They are afraid of wasting the instructor’s time or embarrassing themselves by saying the wrong thing, so they feel a need to prepare themselves well. However, I’ve come to realise that, because the student is dealing with a subject so alien, so foreign to them, they sometimes struggle in trying to articulate their questions.

And in such a situation, these students, they never reach a situation where they feel ready enough to approach the instructor for help.

Overall, these anxieties, this self-imposed stress, they inhibit students from learning effectively, and I found that these issues, they must be addressed first if we want to assure and motivate students to learn well in their interdisciplinary modules.

In my years of teaching, the Telegram messaging app has become a very integral support system for me as an educator. It helps to alleviate students’ anxieties and empower them in their learning. So each semester, I create a Telegram helpline where students can seek help directly from me or from one of my teaching assistants.

It allows me to interact very closely with them. It allows me to show them that I’m serious in wanting to help them learn well. I answer questions without judgement, I collect the new questions and add to my library of questions and answers that everyone can access for their benefit at any time.

Now Telegram is a very, very powerful platform because students can seek help even anonymously. And it really, really helps with student motivation because students can see movement on the helpline in the form of other students asking for help, and that really motivates them to get started on the work, because they know they can benefit from the stream of questions and answers that are coming in on the helpline now.

The questions also make visible the kinds of struggles that their peers face, so students see this and it makes them aware that they are not struggling alone. So it helps them feel more confident about their learning and about themselves.

And more importantly, it greatly reduces their anxieties over learning something so new, so daunting, knowing that they can come to me or my teaching assistants for help, even if they struggle to articulate the problem because we will help them to figure it out together.

Now what I really love about the helpline is that it allows me to shift and foster a very positive learning culture for students. It allows me to demonstrate good learning qualities, good learning values, and shift the mindset away from competitiveness to that of collaboration.

And as I foster trust in my students and create a safe environment for them to seek help, students, more students begin to participate actively on the helpline in helping to answer the questions posed by their peers. And I know I’ve succeeded with cultivating that positive learning culture when I can see other students regularly helping one another with the struggles on the platform. Knowing that help is just a text message away or that there is a comprehensive library of questions and answers that they can refer to anytime to verify their understanding, this empowers students greatly.

They recognise that it is possible to master something so completely new and foreign to them entirely on their own, and they would not have to face the situation of discovering that they are not good enough.

So, to conclude, I just want to say I found the Telegram helpline to be such a wonderful learning tool because it helps to alleviate a lot of the anxieties and stress that students encounter with interdisciplinary learning.

Students know that help is readily available every step of the way. And they know, they are aware, that they are not struggling alone; that the helpline helps to foster that community of learning; that they know they are not struggling alone and they can rely on one another for help, not to compete for grades but to really discover and learn with one another.

So, thank you so much for listening and I hope this has been helpful for you. So, see you, bye.