capabilities.

编译：梁昱卓