This is our fifth Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!
It’s our second post from Martin. (Thanks, Martin!)
With all the great information we’ve had so far in these posts, I am wondering whether we’re still in the “dog” phase, or if some of you might at least be approaching the “cat” phase. Perhaps that’s too hopeful – what with this being the first week of Distance Teaching for some – but we’ll get there.
For now, we’ll consider the cat as aspirational.
Take it away, Martin!
Online Teaching in the Trenches – Assessment
Pushing your presence out to students is one thing. You probably have Canvas or Blackboard to help you with this. You can publish lectures on YouTube or your campus’ video hosting platform of choice, you can do live lectures or discussions on Zoom. But maybe you’re accustomed to collecting student work on paper and returning it that way, and you’re almost certainly accustomed to doing exams on paper.
Formative Assessment
This is a bit easier to handle becuase you can often forgo any serious grade consequences here. If you have a standard textbook, see if the publisher has an LMS service like WileyPLUS. I’m generally not a fan of these for a variety of reasons – I don’t like the publisher lock-in, their software is almost universally terrible, and students usually hate it. That said, it does usually work, and you get the benefit of large problem libraries and automated grading. But if you need to get something going quickly, it succeeds nicely at that. We’re after ‘good enough’ solutions here.
If you have Canvas, use its built-in quiz tool. It can do automated grading, or you can grade manually. It’s pretty good. Students like it because its right there in the course space. The downside is that it’s not a great fit for most STEM courses. If you need to do multiple choice, or even short typed answers, anything from Google Forms to Canvas can work very nicely.
For traditional STEM courses where problem solving is the goal, you’ll need to do a bit more work. One of the simplest solution is to have students take a photo with their phone, convert it to a PDF and then upload it through your LMS (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.) Recommend one of the free apps that make this easy. I really like Scannable for iOS – it adjusts contrast, perspective and cropping automatically, and automatically stitches multiple pages into a single document. There are similar apps for Android. In fact, I’ve stopped using my big office copier/scanner because my phone and the app was faster and gave me similar quality.
Jupyter notebooks are also quite good for this as well, particularly if you’re replacing a lab assignment. Students take photos of their work and add them to the notebook, provide their formal report, and can do data analysis and the like in the notebook if they has experience with python, etc. Or just have them assemble them in their tool of choice (Office, Google Docs, etc.) and send you a PDF.
One of the bigger challenges with large classes is simply organizing the work that comes in for ease of grading and returning it to students. That’s really what your LMS helps most with, but if you don’t have one, and need to rely on emailed assignments, etc. make sure you give them some hard rules on file naming and such. One of the big challenges at my institution is each student has two IDs – their numerical student ID and the first part of their campus email. Different systems sort on different IDs. Do yourself a favor and have them name the file [ID]-[Assignment Number] so that you can easily organize the assignments into different folders and sort them on your computer to match your gradebook. If you have TAs, that can help divide up the work if you normally work with paper assignments. Consider a file sharing tool like DropBox that allows you to do file requests so their emailed files will all drop into a folder for you: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/create-file-request#filerequest Students don’t need a DropBox account. You can put a deadline on the request and submit to multiple people so you can dump your whole roster in there.
Writing assignments are always challenging. Consider a service that can help with peer grading for formative work. Some LMSs have this built-in, Turnitin offers it as a service and there are 3rd party services such as www.peergrade.io. Find the ones that work best for you. Peer grading can help reduce the amount of review that you need to provide. There are a number of studies that show that peer grading does a servicable job at giving students feedback. In fact, you can shift your approach a little bit and use the quality of peer feedback the student gives as part of the grade, just to ensure they take it seriously.
My instructors really like Canvas Speedgrader once they get it all set up. It’s a bit of work to get set up, and required them to change their approach a little bit, but the payoff was worth it. Students upload their assignments as PDFs, my instructors use an iPad Pro with Pencil to load the assignment, mark it up just like a paper assignment, submit the grade, and return the work to the student. It removes a lot of the administrative overhead of grading, and works very well for both writing and for traditional STEM problem solving assignments. It also works well for take-home exams. You really do want a tablet with decent pen input though – iPad Pro, Surface Pro, some Samsung tablets, some convertible laptops all work well. Not a cheap setup, but we’ve been able to reduce the number of graders and readers doing this becuase a surprising amount of their workload is actually just taking a stack of paper assignments and sorting them, etc. and here the computer does all of that adminsitrative stuff for you and allows everyone to focus on assessment and grading.
Summative Assessment
Here’s where things get hard. Test taking services like ProctorU are appealing and do work pretty well in most situations, but have a few drawbacks you should consider. These services work by having students install a piece of software on their Mac or PC that takes control of the computer, preventing students from switching into other apps. It also take over their microphone and camera so that a person at a workstation can monitor the student, just as you do when proctoring an exam. The student needs to show the proctor they have no study aids around, that there is nobody else in the room with them and the proctor enforces a time limit on the exam. The exam is in a web browser and students submit their answers online, which you get in electronic form. The caveats:
1) I do not think they can scale to the current situation. Unlike Zoom which is a matter of spinning up new servers, ProctorU and similar services need to have a person monitoring students – they usually monitor roughly a dozen students at time. I’m skeptical they can staff up and add workstations for the current situation given that almost everyone holds exams in the same few weeks. I would do extra effort to ensure they can handle your course.
2) It works well for multiple choice, short answer, essay – things that can either be easily typed or run through a scantron. It does not work well for problem solving, equations, sketching a diagram, etc. We have worked around that by having the student type in the final answer to each problem, and then taking a picture of their work product with their phone as I describe above and upload that with the exam. They have to do this within 15 minutes of completing the exam. It works, but we’ve never tried it a scale more than a few dozen students, and you don’t get the benefit of easy organization of work materials that your LMS offers.
3) It costs $15-$30 per exam. This is a serious issue at my institution where we have a tremendous number of low income students and being a public, we don’t spring unexpected costs on them. Putting out up to $120 for a set of four finals is something we don’t ask students to do.
We’re advising switching to a paper/project final if you’re about to start a new quarter. If you can make the quiz tool in Canvas work for your final, that’s another good option. Otherwise we’re advising designing an open-book final that students upload through the LMS as a PDF. You may still want a timed final during your scheduled final exam window, and for our instructors they can still do that, but we ask them to give students some leeway on time due to problem with uploading, etc. For project courses we’re adapting an existing strategy that we use. Our project teams normally make a weekly 2 minute presentation on the status of their project, what they did in the last week, and what they are working on in the next week, and noting any new problems that developed. It’s designed to be short so they’ll have to actually put effort into it since they can’t just ramble, and the instructor has a few minutes to ask questions. It’s our way of keeping projects on track. We’re expanding that concept to the final project – students will either put together a video showing their project, addressing specific requirements as part of the course, or doing an interactive Zoom presentation where the instructor can ask questions. The former for larger courses, the latter for smaller ones. Basically, an oral exam. My son is currently doing an animation in Blender illustrating how his project works. You’ll be shocked at the skills your students have if you give them room to be creative.
There’s a lot of other cool ideas and services out there, but they require a lot more prepration and rethinking of how a course is taught. Continuous assessment is the future in a lot of areas, and I’m a big fan, but that’s for another day.
WaterGirl
Martin is around if anyone has questions.
Avalune
So at my university I’m in this weird hybrid support system where I’m basically covering three positions in some capacity. One of those positions is a proctor in our testing center. A lot of people struggle with the online test proctoring for various reasons – lack of camera, cats, kids, whatever, not even getting to cost. It will be interesting as this goes on to see how we handle that. I know that we get a fair amount of income for providing proctor services for the government and other companies, so we’re taking a hit on that while we’re closed too.
I don’t have anything to add about blackboard except I’m glad I took a support position instead of an adjunct position this time. :-P
Good write up though!
mali muso
I’ll be very curious to see how our health professions that have to prep students for standardized licensure (ie. NCLEX) exams handle all of this.
I’ve been using Canvas for a few years and the speed grader for all of them, but I didn’t know you could set it up to be able to mark papers using an iPad. The things you learn here…
Sab
That dachsund looks like I imagine my sister looked when they told her she had to distance teach. Easy for me to laugh because I don’t teach.
WaterGirl
@Sab: That was exactly my thinking when I picked that dog!
Martin
So, our distance learning efforts are a bit hosed given that we didn’t anticipate faculty not being able to go to their offices, and we didn’t think we’d get so locked down that we couldn’t hold 20 person labs. So, we’re trying to figure out where to go. Finals this week, spring break next, so we’re only slightly hair on fire.
We’re trying to sort out the guidance on essential research and how to mesh those with local health policies.
And I’ll invite anything related to coronavirus. Though Italy’s fatalities were still up quite a bit and look terrible, they’re continuing to fall off the trendline and are now on a more gentle exponential curve than the US is, where we were consistently doing better than them. If this trend continues, it’ll be roughly another week before it’s obviously not exponential any longer. It might be faster than that if we haven’t seen the benefits of the later lockdowns, and it may not reach that point at all, but it’s been 4 straight days of increasing improvements.
My models aren’t designed to look beyond the inflection point when herd immunity kicks in, or a vaccine, or just massively aggressive isolating, so I can’t really forecast where this is headed for them, but I think it may not be until nearly 10K fatalities before the daily fatalities are lower than the day before. meaning they could drift up to 20K, or if they really halted the spread it could fall off even faster. That’s just too far ahead to do more than guess at possibilities.
The US had a bad day after a kind of okay day yesterday.
What I can’t tell yet is which of Italy’s actions were the trigger, so I have no real insight on when the US might bend, but I’m guessing we’ll not see it until we cross 1000 fatalities. Hopefully it won’t be longer than that. Guessing we’ll hit 1000 8 days from now.
Another Scott
Diaz-Balart has tested positive.
The House, Senate, White House, etc., all need to have procedures in place to do remote work.
Weeks ago.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT, but I have to get this off my chest. Many of you know I work in a supermarket as a cashier. There are three confirmed cases now in my county. I’m planning on taking a leave of absence from my job and quitting if necessary. I can’t in good conscience go to work in what are in my opinion unsafe working conditions. I don’t feel safe going to work and being exposed to this virus. We’re less than six feet from customers at the registers. My union contract doesn’t even allow us to get hazard pay (which was apparently in past contracts)
My parents are both nearly 60; my father had stents placed 10 years ago and he has (controlled) hypertension.
I understand we have important jobs, but I don’t feel it’s worth risking my parents’ health for little pay and no protection whatsoever. My employer won’t pay for hospitalization or god forbid funeral costs. I can weather the next few months on my savings and my parents’ help. I should add both of my parents don’t want me to work either
Do you all think I’m doing the right thing?
WaterGirl
@Martin:
Not quite sure what you are saying there.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I had an issue today with a student losing access to an online platform that was being used daily. The two of us had a Zoom meeting and she was able to screen share with me so I could walk her through the steps to get back on the other platform. I was pleased as punch. That was the highlight of my day.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
Maybe questions about his forecast models for the trendline here in the US?
trollhattan
My kid’s HS German teacher is ON THIS and today sent everybody a shot of her at her home office desk rocking four displays. She’s the Germaniest German I’ve ever met and the kids love her (most of them, because kids). TBF she’s legit adorable and loves what she does.
The others are kicking out this or that assignment too, and kiddo is sufficiently bored/motivated to keep on task. I’ll be dazzled if they resume school, don’t think it’s in the cards. But there’s a looming AP test suite so how do they accommodate that?
Brachiator
@Martin:
I just find it fascinating how these remote teaching/learning systems work.
But this bit assumes that all the students can also afford a smartphone. Or, if they are given or at least get access to a Chromebook or other laptop, can they also use the camera on the laptop for this?
Might be too obvious a question, but I was thinking how to insure that all students have equivalent equipment?
This may not be an issue for colleges, but for lower level schools trying to deploy these tools, I don’t know.
ETA: I was reading some story about some group deliberately down rating Zoom in the app store. Weird that anyone would spend time trying to create problems related to this stuff.
Another Scott
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The following is just my – some random guy on the Internet – opinion. You need to do what you think is right based on your reading of the situation, input from people you know and respect, etc.
WHO:
Because there is insufficient testing in the US (though it is – finally – starting to ramp up), one has to assume that the virus could potentially be anywhere.
But that does not mean that you are doomed to be infected if you continue working.
Wash your hands. If you can’t, use a hand sanitizer. Don’t touch your face unless just after you have washed your hands.
Keep away from people who are coughing or sneezing. Even though it is most likely allergies, etc., you need to keep your distance if someone seems sick. Don’t take a chance.
Etc. Follow the WHO information above.
Checkout clerks around here wear gloves. Is than an option for you?
You’re doing an important job. It may be very difficult to find a different job for months – look before you leap. See what your colleagues say – maybe you can get management to be more responsive to your concerns? If you feel that you have no choice, then do what you need to do for your peace of mind and overall health. But try to consider all the implications (staying or going).
My $0.02. Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
@Sab: I have told her you are doing these. She is interested.
Kent
Here in the Portland area the grocery chains are hiring like crazy. It’s not like you are a trained respiratory therapist walking away from a hospital job running ventilators. There are thousands of newly unemployed people who will be looking for your job. So it will get filled. Only real question is if you can afford to do it. And how long it will take you to find something else in this economy. That could be a LONG time.
Avalune
@Brachiator: Def an issue for community college students. They rely heavily on the library in town (closed) and the library at school (closed) to get their work done. Most have phones but phones aren’t very well equipped for this obviously.
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Martin. I’m too exhausted to comment meaningfully.
cckids
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You need to do what is best for you and for your family. Given your situation, I’d say yes. Going by your comments here, this has obviously been weighing on you, and you deserve some peace. I hope your employer will work with you.
As a fellow cashier, I entirely understand how you feel. It’s most definitely not safe distancing, nor do we get to wash our hands nearly enough. I’m not in a financial place that allows me to quit, so I’m just doing my best.
I’ve got a bit of a fatalistic view, I suppose. Living for 7 years with my son having 3 different antibiotic-resistant bugs, hearing continually that he could go at any time, I guess my lifetime stress quotient has been reached long ago. I take all possible precautions, but que sera, sera. I’m not minimizing, I’m just numb.
But Goku, please know that I wish you the best. Find your peace!
Mary G
@Kent: That was going to be my advice to Goku as well. If he can afford to quit, he should. He’s just short of graduating nursing school. We need those more.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
I get what you’re saying. I’m doing pretty much all of those things. I’m wearing gloves when I can. It’s just my parents feel strongly about this. And I still live under their roof, y’know? This is a respiratory illness. Handwashing isn’t all there is. At best, I’m maybe 2 feet away from customers in front of me. There’s still be people behind me in another line. And a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that COVID-19 can remain infectious in the air for 3 hours
I’m not the only person at work who feels this way and I tried discussing it with store leadership; I was largely brushed off, imo.
“We’re all in the same boat”. Um no we’re not, HR witch. You’re in your office upstairs away from the unwashed masses.
“Unfortunately, there’s no penalties for call-offs right now”.
We’re too close to customers. The panic buying has lessened, but it’s still been very busy and doesn’t help matters.
We’re just as much risks to our customers as they are to us. The median age of my county is 43.5 or so. Compared to 38 nationwide. A lot of customers are older. This is a clusterfuck
They can’t fucking fire me for feeling unsafe and working in unsafe working conditions. I’ll use the grievance procedure and dig in my heels if I have to.
I hope I’ll be graduating this May and getting my RN license. Granted, it’ll be more dangerous at least I’ll be getting better pay for it.
I’m planning on requesting a LOA. It’ll only be for 30 days but it’ll be better than nothing. I will still take 2 weeks probably to be processed
Martin
@Avalune: A number of years ago I led an institutional push to develop in-house assessment platforms. It’s absurd that we’re paying a 3rd party for this. And it was kind of okay while ALEKS was independent as it was developed at my institution and we had a very good relationship with them (as well as held some of their patents), but their sale to McGraw Hill has really reduced the utility of the platform for us.
The push failed when circumstances overwhelmed the group I was putting together, some restructuring, unexpected losses to other institutions, etc. but the institution accepted the benefit of doing this, so I’m going to try and make another run at it here. Ideally we would develop this systemwide and then open it up to the other two public systems in the state, and go from there.
Our justification is that assessment should be a core competency of educational institutions and that we shouldn’t have to pay others to do this for us, and that traditional high stakes testing fails pretty miserably once you leave the traditional instructional model.
Our proposal is to build frameworks for continuous assessment, with online, unproctored summative assessment. That’s met with a lot of skepticism because proctoring is seen as critical, but proctoring is also needed because assessment is too infrequent, meaning that it’s relatively inexpensive to cheat. We’ve seen a big increase in the shift from per-test cheating to per-class cheating, basically acquiring a fake student ID and paying another student to complete the entire course, rather than just sitting for a test. Larger classes and worse instructor/student relationships definitely feeds into this. Our plan is to substantially increase the rate of assessment to make it increasingly expensive to do this, and to integrate assessment across courses to make it harder for a student to cheat in Econ 101 and not get caught in Econ 102.
By collecting the formative assessment data and being clever about how it feeds into the summative assessment, we can effectively predict the student performance on the summative assessment, making it fairly reliable at catching cheating, except in the case of a student paid to do the entire course. And if we do this in an integrated way we can do that across courses as well.
So, we’ll see where things go, but this is an opportunity for change.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think you need to do what you feel is right. You are not obligated to sacrifice your parents if that’s what you feel is happening. Your employer has options that they can choose to employ or not. That includes things like hazard pay and protective gear, but also closing the store to customers moving to delivery only with online payment so you don’t need to interact with others.
Why do you think Amazon is hiring 100,000 people? They’re surely planning on doing that at Whole Foods, among other things.
Sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Normally Imwould say wimp, but you are nursing and cashier, and those two don’t mix.
Huge issue in my family. I do tax prep and my bosses, who I normally hugely admire, have apparently been watching Faux. My sister has a Chinese husband and they are pretty good at pandemic prep.
So I have been concerned since January. Doing usual flu season prep, wildly handwashing etc.
My office has been completely fucking oblivious. Laughed at me for the last month. Wanted to have a fucking birthday party in the conference room. It was cancelled but they still tried to have a tiny party in the hall with danishes and people singing. Nobody much went and the infected danishes are languishing in the break room.
And clients back from their cruises are wandering the halls. Me being a faithful employee has put a severe strain on my marriage. Our receptionist agrees.
Lyrebird
@Avalune: @Brachiator:
So far as I know, and at the moment I have a pretty accurate picture, I have some students with a smartphone but no computer, and no students with no smartphone.
I have a few students using a Chromebook, which handles some things easily, but if they’re struggling to click the right buttons to get into a Zoom meeting, no way will they get through the hoops involved to maybe be able to install R Studio on it.
Anyone know how to get Zoom to behave better when you are sharing your screen to teach how to use a program with pop-ups, like a big stats package?
Sab
@Sab: I love doing tax prep, but I will not work in such an unprotected environment again.
Brachiator
@Sab:
I was wondering today whether tax preparers who do face to face tax prep were seeing any slowdown in business; and also what steps they are taking to deal with virus related issues.
ETA: related to the topic, I know some preparers use remote office tools in their offices, although maybe not on the same level as educators.
Martin
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I really do like Zoom a lot. I think they’ve done a great job. We first started using it to do interviews of foreign students so we could do an informal assessment of their english proficiency (given that cheating on the TOEFL is pervasive). A 5 minute causal interview will tell you all you need to know – do they understand idioms, are their answers canned, etc.
Martin
@Brachiator: Working at the university level, we can do that. We mandate a laptop for student work. There are a few guidelines but they can otherwise choose what they want, and we bake it into the financial aid model so they can afford it.
You just can’t do that sort of thing in public K-12. We’ve done surveys of students and it’s been a few years since we had a single student report they don’t have a smartphone. They don’t need an iPhone, a Nokia 5 will do just fine at what, $90?
Martin
@Avalune: It depends on what you’re asking them to do. In this case, they just need a semi-decent camera and internet, and any phone from the last 5 years covers that. The test is still done pencil and paper, you just need to take a photo of it.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Martin: I like it enough. My partner is in charge this week and she is horrible at running meetings. Can’t wait til Monday when it’s my turn and show how to improve them. Oi!
Sab
@Brachiator: No slowdown at all in my office. Cannot remember when so many new clients. Lots did their own last year and thought they fucked up. No, Mitch McConnell fucked up but you still haven’t noticed.
Martin
@Sab: We’re using Zoom to chat with our tax preparer, as it happens. She’s in her regular office, but no clients allowed in. Seems to work just fine. Maybe even a bit better as there’s less smalltalk between us.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I understand your concerns. It would certainly make sense to look for another job where, if possible, you feel would better satisfy health related requirements.
But it also would be useful to try to see if your current employer could do more to help you and other employees deal with reasonable health and safety concerns.
Maybe kind of bland advice, but I would never tell someone that they had to stay in a job or that they should up and quit.
Sab
@Brachiator: We haven’t done squat until this week, but that hasn’t impacted me much. Stuff comes in, gets put in a drawer, and eventually I get to it. Usually I am about a week behind. This year I am about two weeks behind, so more stuff.
The client data doesn’t worry me. It’s stale when I get it. It’s the partner interaction I worry about. They just don’t get it that this isn’t a normal year.
Sab
@Martin: What a good idea. Jackals are bright canines.
Brachiator
@Sab:
Hah! That’s a good one. Yeh, the new tax law “simplified” the heck out of a lot of people.
I work with tax preparers and teach tax law update classes. Always fun when we get to QBI and related issues. I can’t imagine regular folks who try to do their own taxes having to deal with this stuff.
Sab
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Mean guy. Not saying you are wrong, but mean.
dmsilev
@Sab: Mitch McConnell didn’t fuck up. The tax bill did exactly what he wanted it to do.
Sab
@Brachiator: A lot of them have shut down. AARP shut down.
trollhattan
If Hillary declares it good, then it’s good. Trust Hillary that this is a damn fine lecture intro.
Sab
@Sab: We are getting their orphans.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Sab: I am nothing but polite and respectful to people.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cckids:
Thank you. Stay safe!
@Martin:
That’s what I feel should happen.
@Sab:
People can be so stupid. Stay safe!
Brachiator
It’s been busy and I have not been able to listen to many of them, but there have been a number of NPR (via podcast for me) stories about how work has changed since the corona virus, and programs on what happened as people switched to remote working and remote learning.
And what I have learned here has been very fascinating.
A lot of this has pushed discussions about politics to the side.
ETA: I have heard about podcasters and other tech folk using Slack for chat conversations. But I have not heard much about it being used for school programs. Nor Microsoft Teams.
catclub
I took self employment net income, then subtracted SEP IRA contributions to get QBI. Luckily a simple life. No depreciation or such.
[This is obviously correct because I haven’t been audited. ;) ]
Avalune
Few of our students have a computer – most have phones but not all obviously.
I don’t wanna divulge details but now that I’m thinking about it there is a student I’m a bit concerned for at the minute. Dang.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I think I’ll try this. Thanks for the advice
Gravenstone
@Brachiator: re. your ETA – they’re probably trying the same trick the Chinese kids did, downvoting the app they were supposed to use for distance learning so that it ultimately got pulled from the platform for low rating. Haven’t heard, but I imagine it got reinstated once it became clear what happened.
Avalune
Apparently in neighboring Philly:
The School District of Philadelphia will not allow teachers to do “remote instruction” with students while schools are closed during the coronavirus outbreak, according to a letter sent to principals Tuesday night.
Because the district cannot ensure equal access to technology among students, it’s barring individual schools from providing graded virtual instruction.
“To ensure equity, remote instruction should not be provided to students, including through the internet, technology at home, by phone, or otherwise,” the letter read.
joel hanes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Do you all think I’m doing the right thing?
Yes.
Brachiator
@Martin:
News stories have noted today that corona virus deaths rose by 475 in one day, the biggest increase since the outbreak. Nearly 3,000 total deaths.
Martin
@Sab: So, just like tax preparers can learn from teachers, teachers need to learn from some unusual groups.
YouTubers – particularly YouTube gamers who typically stream their desktop as well as a camera on them. Not just the software and hardware, but also how they interact with their audience.
And when I was working on early micropayments for a research project I was associated with, I talked to the porn folks, because they’ve always led in areas like video distribution and payment systems. They’re almost always the first on the market.
And these groups are pretty good at sharing their setups because these are permissionless businesses – you set up your environment, create accounts on youtube, etc. There’s no middleman, no boss. And that also means there’s no big budget to get going, so it tends to be pretty inexpensive. And that’s essentially where teachers are right now. If you do a lot of typing – get a quiet keyboard so it’s not distracting to students/clients.
I’m sure teachers aren’t thrilled we me throwing them in the same lot as gamers and camgirls, but you really are trying to solve a lot of the same problems. The gamers for sharing desktop content while maintaining personal presence in a video feed, and the camgirls because their business is about trying to establish a feeling of presence and interaction and engaging their audience for as long as possible. They rely on interactive chat to supplement the video feed, they try and remove distractions to enhance that sense of presence. Things like good lighting and microphones are key to that.
The content you are relaying is (hopefully) different, and the manner in which you engage students is (hopefully) different, but the goals are largely similar, and their tools are well researched and proven, and in some cases those communities have built their own tools like Twitch and Discord to better meet their needs. And to your students, these things are part of their toolkit and part of their manner of social interaction. There are now conventions for delivering video content to specific audiences set by these (and other) groups that are worth at least acknowledging and understanding why they work the way they do. This stuff looks very arbitrary, but it’s actually gotten surprisingly refined over the last 5 years.
Never overlook the trailblazers. They’re usually onto something.
Yutsano
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): One suggestion I could make: do an application for Family Medical and Leave act protections (FMLA). It will legally protect you from actions by your employer plus you’re allowed to invoke it for family members. It does take a few hoops to jump through, but it’s worth getting on the books. Talk to your union rep about it. They should have a procedure for you to apply.
Brachiator
@Gravenstone:
Yeah, I think this is what happened.
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah, the chat tools are interesting. I pulled my team onto Slack soon after they launched.
One of our problems is that as an outside-facing organization, we’re inundated with communication from outside of our team, so a tool like Slack gives us a protected space for the team since you can’t interact with a Slack team if you aren’t invited into it.
But it solves a few other problems as well. If we lose a team member and add a team member, there’s no content locked up in personal email accounts and hooked to named individual email chains. It’s all preserved by the individual’s role, not by the individual’s identity.
And for a paid community – one requiring a subscription, it gives an easy way to create a protected community – so it works very well for a course. And for those with some technical ability, the Slack APIs are quite good so you can hook all kind of other tools into it, streamline account creation (sign up everyone on your roster), do custom notification (ping my phone if I’m specifically mentioned between these hours, ping my computer if anything new is posted in a channel) and so on. So, I’ll set up Slack to notify me any time I get a comment on a Google doc, or you can ping when a new comment is added to a Youtube video. I’ve used it to track registrations for a conference I hosted on Eventbrite,
We have a lot of classes that use Slack. MS Teams isn’t used on our campus to my knowledge. I know some informal groups are using Discord.
For me, Slack is among my most important tools. it’s significantly improved productivity in my team.
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah, it’s hard to spot the inflection points in an exponential or geometric function. But if you take the log of the Italy fatalities, and plot that, you should get a straight line for an exponential phenomena. And we have a very reliably straight line until 4 days ago, when it showed signs of deviating. On the old trendline, they should have had around 700-750 fatalities today, so 475 is significantly better, even if it is their largest ever. And they’ll keep racking up larger death counts for maybe a week, give or take, but instead of accelerating upward, it’ll accelerate downward. I’m guessing tomorrow comes in around 3540, which is around +550, but is better than the ~1000 that the previous trend predicted.
I think it may hit 8K total before the fatalities really fall off, but the old trend would have been racking up 2500 fatalities a day by that point, so that’s a real improvement.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Good info. Thanks.
For a recent remote work assignment, we used Skype. Some designated chat areas or channels were set up for certain groups or topics.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
@Goku (aka Baka):
Not to sidetrack the thread but I have quarantined myself from work and only go among people to get groceries. I’m not hoarding anything and have to make my own bread as there isn’t any in the stores. But I’m a higher risk category than Goku and probably similar to his parents. My work isn’t as necessary as his and we are a bit slow at work so my boss if fine with it. I expect 2-4 weeks of being off. I don’t really want to but for me the risk is too high. And I think your advice to think it through is sound but everyone has to make their own choice as you said.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Take care.
Martin
I just want to say, this economic bailout is fucking stupid. It has all the trappings of doing something, without actually doing something, and taking a lot of effort inside government when they could take a more direct action and put that work on industry.
Instead of a check, which doesn’t address the problem of ‘what the fuck do I do next month?’, simply pause all personal and small business loan payments and rent/leases for the foreseeable future. Have the Fed backstop the banks as this pain will trickle up almost entirely to them. Anyone who has lost their job will be much better protected by that than by any kind of arbitrary check cutting. It ends evictions of individuals and small businesses, because we’re going to jump right down the 2008 foreclosure crisis all over again with one-time stimulus payments. That provides far more future security for individuals. Give plenty of notice for when the moratorium ends so loan terms can be adjusted and people know when they need to start making payments again.
And the government doesn’t need to do a ton of work to figure this out at a time when they seem to be utterly overwhelmed with simple problems preventing them from addressing the larger problems.
Yutsano
@Ruckus: Tomorrow I have to make a decision. Is my contact being limited enough for me to be safe? I have a full schedule. If it’s getting to be too many people, I will be shutting down my office. I will still be there working (I have things I can work on) but we won’t be seeing people. Yet I’m torn because of my innate desire to be helpful.
Of course if Governor Inslee orders us all home tomorrow morning this is all a moot point anyway.
Martin
@Ruckus: I hope you have a very uneventful couple of weeks.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I did my taxes last year. Have been for a while, actually quite simple. Until last year, when the forms and instructions were, how should I put it, fucked up. I read and reread the instructions, but I must be too logical a person because the simplification, wasn’t. I paid and got a notice and could tell by the notice that it must have been quite normal and I owed a bit more. I’ve had pretty much the same income +/- a few bucks and same deductions (standard) for years and what I actually owed was also within a few bucks. I’ve looked at it briefly this year and it doesn’t seem to be really any better than last year. Diving in later this week, hair pulling not optional.
Ruckus
@Martin:
You are of course right. Which is of course exactly the reason that our current government leadershit won’t do it. (was going to correct that but it seems just so fitting) They wouldn’t do it if anyone suggested because it wasn’t their idea. They would never have the idea in the first place because it’s actually good and productive. But some republican somewhere would scream bloody murder because they were going to lose that income for more than 2 seconds.
West of the Rockies
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Late response, but I think it’s a wise choice, too.
Another Scott
@Martin:
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
That was my thinking, is my exposure too risky. We don’t generally work real close but everyone at work has some exposure to others, who will also have exposure to others…….
And I’m 70 and have health issues, some of which I’ve discussed here. I don’t look my age and my docs say I’m normally healthy but the risk is still there. It just isn’t worth the income, as I still get social security. I can’t live on that currently but only by a few bucks so I’ll be OK. Not happy what with not adding to my retirement fund but maybe I’ll be here to spend what there is
Adding – thanks everyone, and I hope the same for everyone else, stay as safe and healthy as you can.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Damn, 2K would be a raise for me. I notice mortgages are in there but not rent.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Bummer they didn’t think to include renters.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My son also works in a grocery, stocking shelves overnight while going to school (now on hiatus). His parents (me) are over 65 but don’t have comorbidity. I am comfortable with him continuing to work.
Your situation with your parents is different. If you can afford it, I’d recommend the leave of absence. Tell your employer it’s for a limited time (1 month sounds about right) and you’ll reassess. If they’re OK with it, then you’re in good shape. If not … I’d leave. You’re in an essential industry right now (who knew?) and you can probably get another job in a month.
My inexpert 2 cents.
Aleta
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think we’re in a situation where no one knows enough to tell someone else they are being too cautious. Your boss’ priorities and yours don’t align. Your reasoning seems good. (It’s similar to ours.) Lots of people are agonizing over decisions about exposure right now . We don’t have anywhere near enough info to decide w/o feeling conflict, and the decisions are very serious. If you do decide to quit, I bet you’ll be in a position to help others in another way. It also seems like the other members of your household have a right to say they’re worried about what your exposure could mean for them. Just my 2 cents after a day half-spent in agony myself.
Yutsano
@Ruckus: No matter what happens I won’t lose my income. If I shut the door I’ll still go in but no one will be allowed in the office except my co-worker and I. I can live with that until April 15th. If we get sent home because of a state wide shelter in place, the federal government will still pay me. I won’t even have to use my own leave in that situation. I would just feel…guilty.
You’re making the right decision for you. I’m trying to wrap my head around if I’m doing the same thing.
Another Scott
@Ruckus and debbie:
It’s one of many proposals.
Warning – Politico (from 8:30 PM tonight):
Moscow Mitch is playing games, as usual.
Cheers,
Scott.
Aleta
https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1240010340240429061
bemused senior
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think you are doing the right thing. I am on the other side of your problem. I am suffering a recurrent cancer and undergoing immunotherapy. 71, with hypertension and type 2 diabetes. My daughters and husband are beside themselves about the need to rigidly follow the shelter in place rules. I agree with their opinions. Mostly I feel helpless. Your parents are lucky to have you and your care and concern. Hang in there.
Aleta
Mon Dieu
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
As our leadershit is doing so badly it really is all upon us to make the decisions for ourselves. I don’t feel guilty and I see no reason anyone else should either. This is in fact a life and death decision. Not a thing wrong with choosing the option that puts the ratio of life or death more in the favor of life.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Thanks and good.
Maxine has zero fucks left and has for some time. Heard her speak at the first woman’s march I was able to actually get to in LA. She swears as much as I do and I liked that. The crowd liked it. Pissed off Maxine is a sound and sight to behold. Not One Fuck Left.
WaterGirl
I just put up an Open Thread.
smintheus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes you should refuse to go to work, it’s life threatening. Your store should be requiring patrons to submit requests in advance and letting them pick those up at the curb. If they won’t do that, then the cashiers should force them to do so by staging a sick out.