Restrictions on in-person teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic severely challenged higher education practices worldwide. While didactic delivery of course content is easily achievable with virtual teaching technologies, promoting critical engagement with this material can be more difficult, particularly with classes of larger size and lower experience. Yet despite these practical challenges, for teachers of social psychology the pandemic context offered an unprecedented pedagogical opportunity to highlight both the relevance and limitations of social psychological research for tackling societal challenges. This paper outlines a strategy developed to sustain socially critical learning objectives within remote delivery of a large introductory social psychology module. This revolved around establishing asynchronous, peer-led online discussion forums wherein students independently considered how the concepts they encountered in weekly pre-recorded lectures could be applied to understand societal responses to the pandemic. The present article describes the structure of this pedagogical activity and the benefits it offered to students, teaching staff and the wider community.