This is our third Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!
Here’s Part 1 from Martin – Online Teaching in the Trenches (Thanks, Martin!)
Online Teaching In The Trenches
So, my credentials here are different. I do have some teaching experience but my main experience is with curriculum development and implmentation with a heavy dose of technical expertise and focus on assessment. I’ve chaired statewide initiatives and worked as an advisor for a number of K-12 districts. My main experience is with STEM instruction, including writing instruction at the university level. I’ve developed and led online learning initiative with varying degrees of success. There are valid individual objections to online instruction, but now we have no choice, so let’s make the best of this.
There’s a right way to do this which can produce better outcomes than traditional in-class instruction, but they take a lot of time to set up. We don’t have that, so we’re going to have to MacGuyver this shit and accept a lesser outcome. I’m assuming an environment where you have access to your campus, but where work-from-home policies or quarantine may be in place leaving you with minimal technical support. Assuming here you’re pretty much on your own.
Your first decision is whether to do live instruction or recorded. Live takes less work since you’re mostly just doing what you do in class, but technology problems are more critical at a time when your IT support is at its worst, and students may not always be able to make that time work. Some may have to share computers, some may be dealing with other realities of a pandemic. Recorded affords you time to sort through some of these issues and is more flexible on both ends, but takes more work to do. The upshot is that you will always haveyour recorded content so if we are still doing this in the fall, your fall offering is now mostly set up. My instructors typically do both – recorded lectures, with live discussion sessions and office hours. Effectively a flipped classroom model. It preserves some of that direct interaction without relying on it working for everyone. When we do have live lecture instruction, I typically insist we have a tech support staffer in the room simply due to the frequency something goes wrong.
Live Instruction
Zoom is the go-to standard for live instruction. Most institutions have licenses. Students are often familiar with it. It runs on all platforms, and Zoom Rooms allow you to schedule your Zoom session just like a course. It can scale to 100 participants for a standard license or 300 for an institutional one. Do some practice ahead of time to learn how to deal with muting, getting the interface the way you need it, making sure your screen sharing works, etc.
Zoom can also record your session so you can use it as a poor-mans recorded lecture tool. It works both as a tool for simulating a discussion session, as well as for something like office hours with students dropping in.
If you have a TA or some other assistant, having that person able to monitor a chat space where questions can be posted and feeding them to you to answer makes the whole thing go massively better. They can also triage questions and if they feel it only applies to that student, they can just answer it in chat.
I’ve heard some questions about whether Zoom can ramp up to handling every unviersity course in the the country overnight, and I think the answer is yes. They built out on AWS and then moved into their own cloud stack, but have retained the ability to do surge capacity on AWS, so yeah, I think they can scale just fine. They may have some outages as they work out what the real demand will be, but I think they’ll move in front of that quite quickly. They have a good team.
Also, in my experience, Zoom works better on mobile devices than computers. So if you aren’t doing screen sharing, just run it on your phone. It’ll probably be easier, better quality, and more reliable. If you miss your white board and you have an iPad Pro with Pencil or a Surface or a Galaxy tablet with pen, then you can do screen capture on those devices and work out problems for the class. These can vary a lot in terms of quality. A standard iPad with a 3rd party stylus isn’t very good. I have a 12″ iPad Pro with 2nd generation Pencil and it’s amazing.
Recorded Instruction
The worst outcomes result from taking your traditional 50 minute or 80 minute class, recording it, and putting it online. That may be where you have to start, but try and change that as soon as you have time. We have to break down some basic conceptions here. The 50 or 80 minute lecture is not the product of some grand pedagogical consensus. It’s an administrative construct designed to operate schools efficiently, particularly in an era before computers. It’s the factory model.
Armed with that set of constraints by administrators, instructors have developed means to make that work relatively well. There is something to be said for physical presence, subtle non-verbal interactions, reading a room, etc. But we can shed that administrative constraint here and adopt better approaches for students. You likely have an intuitive sense of the pacing of your course by week, but the students don’t particularly care about that. That’s your time management need, not necessarily theirs. As we go thorugh this, the pacing may shift relative to where you want to do assessment. And that’s okay as long as it doesn’t get too out of hand. Online courses generally give students some flexiblity to adapt the pacing to their needs.
So, start by thinking about how you choose to learn. It’s generally in short bursts allowing for time to review and apply it, reinforce whether you understand it, and then tackling the next concept. If you are recording your lectures consider taking your normal 50 or 80 minute lesson and break it up into conceptual elements that are 5-10 minutes long. They should be a complete concept, they should look back slightly to remind students what this module will build on, and they should look forward to the next module. This helps anchor the concept in the larger context. As a result, your 50 minute lecture may not fit in 50 minutes of recording. That’s okay. The other benefit of smaller modules is easier maintenance in that if you need to revise or re-record a module, you just need to do 5-10 minutes.
If you take a 45 hour of instruction class and break it up into 5-10 modules, you’re looking at maybe 300-400 videos. You want to be able to create one of these, maybe do a little bit of editing – add a title screen, trim a bit from the start and end and push it out to your campuses system fairly efficiently. Our faculty generally prefer Youtube hosting with embedding the link in a Canvas lesson. That also makes it a bit easier if you need to re-offer the course and you can copy everything over to the new course space and just edit it. With so many videos, you’ll need to do some extra effort to make the listing/directory easily navigable with clear titles. If you number your videos, don’t put them in the title of the video. Often times instructors want to add a new video and that throws off the numbering. Number them in Canvas and break them up in a chapter/video manner so that if you do need to renumber, you won’t have to renumber all of them.
And a course is rarely actually linear. Typically you’ll build off of something you introduced several weeks ago, and here you have an opportunity to point students to review a set of concepts as an introduction to something new. ‘Go review videos 3-4, 3-5, 4-2, and 4-3 before starting 7-1’. That’s something you can’t easily do in a traditional class, but is trivial to do here.
Don’t go crazy with technology. You want solid, reliable over flashy. If your institution has a service or software such as Replay, you may be best off sticking with something that your institution will provide support for, even if it’s not the best for your use case. Most faculty just want to go through a Powerpoint presentation with a voice-over. Using a camera is better as students are more engaged looking at you than just listening to you. If you feel a bit more technically capable, I’m a fan of Filmora for recording. It does a good job of screen capture (your Powerpoint) as well as your video camera and microphone in an overlay window and giving you good editing tools. It’s a nice bit of software that runs on Mac or Windows. Not terribly expensive. But if your school has Replay and support for it, I’d just stick with that to start.
Supplemental Instruction
This does afford you the chance for supplemental instruction. Don’t be afraid to point students to other content. Professional YouTubers are very good at this, they have full editing gear and experience, and they know how to do the ‘performance’ of engaging teaching, and making things interesting. That doesn’t come naturally to many instructors, particularly when you are just speaking to a camera. You don’t need to replace your own instruction with this content, but students may find a lesson that came with a week of planning, professional
editing, and animations to be more illustrative. Especially here in the beginning when you’re scrambling to get something working, leveraging the work of others can take some pressure off. EEVBlog, Physics Girl, Wootube, etc. Every discipline has someone passionate about that discipline out there creating content. This will work better for lower-division than upper-division instruction, but you’ll be surprised at how much advanced content is out there.
If you’ve lost your labs, you’ll have to move to demonstrations since presumablycyour institution is still open and you can simulate the lab. Again, record thesecrather than trying to do them live – it will never go well. You may be able to pull the demonstration off perfectly, but having to do the cinematography at the same time will break you.
If you have more time or you have TAs who can help with this, a really good model I’ve seen work is to take a problem or a demonstration and record it 3 times. Do a 1 minute solution (advanced), a 3 minute solution (typical), and a 5 minute solution. Students that feel like they have this down, they can do the 1 minute video. Most will do the 3 minute, but those that are stuck might need the 5 minute – which may be more detailed, cover some remedial material, walk through the math in more detail, give a 2nd or 3rd explanation, etc. This will obviously take longer, but may help reduce the amount of live explanations if students get stuck.
You may be surprised at how much experience your TAs have with video or audio recording and editing. It’s not that uncommon.
Tools of the Trade
Most people can get by very well with Zoom and either Replay or something like Filmora. If you can afford a bit of gear, take lessons from pro YouTubers. They’ve driven the cost of much of this stuff down, so you can really up the quality of your instruction for not much money. Your laptop camera and mic will certainly work fine to start, but a separate camera and mic will make your results much better.
1) Lighting – Get a softbox lighting setup: https://www.amazon.com/Soft-Boxes/b?ie=UTF8&node=14014901 These provide diffuse lighting from a non-point source, so they knock down shadows. You need more light than you realize. $40 and up.
2) Camera – Logitech StreamCam. $150. This probably also takes care of your microphone needs. It’s not as good as a dedicated mic, but it pretty good. You may need to add a stand for flexibility.
3) Microphone: The best reviews of these, IMO, including audio samples:https://marco.org/podcasting-microphonesRecommend the Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB. $100. This assumes you’re sitting and presenting, not standing. If you have a decent camera like the StreamCam, you can probably skip this. But get a USB mic so you don’t need to deal with other hardware.
If you’re doing demonstrations, the camera with stand and lighting will be key. Alternatively, your phone can do a servicable job here – especially a recent flagship Galaxy or iPhone. There’s software for using an iPhone as an external camera such as iWebcam. Depending on what you’re doing you can step up even to a DJI Osmo Mobile 3 Gimbal – $120. Really amazing bit of hardware for stabilizing video, even does motion tracking, etc.
If you do have access to your campus, see if your department can set up a few classrooms or conference room as studios. Or set your office up as one. Mount a camera, lighting, etc. so you can present in front of your white board or at your desk.
And many disciplines really benefit from recording their lessons out in the world. An iPhone and gimbal setup and you can give an urban planning lecture in a setting that illustrates your topic. Or from a museum or what have you. The change in venue is engaging for students, and you may enjoy the opportunity to get away from things a little.
I’ll do a separate post on assignments and testing.
*****
Note from WaterGirl:
For sharing, and for future reference for yourself, you might want to bookmark the whole series.
https://balloon-juice.com/category/health-care/covid-19/distance-teaching-coronavirus/
You can also find it under Featuring in the sidebar (it’s in the menu bar / hamburger on mobile).
Scout211
This is really great stuff. Thank you for this. It will really help the teachers who are new to distance teaching. Well written and full of great advice.
Mary G
So many smart people on Balloon Juice sharing wisdom for free. Thanks, Leto, Avalune, Albatrossity, BillinGlendale, Imm, Martin, Marvel just off the top of my head.
WaterGirl
Martin, will you be around at all this evening or tomorrow in case people have questions? If so, maybe you can let us know when? thanks
WaterGirl
@Mary G: And they all write so well!
Martin
@WaterGirl: Of course.
This is a bit thrown together since we normally try to take a much more measured/structured approach to this. I have worked with faculty in emergency situations, such as one instructor who had visa issues right before the start of the term and had to teach from a hotel room. Thankfully it was a programming course which opened up a TON of tools.
But every situation tends to be a little different. The thing to remember is that students are as unsettled as you are. They’re not expecting a best of breed online course – they know this is being cobbled together, so lean into that, rely on their feedback and suggestions.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I used to work with a fellow who could never get his sayings right. My favorite of all time:
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Martin. I am overwhelmed and so are most of my students.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: The guest post by Pika re: the emotional toll is scheduled for 9am on Saturday morning. You should come!
BGinCHI
Damn, Martin, this is fabulous.
Shared with my dept and some others. Many thanks.
I know this might sound kind of appalling, but one of the things I’m going to do with the new schedule of non-face-to-face time in my Shakespeare undergrad course is to push them back to the text to do more careful reading, and especially re-reading. They can come to depend too much on my lectures, where I carefully guide them through the text, and at this point in the semester they should be able to read deeply on their own. I’m going to send guiding ideas and arguments and challenge them to rise to the occasion in chats and threads (like we do on Sundays in Medium Cool).
Doesn’t work for every class, obviously, but in this case I want to try this low-tech model first.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
If I’m not in a Zoom meeting already.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
I still haven’t decided, I’m leaning toward this as well — at least for part of it. I already chucked out one whole Dostoevsky novel so we can go slowly through Karamazov.
ETA: It did occur to me today that my BJ experience could help me with trying to keep a discussion going online.
zhena gogolia
I have to go to bed to get ready for another six-week day tomorrow.
Bill
A friend shared this on FB
Teacher friends! If you want some excellent EAL, primary, KS3 or support resources, Twinkl are offering one month free unlimited download for all resources due to school disruption. Also useful for parents to support at home – share the love UKTWINKLHELPS
Haven’t used it, but if you teach up to year 8 Or 9 it sounds good
Martin
@BGinCHI: Oh, yeah, I should note – my campus is on a quarter system, so we’re heading into a new term which is nice because instructors are likely to be doing the entire term online, rather than just having to adapt midway through.
So, I wrote it from the perspective of starting a new term.
Something you might consider is coming up with a question for them to answer – something with a controversial or disputed answer and have a group of them take a position and argue it. The group can be a challenge in that you may get one student doing all the work of the group, but there are ways to mitigate that. But as a group they’ll sort of be forced to dig into the work deeper, and in all likelihood there will be some disagreement about their position which they’ll need to resolve internally.
A lot of engineering instruction works around small student groups working out open-ended problems. The students in the team push each other deeper into the work.
Martin
@BGinCHI: I may do a 3rd installment on things after the basics. Tools like Slack and Discord, discipline specific tools ideas for replacing traditional labs, etc.
There’s a lot out there.
patrick II
An alternative theory of the coronavirus from the Moscow Times:Trump did it!
Old Dan and Little Ann
I start with Zoom on Monday. After about 5 hours of training it should be interesting. It will work out for the quiet, attentive kids who are constantly ignoring the active, always attention needing kids in class. There is a mute audio and picture screen which is my favorite function
The Dangerman
Good stuff here, thanks. Comment, then a question.
I did DL from 1995 though the end of 2006, heavily at first, then somewhat off and on. Asynchronous initially, then synchronous. I think I’ll spare any words of wisdom about my experiences because the platforms have changed and improved (I hope). The software I used doesn’t exist any longer because it sucked…
…which is why I went the other way and now want to be where I want to be in person. I travel. A lot. Generally, not too far, but I can roam some (generally, no further north than Portland, OR, and south would be San Diego. East, maybe Vegas. Almost never Arizona.
So, what in the fuck does one do if one comes down with the dreaded Corona when you are away from home? With a typical cold and I can’t get home, I don’t feel too bad about staying in a hotel/motel. That happens rarely thankfully; I generally do NOT get sick. I get a cold every 2 to 3 years or so and, typically, I’m home. So, no big deal.
So, for THIS one, if I’m on the road (as I am now) and come down with something, I’d feel like shit going back to the motel/hotel and saying “Surprise!”. I guess they’d clean REALLY well, but, still, that’s cold…
…and I don’t think hitting a Hospital makes sense unless it’s really needed. They are gonna be maxxed out. Probably soon.
So, what does one do other than TRY to make it home impaired/impacted?
Kent
No distance learning here!’ I guess someone has to be the control group in our big national experiment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/liberty-university-president-jerry-falwell-jr-says-in-person-classes-to-continue/2020/03/13/70b23a58-654e-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Sounds like no learning whatsoever.
Martin: Thanks for the good write-up, this kind of instructions seems completely foreign to me(probably due to my age).
JaySinWA
@Martin: I am stuck in an MS Teams world for an older audience. If there are any helpers out here, I am all ears.
The Dangerman
@JaySinWA:
Only words making sense at this hour is “older audience” so I hope this helps a little…
…but google Andragogical Learning. Adults learn differently than children (Pedagogy). I don’t recall enough this evening and at this hour to be more help right now wrt details.
Bedtime.
Martin
@JaySinWA: I’ve never worked with MS Teams, unfortunately. If I do get off that 3rd post, there might be some things that could adapt from Slack. There are a lot of technical differences, but conceptually they’re similar.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Things have changed a lot.
Thankfully I stumbled into hiring someone who was a curriculum planner from Open University. She was tremendously helpful – she did an online curriculum through her schooling and then for a decade of her career.
Her main observation is that the US has a very disposable attitude toward education. We invest all of this effort in things that are ephemeral. You have instructors that have given more or less the same lecture 30 times in their career, rather than doing it once, with some regular maintenance, and putting the rest of their time in building out other educational infrastructure. As a result we under-invest in assessment and we have no real standardization in curriculum, because everyone is too busy running around reinventing the same wheel over and over.
JaySinWA
@Martin: Thanks, although I didn’t intend that specifically for you. I seem to remember someone in the introductory post mentioning MS Teams, so I wanted to do a general callout for hints with that platform.
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: I searched the introductory post for MS Teams and didn’t find anything. Guessing you know how to get to all of these posts through the link under featuring?
If you can find the original comment you are thinking of, I could reach out to them by email.
WaterGirl
Repost from the introductory post:
I you have thoughts or experience or recommendations that might help someone else, please consider writing them up for a guest post. It takes a village!
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: Thanks, I did that as well. I must have seen it somewhere else just it before this series started and misremembered.