Four Online Education Strategies for the COVID Classroom
When COVID-19 forced colleges to transition to an online format, many courses were stripped down to their barest form: a means to channel information from teacher to learner, placing the onus on the student to actually learn it. In the wake of a pandemic, with a greater number of distractions and anxieties than ever before, students were provided with less engaging lesson plans while being forced to take up greater responsibility for their own education. Marion’s work with TechChange, a company that specializes in the creation and facilitation of online courses, allowed her to see that it is not an online format that fails to educate. Rather, it is the failure to incorporate the advantages and tools of online education that caused the online transition to miss its mark. To share her observations, Marion Comi-Morog wrote the article “Four Online Education Strategies for the COVID Classroom”. This article was later published on the TechChange website, the link to which can be found here.
Analysis of Early British Literature
From a neck “whiter than snow on a branch” (Marie de France 564) to her “beautiful mouth, well-set nose, / dark eyebrows and elegant forehead,” (Marie de France 566-567) Marie de France, author of Lanval, devotes much of the romantic poem to the description of her heroine’s appearance. As the plot of Lanval revolves entirely about the bodies and appearance of women, many would describe the work as dehumanizing, written to scrutinize the female body so as to objectify the female. Because all importance was placed on the town looking upon her, the lady may be seen as an object of the plot, incapable of enabling action or influencing the story. However, the importance placed on her body gave the lady a power to command the attention of the King’s court, of an entire town, to save the life of her loved one. In harnessing the power given to her body, the lady of Lanval finds a means to execute her own agenda within Camelot’s imperfect, gendered system, becoming an enabler of the plot. Marie de France’s Lanval is a progressive text, sending a message to her work’s audience, the court, and women of her society that, in working within an imperfect system, women have the capability and drive to become heroes in their own right.
Entry in National Competition – Awarded “Most Philosophical Student in America”
In 2017, Marion was awarded the title “Most Philosophical Student in America” in a national short essay competition. The essay prompt was to answer in 500 words or less whether imagination or knowledge is more important to society. Seeking to examine the complex relationship between the two, Marion compared imagination to a vital flame, bright and alive, over which the rudimentary block of knowledge is melded, taking shape to become the structural scaffold that civilizations are built upon. She states, “Just as steel cannot become sword without fire, so too knowledge remains formless without one’s originality. Imagination both creates and utilizes knowledge; it is in this way that knowledge achieves its full command, and because of this that imagination has a greater impact on society.” The full work can be downloaded here.
All illustrated images were conceptualized by Marion Comi-Morog for TechChange clients. Illustrated by Yohan Perera.
Marion Comi-Morog 