Remote Conversations To Enhance Class Experience in the Time of COVID: Co-Teaching with a Wingman Model

Remote delivery poses numerous challenges, particularly for discussion-based classes. Here, we describe a class management model that uses a conversational approach between instructional coleaders to introduce topics and facilitate student discussions. The conversational approach enabled us to model various aspects of the scientific process, such as asking questions and generating hypotheses, aimed at an emergent subject, such as COVID-19. Students’ feedback was positive, noting how the class enabled them to connect their existing knowledge with the daily influx of new insights about SARS-CoV-2. While our class focuses on COVID-19-related topics, this model of a conversational style class can be easily implemented for other course topics.