Friday, July 31, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Video concerns

A host of concerns surrounds instructor-created videos. Some tend to be legal issues; most tend to focus on instructor mindset and personal fears. I'm no psychologist or psychiatrist, so today's post will only share my perspectives on these topics. I have no illusion that I probably won't change your opinion on many of these points, but I do provide some practical solutions to common concerns.

Mindset

I look and sound different on video

Yes, you look different on video than in the mirror, and yes: your voice sounds different on a recording than it does when you speak. We all experience those feelings and apprehensions. But, that is reality, and I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable. You will get used to seeing yourself on video and hearing your voice as others hear it.

What if I make a mistake?

I saw a recent Twitter thread discuss this question, and I was surprised at how many academics came down on my side: don't re-record the video. Just acknowledge the mistake, correct it, and move on. This is a great approach for at least two reasons: it humanizes you to your students, and it is important for them to see that teachers aren't perfect. In fact, we can use that opportunity as a "teachable moment." When this happens to me, I often pause, and then explain to students how/why I made that mistake, how I noticed it, and how to correct it. This exemplifies the second reason not to avoid making mistakes in class. Part of education, I hope you'll agree, is about learning how to learn. And the learning process relies on making some mistakes and addressing them. I hope you might also take the time to read an earlier post of mine with more narrative about why it is worth embracing content mistakes you might make in the classroom.

Let me share the most memorable Reply to all of my public YouTube videos to date, because it so bluntly underscores my point about the importance (or lack thereof) of recorded mistakes:
"Even when you make an error, it makes more sense than when my professor explains it correctly." – Nick Tokar
This is a comment on one of my most-watched videos (almost 75,000 times since 2017), about three-point genetic mapping. This quote is the top-ranked of the 102 comments currently on this video, probably because that comment alone has 63 "likes" of its own. My take: even when videos have errors, that doesn't make them less impactful or useful. What does is how you, as the instructor, deal with a mistake being identified. I think it comes down to humility - and this counts in the physical classroom just as much as in your virtual classroom.

How to address mistakes indelibly embedded in videos for time immemorial

With respect to the above quote, I should provide some context, in order to set out some best (and worst) practices for how/whether to address and/or correct mistakes in your videos. This video involved a genetic analysis technique that relies on writing out and interpreting a numerical matrix (which is boring to watch in a video). So, while I was recording the video, I was flustered enough in trying to remember to look at the camera and talk while also performing the interpretation of the data that I made a mistake in a small (but critical) part of the analysis.

After I posted the video, (at the time) manually typed the video captions on YouTube, and created the Table of Contents for the video, I was really pleased. Then somebody spotted the error. I was faced with the decision of how to address my mistake - and you will, too, someday. Here was my short list of top contenders for how to proceed (in no particular order):
  1. Remove the video from YouTube (and perhaps re-record the video)
  2. Ignore the comment pointing out my error (actually, this never crossed my mind, but it was an option)
  3. Reply to the YouTube comment by that one viewer
  4. Post a written correction of the mistake in the description of the video
  5. Crawl under a rock and never come out (also not something that crossed my mind, but I suppose some might consider this approach)
Here's how I reasoned through my solution. 5 just wasn't an option. I also didn't like choice 3, because it would be easy for a viewer to arrive at my video and press "Play" before reviewing all of the video comments (and their responses…) - it just wasn't an "eye-catching" approach to visibly solving the problem. 2 just isn't me: I'm an instructor, and I do spend time responding to all comments on my videos; I would feel really terrible if I discovered that I had led one (and then untold others) down an erroneous path, especially when the entire point of my posting these videos freely on YouTube is to help others.

What I probably should have done, in retrospect, was choice 1 (and I still might do this someday). Initially, I reasoned that I had spent so much effort creating the video, it wouldn't be a good investment of my time re-recording it just to eliminate one mistake. And, just so you know, one thing that isn't great about YouTube in this sort of circumstance, is that there is no way to remove and replace a video and keep its same URL. So, I can't re-record the video and replace the old video with a new version. From the author perspective, this would be great, because that is one of my most popular videos, and it helps my YouTube channel attract viewers to all of my videos. If I delete the video with the mistake, all of that disappears, and the new video would start its new life from birth, essentially. Now that I have the benefit of hindsight, for this particular video and the number of positive comments it has received, I'm glad I didn't replace it with a "better" version. Instead, I opted for (by process of elimination)…

Option 4. To the written description of the video, I added a disclaimer explaining the error and how to correct it. This, I thought, was a good compromise. I was being transparent about the mistake while also keeping the video on YouTube. To me, so far, there is still one drawback from this approach: even in the video description, users tend to overlook that caveat, so I still regularly get comments on the video pointing out the same mistake.

Here is where I think humility, and embracing the mistake (even time and time again), can be a really impactful opportunity for educators. Each time a comment inquires about the mistake, I do get a little defensive in my response, and I point out that I did actually note the mistake in the video description. I think I do this to make the point that I'm not deliberately trying to deceive viewers. However, I add a positive spin for the commenters: I also note that I'm glad they were willing to comment, and that I'm impressed they were paying close enough attention to spot the mistake - that this tells me they're understanding how the analysis works. I acknowledge that they did arrive at the correct solution after all, even though I did not, and I thank them for their post.

That's the way to handle your honest mistakes. Don't blow it off, and don't cover it up. Own it, and make it a teachable moment. You'll make a huge positive impact on your students.

Edit: after writing the above, I wondered if there were other good solutions in YouTube to alerting viewers about an error at the appropriate time in the video. At present, the only solution YouTube seems to offer is the ability to insert a "card" (a clickable link to another video) at a specific timepoint. So…I just recorded a quick "erratum" video that quickly explains my mistake and the solution, and I'm advertising that video on a card that appears just prior to where I make the mistake in the original video. Through the entire video, there is now an "i" (information) button floating in the upper-right of the window, and mouseover reveals more details about the link to my erratum video:


Then, at the timepoint of my choosing (right before I make the mistake in the video), that "i" button changes to a small (hopefully noticeable) banner with text I provided:

Clicking on that button or banner (the "card") launches the correction video. You can see what that looks like in real time using this link. So, adding cards provides another approach to making additions to video content hosted on YouTube without entirely replacing it.

One final thought on admitting mistakes: I'm a teacher, and of course I've been a student, too. So, I've been in the audience when a teacher has made a mistake, and then stepped back from the (then) chalkboard, and spent minutes trying to figure out where they went wrong. And then they spent an inordinate amount of time trying (sometimes frantically) trying to right the wrong. Often, that approach just further confuses the situation.

If/when this happens to me during class, my current approach involves two steps. First, I acknowledge that I've made a mistake, that I can't see where at the moment, and that I value the students' time, so I don't want to spend more in-class time trying to fix the problem. Second, I assure the class that I will figure out how to address the problem and that I'll provide the accurate version online or at our next class meeting. My asking the class for time to reflect on the problem, to let me decide on the best way to explain how I made a mistake and how to fix it, is not a weakness. It is a strength, and it is a great way to model how to learn.

Legal

From workshops I've led in the past, I can categorize these concerns about the use of instructor-created videos into two categories: student privacy and intellectual property rights.

Student Privacy

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) controls the rights of individuals to control the release of personally identifiable information from the educational realm. From trainings I've taken, my understanding is that this includes whether a student is enrolled at a particular school. Thus, it could be problematic if an instructor posts a video that includes protected information, and it is likely (if not true) that the release of student images themselves (and perhaps even their voices) would be protected under FERPA.

Particularly if you intend to produce any "capture" videos (recorded lectures, office hours, Zoom meetings…), best practices for addressing FERPA requirements might (again, I emphasize that I am not a lawyer and not providing legal advice here!) include:
  • first obtaining written permission from students to record and distribute their likeness (including audio and video)
    • This does raise the obvious point of what you would do if even one student opts out of recording…would you have to stop all lecture capture at that point, or only not post videos in which that student might have orally asked a question?
  • ensuring the videos are protected in a way that only other students from your course can access them
One reason I like using ExplainEverything to record in-person lectures is that the video it captures is of my tablet screen, not of the classroom. Then, it does record the room audio, but students who might ask questions are far enough from the microphone on my tablet that their questions are often audible, but I don't think they'd be clear enough to identify an individual student.

What I'm still trying to decide, because I've never held synchronous classes over Zoom before, is how to manage recorded Zoom video, which will have a video recording of the participants along with the screen names they chose. And, because I'm asking students to identify themselves with their real names, that could definitely pose a FERPA issue if the video was pirated and shared elsewhere.

It is a good idea to contact your administration to get official advice on these points before pressing "record."

Intellectual Property

Yesterday's post described the fact that any video you create can be pirated if you share it with others in any way. Legally, as the creator of the work, you own the copyright to your video. However, before you decide whether to spend time enforcing your copyright, it is worth asking yourself whether your video has monetary value and whether it is worth your time trying to leverage that value. I did not create my educational videos to make money on them (if that is even possible); I created them for efficiency. They represent tools that I believe will both 1) help me provide more on-demand resources for future students to use to learn about science and 2) help my students learn better in my classes, because I have customized the topical content and tailored the delivery to the manner in which I teach.

Let's face it: none of us are going to make money licensing educational videos. The market is flooded with them, and the vast majority (including mine) are not produced well enough to be valuable. Instead, my perspective is that my making and sharing free videos increases my visibility in the community - and that might provide me future opportunities that benefit my career.

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Video distribution and accessibility

Once you've made a video, now you have three major tasks remaining, for your students' benefit. You should
  • distribute that video file to your class
  • ensure that the video is captioned (provides the text transcript of speech in the video, for blind/visually impaired students and many more!)
  • make a time-stamped table of contents for the video

Distribution

There are many ways to share your .mov or .mp4 or other format video file; the choice might depend partly on your institution's policies and your own comfort with who can access the video you've created.

Options include:

  • Embed the video in your Learning Management System (LMS) website for your course
    • Pros: only available to your students
    • Cons: for many LMS, the large video files are not stored within the LMS - you might still need to upload them to a different server and then embed the file by linking it to the LMS; you will need to figure out how to caption the video
  • Add the video file to a file sharing site like Google Drive or Box or Dropbox
    • Pros: you can control who has access (and what kind of access: view only, upload/download, etc.)
    • Cons: you may have file storage limits that you would eventually exceed by storing large video files; it may be tedious to manage file access, depending on how many students you have in your class; you will need to figure out how to caption the video
  • Upload the video to YouTube (or another public video platform like Vimeo)
I'm a big fan of using YouTube to host videos, so the rest of this post will focus on YouTube features. I'm not providing a walkthrough of how to sign up for and customize your account at YouTube, which is part of Google, so if you have a Google account, you have a YouTube account.

Before we proceed, now is a good time to note that there is no way to make a video completely private (unpiratable), no matter how much security you place on it.
If you create a video for others to view, then it can be pirated.
Even if you upload a video to your LMS, so that a student has to login to your campus website to view your video, and only students enrolled in your course can get to that website, they can still, at worst, play the video on their computer and use another device to record their computer screen and audio as your video plays. Such a "bootleg" copy won't have the same quality compared to the original, but the user will still have their own copy of a video file they could then share with others. The same is true of hosting a video on YouTube: although users cannot download the original video file - they can only watch - they could use the same tactic to make their own recording of your video.

Captioning

Providing video captions is incredibly important, not only from an accessibility perspective. You have the ethical and legal (at least in the USA) obligation to provide accessible course materials.

Why caption?

There are many reasons to caption videos (other than it is required)! Here are a few that students have mentioned to me:
  • Students want to watch a video in a loud environment where they can't hear the audio track (and don't have earbuds/headphones)
  • Students want to watch a video in a quiet environment where they can't make noise (like a library, public transportation, etc.) and they don't have earbuds/headphones
    • Students want to watch a video in either type of environment, and they do have earbuds/headphones, but their bluetooth headset has lost power and they want to finish watching the video…
  • Students are non-native English speakers and benefit from hearing the audio and seeing the written words
  • Students don't know how to spell and/or pronounce technical words and benefit from seeing the word and hearing the pronunciation at the same time
I'm not even remotely deaf, but I can attest I've benefitted from captioned videos in at least all of the above situations.

When/what to caption?

There are lots of questions I have about captioning that I consider to be in a legal/ethical "gray area," and that is because I'm not an expert in the laws surrounding course materials accessibility. Although I won't greatly elaborate on them now, such questions include:
  • If I don't have a student registered in my course that has officially been granted a disability accommodation that requires video captions, do I still need to caption my videos? (I'd say: yes, especially if you intend to use the video in future courses, when you might have a student that would require captions)
  • If I am capturing live lectures, which is a situation where blind/visually impaired students don't get accessibility accommodations, then do those videos need captions? (This is an important question to seek clarification from your administration on. My personal perspective is that lecture capture is simply an honest recording of what happened in the physical or digital classroom - so it is no less accessible as a recording than it was in the original face-to-face or virtual classroom…but I still caption them!)
  • If the video provides a resource for students, but I do not require students to watch it for class, does it need to be captioned?
  • How accurate do the captions need to be? Is capitalization and punctuation critical to include?
When I started creating educational videos (years ago), I manually captioned them - meaning I typed out the text transcript as I watched the video after recording it. I found that it took me between three and four minutes to transcribe one minute of video. This was not a great use of my time, and it was impossible to caption lecture capture videos.

Thankfully, Apple's Clips app came along (which I discussed in yesterday's post: it "live captions" content), so I used it to make some of the short one- to two-minute format videos I use for class purposes. Otherwise…

How to caption

…I rely heavily on YouTube's automatic captioning. It is fast, it is free, and it is pretty accurate. When I began using it, "deoxyribonucleic acid" would not get transcribed correctly, but at present I find that many technical terms are being spelled correctly, requiring minimal editing from me.

I have two caveats to share about YouTube captioning:
  • It can take a while (minutes or hours) for captions to be generated, depending partly on how long the video is, so plan ahead and be patient
  • Captions are a text file that YouTube overlays in real time onto your original video file. Your video file isn't altered by the addition of the captions. In other words, if you download your video file from YouTube after captioning, you won't see the text captions in the video…so you can't use YouTube as a service to generate a captioned video file that you could then post somewhere else. However, because the captions are a text file, you can download that transcript file from YouTube for later use (like providing it elsewhere as a downloadable file for students to access along with the video).
Here's a walkthrough video I created (in Clips, using content mainly generated by QuickTime Player screen capture) showing how to upload a video to YouTube and then how to locate and edit the automatically generated captions.

YouTube video security options

As an aside, it is worth noting that, when you upload a video, you make a selection of the privacy of the video. At present, you can choose "public" (which was my choice in the walkthrough video), or "unlisted" or "private."
  • Public videos can be viewed by anybody and are able to be found by the search function on YouTube.
    • I use this option for class-related videos where students are not identifiable (important because of FERPA), because I like the idea of others, aside from my current students, being able to use my videos for their education.
  • Unlisted videos cannot be found by search, but anybody with the URL to the video can view it.
    • I use this for personal videos and for posting Zoom meeting recordings, because these would not be useful to the public, but I can easily share them with small numbers of people by e-mailing them the link to the video. This would be reasonable to use for classes if you don't want to make your videos public. However, note that anybody who shared an unlisted video URL with their friends, or posted it publicly elsewhere, would then let others view the video
  • Private videos can only be viewed by users that you grant access to in YouTube by entering the other users' e-mail addresses.
    • I set some of my old videos to Private when I don't want to delete them but don't want anybody to be able to access them. For me, this is usually when I've posted exam key videos. After the end of the semester, I make those unlisted videos private, so that students in future semesters can't access them.

Table of Contents

Especially for long videos (but even for short ones), it can be very powerful if you can inform your viewers about the timepoint in the video when different topics are introduced. A table of contents of the video. I confess, I do not do this for lecture capture videos - but I do it for every other video I publish.

What is really great about YouTube is that you can add a Table of Contents in the video description window, and then when users view your video, the timestamps you put in the Table of Contents are automatically hyperlinked to those times in your video.

Youtube video page showing a table of contents
Beneath the video, the Table of Contents contains times (in blue, which are hyperlinks) next to brief descriptions of the content of the video at each time


Thus, when a user loads your video in YouTube, instead of watching from the start to wait until you start discussing the concept they want to learn about (at 13:12 in the video), if the Table of Contents reads "13:12 introduction to the ablative case," then the user clicks on "13:12" and the video jumps to that time and begins playing. You can see an example of this in the caption-editing video from above: look beneath the video. For a more thorough description of how to add a Table of Contents to a YouTube video, check out this blog post I wrote (it is five years old, but is still pretty accurate!)

Tomorrow, I'll wrap up Media Resources Week by addressing other concerns instructors often have about creating and distributing videos.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Virtually Autumn: How to record

You're planning on doing some video recording: lectures, answer keys to assignments, demonstrations of how to use a software title, showing how to calculate compounding interest, introducing yourself as the instructor, and maybe a quick video tour of your class website. What are the hardware and software tools you should use?

I'm going to very superficially describe my workflows; the goal of this post is to give you ideas of technologies that exist and what they are designed to do – to point you in the right direction for additional information. I opted not to provide exhaustive details here mainly because technology is always changing, for example:
  • which software titles are available on which operating systems
  • the costs of various software titles and different account types you can register for
  • whether your institution has a site license or discount for software
Over the last five years, I've settled on a set of software/apps that I use for recording specific types of videos. I use Apple hardware (MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone) for recording, but if you're not an Apple user, that's OK - more than half of the software I use is device-independent. Most, if not all, work on Windows and Android as well.

One set of video tools that will be missing here are professional-level video editing tools like Final Cut Pro (Apple) and titles from the Adobe Creative Suite.

Zoom

Primary use: videoconferencing
Video recording use: meetings, shared whiteboard, shared screens and annotations
Pros: available on all common device operating systems, user friendly design
Cons: I'm having a hard time thinking of one, which is probably why it is at the top of the list
Workflow details and resources:
  • How to record in Zoom walkthrough video by me (video components created and recorded in Zoom and using QuickTime Player; video assembled using Clips).
  • For those who find it awkward to use a mouse or trackpad to draw annotations, and who have a tablet they'd like to use for that purpose, here's a great approach: walkthrough video by me (recorded using Zoom). The brief written version of the approach is,
Host the Zoom meeting on your desktop or laptop computer, and then also join your Zoom meeting from your tablet. Make your tablet a meeting co-host, and then while you're performing administrative host functions on your desktop/laptop (e.g. monitoring the chat, recording the meeting), you can share a whiteboard from the tablet, and then draw with your finger or stylus on the tablet to make your annotations.

Zoom is an incredibly versatile tool that works on all platforms, and many institutions have licenses for their instructors. Zoom uses the device's built-in camera to record video (and microphone for audio). I like to record Zoom meetings and post them for people who were unable to attend. Meetings can include users sharing their screens to the entire class, and the ability for everybody to draw on (annotate) those shared screens. A user can also share a blank screen (whiteboard) for group annotation as well.

As an instructor, I have also used Zoom to create video messages from me to the class. This could just as easily be accomplished on a mobile device by using its camera to make a video recording.

Zoom's strength is recording live video from the camera, but not as much for creating screencast videos, defined as students viewing your "slides" (PowerPoint or Keynote or Google Slides files, for example) and how you interact with those slides, like using a LASER pointer tool, or annotating or editing.

For screencasting, there are a host of options! Three that are very popular are:
but, I have never used any of these, because I was first introduced to (and never left)…

ExplainEverything

Primary use: screencasting
Example video: Genetics Exam Key
Video recording use: recording your voice (audio) and video of your device display, including your annotations
Pros: natively imports PDF and PowerPoint files as individual slides, has some basic built-in editing functions, allows "live" addition of graphics and other file types and of web browser windows during a presentation
Cons: doesn't (yet) support adding a thumbnail video of the instructor's face in recordings
Workflow details and resources:
  • My blog post on how I use ExplainEverything to record presentations
  • My blog post on how to share an ExplainEverything presentation on a tablet/smartphone in a Zoom meeting
  • My unfortunately long walkthrough video on how to perform basic animations in an ExplainEverything presentation (video content was created in ExplainEverything and recorded using QuickTime Player; the video components were assembled using Clips)
I use ExplainEverything to record face-to-face class meetings, where my tablet is connected (usually wirelessly) to a projector, so that the entire class sees what is on my tablet screen - and that is a set of PowerPoint slides that form the basis of the lecture. ExplainEverything has a built-in recording feature, so after I import whatever files I want to project, I press the "Record" button and start talking and navigating through the different slides (pages) of the imported file. ExplainEverything has a robust set of annotation tools (pens of variable width and color, highlighters, a LASER pointer tool, and others) that let me "mark up" each projected slide. The slide navigation and annotations are all recorded as a video file, along with the audio.

I also use ExplainEverything outside of class especially to produce lecture videos for asynchronous instruction and to produce assignment key recordings. For the latter, I import the file containing the assignment, and then I write/draw out answers to the questions while orally describing the thought process behind how I arrived at the correct answer.

Clips

Primary use: creating "social media" style informal video messages
Video recording use: quick walkthroughs and "trailer" videos that introduce a topic
Pros: live captioning, allows live photo or video capture as well as photos and videos from the camera roll, numerous built-in graphical features for annotations, as well as background soundtracks
Cons: iOS only, editing the live caption text is tedious
Workflow details and resources:
  • My Clips creation workflow video (primary images and video were screenshots and from QuickTime Player; the video was assembled using Clips)
  • My blog post with a longer description of pros and cons, live captioning, and the concept of course trailer videos
Clips is a free and Apple-only video production app that is essentially the older (more mature?) sibling of TikTok, as far as I can tell. Its function is to quickly produce short videos that can contain some simple graphical additions. This is not a screencasting app - it doesn't allow manual/freehand annotation.

The overwhelmingly cool thing about Clips is that it was the first publicly available app with "live captioning." As the user speaks while recording a video in Clips, the audio is automatically transcribed into text that appears (if you want) on the screen as a caption.

I mainly use Clips to produce quick "trailer" videos. Although I forgot to mention these in yesterday's post, course trailers are my version of movie trailers: you know, the quick TV commercial-length teasers that introduce the story, show a few scenes that grab your attention and leave you wanting more…and then it is over. For one of my courses, I have made a trailer video for each class meeting. Students watch the trailer video before coming to class. They hear about what the topic of the day is, and I incorporate what I hope is a "hook" to get them interested in the topic. In my case, I often pose this as a question, like (for genetics): "Why is it that some siblings don't look more similar to each other than others?"

Lecture Videos

Primary use: creating lecture videos where viewers see the "white board" and the instructor's face (not back) at the same time
Example video: Ancestry Testing
Pros: cool-looking and engaging
Cons: proprietary hardware required

Several years ago, groups at two different universities practically simultaneously invented a method for a presenter to draw on a vertical piece of glass with fluorescent markers while being videotaped through the glass so that the viewer sees the instructors front side (face) and the board contents at the same time.

The two technologies are called Lightboard and Learning Glass. They're great for producing engaging lecture-style videos. If you have one of these at your school, I highly recommend taking advantage of it. This is my go-to solution for producing lecture videos for asynchronous use.

QuickTime Player

Primary use: screen capture of a computer screen
Example video: Ancestry Data Analysis (Microsoft Excel screen capture starts at about 17 seconds)
Pros: very easy to use
Cons: macOS only

Apple users probably know of QuickTime Player as the default video-watching app for files like .mov and .mp4. They might not know that, in the File menu, the "New Screen Recording" option allows you to record a part of your screen or your entire screen while you otherwise use your computer as normal. I use this for creating software walkthrough tutorials, like how to enter functions and perform calculations in Microsoft Excel or how to navigate YouTube to locate and edit the text of video captions.

After videos are created, they need to be shared with others, and for educational purposes they definitely need to be accessible (meaning they need to have captions). Tomorrow, I'll address these topics.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Virtually Autumn: what, when, and why video record

The theme for the rest of this week's posts, in preparation for an autumn of online instruction, is Media Resources. I'll be focusing specifically on instructor-created videos.

To begin this series of four posts, I think it makes sense to discuss the different subjects that a teacher might record to assist their students.

Subjects

I encourage you to consider recording all of your synchronous interactions with your class. That can include not only formal instruction but also office hours. The recording process is particularly easy if you are using videoconference platforms like Zoom to hold these meetings. I even use Zoom to record in-person office hours (do you remember what it was like to think about having face-to-face office hours?) More on that process tomorrow.

I do also take the time to create video lectures that I ask students to watch before class, so that we can spend our in-person synchronous time addressing their questions about the content and using/applying/discussing/practicing what they learned. These tend to be produced in one of two forms: either video of my working at a whiteboard (actually a Lightboard, like in the image below) or a screen capture of just a digital whiteboard without my face (usually me drawing on a tablet computer and recording it, like this example video).

Photograph of the author recording a Lighboard video
A frame from a Lightboard (aka Learning Glass) video I produced. I have drawn with markers on a piece of glass located between me and the camera. The captions at the bottom were added afterward.


In the sciences especially, recording demonstration videos is fantastic. Most of my colleagues who are now transforming laboratory classes into online versions have been making recordings of laboratory techniques (like my example video of how to perform agarose gel electrophoresis) and also the outcomes of experiments.

Two other common subjects to record are walkthroughs and keys. If you teach a subject that requires students to follow a process that might be difficult to fully explain in writing, then a video demonstration of that process might be ideal. For example, I've used this approach to show students how to use different computer programs to analyze data, like how to use a spreadsheet to perform the chi-square statistical test. Here's a short example, where I reveal a nifty text-editing feature in MacOS.

I think that the power of video is incredibly useful to leverage when providing students with feedback! Some of my colleagues prefer to comment on student written work, like essays, using audio or video instead of only written comments, mainly because recording comments is faster than typing comments and because most students can also benefit from hearing nuances in your tone of voice. In my science classes, I have relatively few essay-style questions that I use for assessment. Instead, the types of questions I ask tend to involve analyzing and interpreting data and forming conclusions. Even items as simple as multiple-choice questions, in any discipline, can involve advanced analysis and decision-making in order to select the correct response. To help give students feedback on their work, then, I routinely create video keys to quizzes, exams, and other exercises. These videos tend to consist of me orally explaining how I arrived at the correct answer while I also sketch out diagrams, formulas, flowcharts, or other visual representations (like in this example video).

Benefits

I have recorded every single class meeting I've led for several years, and I make those videos available to my students (more on that process later this week). Benefits of doing this include making the class content available to students who were unable to attend, which will be of particular value now, at a time when we will hopefully strive to be as flexible as appropriate. Many of my students have also mentioned they like to refer back to class videos when they were unable to take notes quickly enough; some review the videos to study for tests.

Students and I both benefit from recorded office hours. Any time a student asks a question, especially if they've decided to commit the time to come seek clarification, I know that the topic has been particularly unclear and that other students will benefit from the answer to the question. So, recording and distributing my responses to those questions is particularly important to me. Further, you might relate to this feeling: a student comes to my office and asks a question, and I patiently and methodically work through responding to the student's satisfaction. The student thanks me and leaves, and then no more than five minutes later, another student comes by and asks the same question! Although I don't want them to feel badly, it takes a lot for me not initially to respond, "You should have been here ten minutes ago…I gave the most eloquent response to that question than I ever have before!" Now that recording office hours is my practice, I have been able to compile my "greatest hits" library of what I think are quality responses to common questions…to the point that I'm now curating a video Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for each class. This is a resource students can access on demand to seek resolution to their questions related to course content.

Walkthrough videos are easy for students to locate and use to learn (or re-learn) how to perform particular processes. Video keys to exams/quizzes/exercises are a really efficient way to provide feedback to all of your students. Ideally, the instructor will provide each student customized feedback at each point where improvement is possible. Practically, this is not feasible for many instructors, who have too many students enrolled in too many courses. There is not enough time to accomplish this task. So, to make the most efficient use of my time, I ask my students first to review the video key, and then if they have a question or concern that was not addressed (if something is still unclear), then I'm more than happy to meet individually to discuss additional points that need clarification.

In sum, one of the main reasons I advocate for creating videos is that the investment of time creates a resource that you can leverage, to your students' benefit, for countless academic terms to come!

Students do acknowledge the benefit of instructor-created videos. In my surveys of students, I routinely find that they highly rank the value of my videos, and this is one of the major motivations that has kept me enthusiastic about continuing to invest time in video production.

Data table showing that students value the use of videos in the academic setting
Half of students rank using my recorded lectures as essential to their success in my class (yellow). The video resources surpass in importance the other resources students can access: exercises, question-and-answer, and the textbook. Quotes from students also reveal their perception of the value of watching instructor-created lecture videos before coming to class.
Now that we have some ideas of subjects to consider recording, tomorrow I'll explore some of the many tools you can use to generate these resources. Then I describe basic editing and distribution options, and I'll finish the week with a post addressing various concerns that instructors have about using videos they have created.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Onboarding Students

In the previous post, I introduced the general idea of striving to earn student buy-in to the course design by describing how and why I designed your class the way I did. In the post before that one, on additions to the syllabus for a virtual course, I provided resources for students to obtain technical support. Here, I'll combine these two topics and give more details on how I onboard students to my class.

Course Design

I like to explain to students

  1. how my approach to teaching is designed to help them succeed in class
  2. how the class will help them beyond the classroom
  3. how their efforts will develop their scientific skills

I discuss these points on the first day of class, and I also include a written version as the introduction to the course manual. You can view a PDF of that introduction here, and I'll summarize the main points below.

For my genetics class (starting on the third page of the PDF file),

  1. I introduce the blended learning ("flipped classroom") design, suggesting that it maximizes the use of precious student-instructor interaction time. I explain why group work is important, including opportunities to get feedback on comprehension not just from me but from peers, and that having conversations can foster an environment where question-asking can become less scary.
  2. I provide evidence that employers prefer candidates who can adapt, learn, and think critically, and that blended learning is ideal (compared to traditional lecturing) both to help students practice those skills and also to demonstrate those skills to me, as an evaluator who will definitely be assigning a letter grade and perhaps also providing a recommendation letter in the future
  3. I explain that a relevant scientific organization (the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has produced a policy document describing core knowledge and skills that undergraduate scientists should develop. I then describe how the class has been designed to facilitate that process of knowledge and skill development.

These are approaches you might take to help students understand (and maybe even appreciate!) the deliberate structure you've created for your course. Help them answer how your course design helps them:

  1. better achieve the learning objectives?
  2. obtain content and develop skills that are valuable beyond the classroom in "the real world?"
  3. attain or exceed disciplinary standards and expectations?

Technology Practice

Virtual instruction necessarily involves technology, and we should not assume that all of our students have all of the skills they will need to accomplish the tasks we envision. In my teaching experience, I've primarily had to focus on helping students learn to use software. My classes tend not to involve new hardware technologies like clicker systems, which I might have to spend time showing students how to use. Instead, I've found that I do need to provide instruction, for example, on various aspects of using the course learning management system.

You should not expect to be able to anticipate every possible student need, but as I've suggested before, it is worth spending the time thinking of common training needs. You've either encountered them in the past, or you can guess at what software processes/workflows some students might not be familiar with.

There are many ways to help onboard students to the technology for your course. For example, you can provide written or video tutorials. I do like to create my own brief walkthrough videos, like this one on how to use software to measure the length of a worm or how to perform the chi-square test in Google Sheets. In an upcoming post, I'll provide more resources on how to make these sorts of videos.

However, we know that is better to do something than only to watch a walkthrough video of somebody else doing that thing. This is why I highly encourage building time into the first days of class for the students to have purposeful practice. For the software and skills I plan for students to regularly use, I create low-stakes exercises to help them become familiar with the required workflows. This way, they can improve their efficiency and be more comfortable before you might require them to do the same in a more stressful situation, like during an exam.

Other examples of software and skills might include:

  • how to create a Google Sheet, perform calculations in it, and share it with me so that I can provide feedback
  • how to use an online DNA analysis tool to perform a BLAST query
  • how to use Socrative to take in-class quizzes

Why is the practice meant to be purposeful? I find that students are more likely to conduct a task, especially a practice one, if there is some benefit to them. Aside from explaining that the inherent benefit is to practice, it helps if the practice exercise is more than: create a Google Doc, type your name in the document, and share it with me. Since this process happens at the start of the term, I might add the instruction to write me a paragraph or less summarizing what they already know about DNA and how they think that the field of genetics might be relevant to their lives. This is useful for me to know as the instructor, and it can help students start to realize how the class topic might be engaging.

Likewise, the reason that purposeful practice is low-stakes, and not no-stakes, is to provide that little additional incentive (maybe one or two points) to complete the workflow. Of course, with the concept of flexibility in mind, it is perfectly reasonable to make this a no-stakes assignment, to have a "soft" deadline, and to allow multiple attempts at completing the process before perfecting it.

Consider deliberately designing time in your class to onboard students to your course design and to common digital workflows using purposeful practice. Ideally, these will decrease stress (both to you and to students!) and improve student retention and productivity in online classes. Of course, the same practices are just as valid in face-to-face classes as well. I think we'll continue to find that good teaching is good teaching, whether online or not!

Friday, July 24, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Communicate now

As I suggested yesterday, clear communication with thoughtful content is critical in virtual instruction. By thoughtful, I mean, in part, having reflected on what questions and concerns student might have and proactively addressing their needs. Of course, instructors could spend a lot of time on this and still not accurately think about the class from the student perspective! So, I always advocate for actively asking students for feedback. I suppose some faculty might see doing this as a weakness; that it either shows they are not "in command," relinquishing some course decision-making to students, or that they don't have enough experience as a teacher to know what students need to succeed in their course.

Instructor introduction

Instead, I routinely introduce myself on the first day of class as imperfect, just to get that fact out into the open! Of course nobody is perfect. I spend time on that first day explaining that I'm the instructor of the course not because I have all of the answers. I tell the students that I'm standing in front of them (or, now on a computer screen in front of them) because I'm farther along the educational journey than they are, and that I have developed skills in helping learners approach content from different perspectives; that I have enough knowledge of the subject to be able to explain difficult concepts in multiple ways. I explain that I will definitely make mistakes and that I will appreciate it if students are paying close enough attention to spot them! I also mention that they might ask me questions I don't know how to answer, and that I value those opportunities to show them how to go about finding or developing an answer to a question in my discipline.

I believe that this approach helps humanize me and make me more approachable. Again, building community is difficult in online courses, and it is imperative that we do as much as we can to stimulate participation and willingness to talk during and outside of our classes. So, I suggest making this part of your communication to your students as early as possible; maybe even before the academic year begins! Add this to the video introduction of yourself that you're going to post on the front page of each course webpage. You can design a generic version that you can use for each class each semester, so it is a good investment of your time.

Course introduction

Likewise, be honest and transparent about what the class experience will be like. I am already communicating with my students, through a discussion board, about the general structure of my virtual course, like when they will need to participate synchronously and what technology they will need to do so (items that are also provided in the course syllabus). It is also wise, I think, to be clear that not all decisions have been made yet, and that plans will very probably change during the semester. I've mentioned that I'm preparing to be as flexible as possible, and I'm asking students to be as patient and flexible as well. The goal here is to advance the idea that we are all in this together! These are useful communications to have now with your students.

Solicit feedback

To know what your students' needs are, the best approach is to ask! Across an academic term, I routinely use anonymous surveys to obtain feedback about student perspectives and ways they think class can be improved. One reason I do this is to develop student buy-in to the pedagogical practices I use. For example, I normally teach "flipped" (blended learning) classes, where students access the material before a class meeting, and then we spend our valuable in-person time practicing using that information, discussing it, and doing question-and-answer to help clarify alternative conceptions. My virtual courses will work the same way, and I know from experience that some students think this approach is "lazy" teaching. They expect me to actively lecture for fifty minutes a day to earn my salary, and they might think it is a cop-out for me to have video recorded parts of those lectures for the students to watch.

Of course, educational research suggests that the active learning we do during our face-to-face meetings (now online "synchronous" time) helps improve learning, and of course the students don't know that unless we explain it! So, because of what I perceive as a widespread opinion that online instruction is inherently lower quality that face-to-face, I deliberately invest time at the start of each academic term describing how the course has been designed to improve the student experience and dispelling myths about the instructional approach.

To help me explain the benefits of course design to students, it can also be very valuable, on (or before!) the first day of class, to survey your students about their attitudes and perceptions on your pedagogical approach. This way, you will find out what sort of concerns you will need to explicitly address at the beginning of the academic term. Some questions for virtual instruction might include:

  • How much do you like being able to ask questions during class? (a little, some, a lot)
  • What percent of class time do you prefer be spent on lecture? (0-25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, 75-100%)
  • How much time do you expect to spend outside of class preparing for class?

This process can be very eye-opening about differences between your expectations for student activity/involvement and their expectations. With these types of data, you can best help your students understand the value of adapting their schedules/expectations/activities to your pedagogical approach.

Communicate the course design: How and Why

After getting this student feedback at the start of the semester, I spend at least a few minutes each class for the first couple of weeks explaining how I designed the course for virtual instruction and why I made those choices, with student success in mind. To address student sense of satisfaction in the course, I address topics like:

  • how what you are doing is probably going to be new to them
  • how you know that your changes have been shown to be effective (i.e. that you're not necessarily testing unproven strategies on them as "guinea pigs")
  • how their participation and regular preparation is absolutely critical and essential for the class to work and for every student to do their best

For me, this has been effective at helping students appreciate (or at least understand) that each element of the course was purposefully designed to help them and that their experience will be most effective if they actively participate in the class.

Now is a great time to start communicating with your students. Introduce:

  1. Yourself
  2. Course mechanics (syllabus and more)
  3. A survey of their expectations
  4. The how and why of your course design

Give your students a rudder: steer them toward what they can expect your class to be like and show them that you're on their side; that you have their interests at heart; that you've designed the class with their success in mind.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Syllabus Considerations

A critical element of success this autumn will be transparency and communication with students. There are many thoughts about what "success" means, including in higher education. My practical definition, especially in the era of COVID-19 and concerns about declining enrollment, is to couch the conversation in terms of the student experience. From what I've read recently, enrollment may be steady, but recent decisions on layoffs and other forms of cost-saving at college campuses reveal the worry among administrators. Likewise, the number of student requests I've seen since March for things like tuition refunds for online instruction underscore the question whether students will be willing to invest in their education if they perceive it to be less valuable when it is conducted online.

Thus, at least for the near term, let's focus on the student experience as a major metric for success. In this framework, one of the most important things instructors can do is to help manage the expectations of the students that do enroll in our courses. I'll advocate for plenty of transparent and honest discourse about key points like how the course will operate and what the students should anticipate.

These next three posts will address these points. Today, I'll suggest additions to the syllabus, as one of the first interactions students will have with an instructor. Make a good first impression! Then, over the next couple of days, I'll dive into further ideas for how to communicate with students and steps to take to enhance student buy-in to the course design.

Syllabus Additions

Here are a few things I've added or changed on my course syllabus for autumn (this is a long post, but please at least scroll down to the bottom - the last suggestion is, I think, the one that will be the most stress-eliminating if you plan in advance).

The overarching theme for the syllabus additions is "tech support." The premise is that, in a virtual class, a whole host of things could go wrong on the student end of communication, and the instructor is much less able to address those concerns remotely. The solution is to be proactive about addressing possible situations.

In a face-to-face class, (most) students know how to read a syllabus and/or the course catalog and how to physically arrive at the classroom for the first day of class. Later, if a student has an issue, they can ask questions and get help in real time. That dynamic is totally different in an online course. If, for example, the student encounters a tech issue logging into the learning management system, or doesn't know how to use Zoom to "arrive at the classroom" for the first day of class," they're immediately faced with a potentially devastating setback - they know they're already missing out on important information and feel like they're behind compared to their peers. Imagine how "success" (student satisfaction) would be rated on day one!

So, this summer, I've been imagining as many ways as possible that students might encounter technological challenges. Even our "digital native" students don't know everything about technology, especially with proprietary education software, like learning management systems and Zoom, Kahoot!, Socrative, and all manner of apps that you might ask students to use. I've been collecting and curating resources to provide to students in the syllabus, so that they have a menu of tech support options to draw from if they encounter issues.

Normally, I didn't have this information in the syllabus, because I'd address concerns on an individual basis as students encountered specific issues. But, this is the "new normal," and anticipating problems will be critical for ensuring all of our students have access to our courses and have the best possible experience. Although it does take a lot of time to seek out and incorporate all of this information into the syllabus, it is a worthwhile investment. Once your syllabus is complete, it will help more students than you will probably ever know, and it won't take much more effort each new academic term to keep it updated.

Here are some things I've added to my syllabus:

Learning Management System (LMS)

Links to the learning management system's own support pages for basic things like "Canvas Overview for Students," "How to use the Canvas Student App," and the student support pages for other topics. My university has developed its own Canvas course to lead students through how to use Canvas, so I provided a link to that short course, which is available on Fresno State's Canvas website.

Required Technology

Access to a computer (desktop or laptop preferred; table or smartphone acceptable) with:

  • high-speed internet connection (sufficient to stream videos)
  • microphone
  • videocamera
  • login username and password (especially if necessary for installing software) Note: I added this because I've had situations where students borrowed a mobile device from a family member but did not know the password needed to install software

Software including:

  • PDF viewer (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview)
  • Zoom app
  • Google Apps (including your official Fresno State gmail account: username@mail.fresnostate.edu) via Fresno State sign-on
  • Web browser (Firefox and Google Chrome recommended). What are the browser and computer requirements for Canvas? Which web browser am I using now? Note: I'm providing very basic information here, like how to learn what web browser and version a student is using and how to know whether that will be sufficient to use the LMS?
You are also expected to:

  • have a basic understanding of the operation of your device, including managing digital files (like where your device stores photographs and screenshots)
  • have a basic understanding of the internet, including web searching, using hyperlinks, sending and receiving e-mail, including attachments
  • keep your device software updated to latest versions

Technical Support Options

The primary student resources at Fresno State for academic technical support are:


Both of these resources are available via telephone and Zoom during normal business hours.

Specific video tutorials/walkthroughs are available:


For support using Zoom to join video calls, host video calls, and record videos, please use:


Learn how to take a screenshot using your mobile device Note: here, again, it is worth thinking about even what we might consider to be the most basic processes of using a mobile device - be exhaustive in thinking through all of the processes you might ask students to take during your course.

Configuring LMS Settings

Provide students with explicit instructions for how they should expect to communicate with you. If you will communicate both through your LMS and also through e-mail, be sure to indicate that you expect students to check both at least daily. With Canvas, it is really important that students have automatically generated notifications configured properly. So, I provide this statement:
It is essential that you review your notification preferences and change them to suit your needs. Click on your name in the top left hand corner just under the "CSU logo". Click and select "Notifications" from the menu. You can set your notifications to a variety of settings to be sure you are receiving important course information. A brief video is available here. I encourage you to select “Notify me right away” (the check-mark icon) for Announcements and to select “Daily summary” (the clock icon) for Grading, Submission Comment, Discussions, and Conversations.
Communication Expectations

I describe how I will expect students to communicate with me and with each other. Indicate the circumstances in which to use e-mail, telephone, Zoom, LMS discussion boards. I suggest best practices, like how to create a useful subject line and salutation in an e-mail, to avoid sarcasm when communicating to others in writing (because such statements are more easily mis-interpreted for tone), and other advice like "if you don't have anything nice (constructive) to say, don't say anything at all."

Zoom-specific instructions include:

  • Always sign in using your real name as a screen name
  • You are not required to use your camera to display video, but you are strongly encouraged to do so, as visual cues can improve communication and help to build and reinforce our class community
  • Use the chat function or "Raise Hand" tool to indicate to the presenter that you would like to ask a question or to make a statement
  • Mute your audio when you enter the meeting, and only un-mute yourself when you are ready to ask a question or to make a statement

How students get feedback on course progress
As the semester progresses, the Calendar feature may be useful to you to ensure you're aware of key deadlines. Learn how to use the Canvas Calendar. Also, I will keep your class score up to date on Canvas. To view your scores and grade, and to obtain feedback on assignments, use the left navigation menu and select the "Grades" link at any time. View an overview of Grades here. For graded assignments, you will see your numerical score. For any assignments that are scored only on completion, you will see a check-mark when the assignment has been successfully graded.
Note: the last sentence above is particularly important for students new to using your course LMS - and I would think you'd have at least one new student in your class!

How students should access course materials

Unless you happen to be having your students purchase physical textbooks for an online course, it will benefit the students to have clear instructions about where they can locate all of the digital resources you plan to have them use. Is there a folder on the course LMS website? Is there a particular method you have used to name files, to organize them, and to indicate the course meeting date that each file is associated with?

If you have videos (which I'll discuss in many more posts later), is there one URL, like a YouTube channel, that you provide that will be a one-stop-shop for all video content?

In Case of Fire: what to do when things go wrong in synchronous instruction (MUST READ!)

If anything on this post is an innovation for a syllabus (and many of the above were ideas I borrowed from others), it is this: provide instructions for what to do in what I might term "instructional emergencies." Think about it this way: we're all supposed to have statements about safety and emergencies in our syllabi. Instructors have to tell students what to do in case of fire: how to exit the room and where is the emergency meeting point, for example. Well, in virtual instruction, what are the "fires" we need to prepare students in advance for? Here are some issues I've addressed in my syllabus. What should students do when:

  • A class meeting gets Zoom-bombed and I close the Zoom mid-session (I ask students to wait five minutes and then check for an LMS announcement with further instructions)
  • We're in the middle of a Zoom session and I freeze/disconnect unexpectedly, perhaps due to an internet or power outage (wait five minutes and then check for an LMS announcement with further instructions)

A last thought

As always, the syllabus is packed full of information, and now your syllabus will be even more overwhelming. It is a great repository of facts and information, but the last thing I'd suggest keeping in mind is the "new normal" mantra in education: patience, understanding, flexibility. We've all had students that asked us questions when the answers were clearly provided in the syllabus. Now, more than ever, is the time to be gentle and thoughtful in responses to such inquiries.

My syllabi often conclude with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section. It begins, "What should I do when…" I provide simple answers to questions like, "…I missed the deadline to turn in an assignment." My response,
"Complete it to the best of your ability and turn it in to me as quickly as possible. At the same time, you are welcome let me know the circumstances that caused you to miss the assignment deadline. I will then be able to decide whether accommodations are in order."
The FAQ that I expect students will leverage a lot this semester is "…life happened."
"Contact me immediately by e-mail. In your e-mail: fully explain your situation (as much as you’re willing to share), and then propose a specific solution, including a timeline and steps that you will take, that adheres with the policies in this syllabus."
Patience. Understanding. Flexibility.

If you have other ideas or thoughts about syllabi, please share them in a comment!

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Learn about the Learners

Two of the most important decisions to be made early on when designing a virtual class are:

  • the percent of the class time the instructor will require synchronous (in real time) participation
  • the format of that synchronous participation

The end of the 2019-2020 academic year, with many campuses reducing or eliminating in-person instruction, brought into focus that many of our students do not have the resources to effectively access synchronous virtual instruction. By resources, I mean: time, environment, and technology.

Time

I know that many of my students last spring had major schedule changes imposed upon them after COVID-19 struck. Their public school-aged siblings started learning remotely as well, and some of my students now had family expectations that they would help care for and tutor younger siblings. Some students and/or their parents had work schedules suddenly change as businesses adapted to COVID-19. Even through uncertainty and change, my students did still have time to commit to schoolwork, but now it wasn't necessarily, for all students, at the same time of day our class was scheduled to meet.

Environment

Upon returning home to start virtual instruction, many students also found themselves in a place with distractions. Their siblings, for example, might be having conversations with their own teachers via videoconference in the next bedroom, making it more difficult for my student to concentrate on the video I had asked them to watch.

Technology

Some of my students did not have what I would deem appropriate technology to efficiently participate in class (e.g. they might have had a smartphone, which isn't great for producing written work), and some of my students did not have access to free, high-speed internet. Some students do not have unlimited cellular data plans (even I don't!), and some of my commuter students have poor connectivity in outlying rural areas. Add to that the scenario that home bandwidth might now be shared among multiple students of various ages all trying to have videoconferences at the same time.

Course Redesign Approach

I argue that, even if one of my students in my class this fall does not have the resources to succeed in my class, then I need to design my virtual class with that student in mind. How I interpreted this situation is that I needed to design a flexible virtual class that would ameliorate at least some issues of access.

The principles I advocate are to learn about the environment and technology resources your students have, and to consider their situations, when deciding:

  • how much synchronous participation you will require
  • what format that participation will take

In my case, I have decided that most of the activity in my fall semester classes will be asynchronous, and that most required synchronous work will be low-bandwidth, like group-editing a shared Google Doc or participating in a discussion board. This way, I hope I am not imposing an additional cost on students who might have to pay extra for data needed to stream live video content.

I will also ask students to access the course content on their own, asynchronously, before class. Then, I will hold optional synchronous videoconference meetings to try to replicate the classroom setting during scheduled class times. I will record these meetings to make them available to students who are not able to attend. Thus, I am designing a blended learning ("flipped") class, where the "in-class" time will be optional and devoted to question and answer time to help address student alternative conceptions and to more deeply explore class content.

Although every class is unique, I also propose that instructors retain some synchronous instruction, if possible, because that "face time" is very important in helping build relationships and the intellectual community of your class. These connections will be critical to help engage and retain your students in what can otherwise become a "faceless" class that is more easily ignored.

Learn about the Learners

To understand your students' environments and available resources, you'll need to ask them questions - right now! This past spring, when instruction took the emergency move to virtual delivery, I immediately circulated a survey to my students, so that I would have information on which to base my course redesign.

If your class roster is populated and you have a way to contact your students for the upcoming semester, then this is a great time to learn from them what situation they are in.

What to ask
Here is the survey I distributed to one of my classes this spring, and the responses I received were incredibly helpful as I chose how to adapt instruction. I hope it will be useful to have this example as a reference.
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~jross/pdfs/studentlearnersurvey.pdf

How to ask it
First, it is important to indicate that student responses will remain private, that completing the survey is optional (but explain why it is important!), and that students should not feel the need to provide more details than they are comfortable with.

As far as the method of creating and distributing your survey, there are several options. You can do something as easy as add your questions to an e-mail you send each student individually, or you could attach a document that contains the questions.

If your class learning management system has a quiz function, then you could write all of the questions as part of a zero-point quiz. This is a good approach because it will help collect responses in a more useful format than in a mailbox full of individual e-mails.

If you have advanced question types you'd like to ask, then you might choose to develop your survey in Google Forms, or SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics (if your institution has a license for these platforms). The example survey above was designed in Qualtrics.

Thank you for considering the resources your students have and adapting your course design accordingly!

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Virtually Autumn: Where we are headed

Fellow instructors: as usual, summer has been short. This is particularly true in the COVID-19 era, when so much else is occupying our attention. At my university, California State University, Fresno,  instruction begins in four weeks. Only very few classes will be held in person; most will be conducted entirely online.

Background


I have spent the past six years of my career as a teacher building my own digital instruction skills and also leading pedagogy training for my peers. When the California State University system announced in May that fall semester at the 23 CSU campuses would be almost entirely virtual, my campus designed courses for our faculty to take to prepare for redesigning their classes for online instruction. I was asked to lead one section of "Foundations of Virtual Instruction," with faculty learners from multiple disciplines. This summer, we explored key principles of online teaching and learning. We practiced and became more comfortable with digital workflows. We discussed concerns, caveats, and potential pitfalls.

Objective


Now, with classes beginning soon, I'm sharing here as much as I can about lessons learned. Each weekday until instruction begins, I'll provide a new Virtually Autumn post on preparing for online instruction. Some posts will be extensive walkthroughs of topics; others will highlight points that you might choose to reflect on as you prepare for autumn.

My intention is to help faculty help their students succeed. As always, but more so this year, we are all in this together. The future is unclear, and it is in these trying times that we must focus more than ever on quality instruction. In particular, one truth has become more clear to me than ever before. Things are never going to be the same. Change is a universal law, and it is always uncomfortable to be reminded of that law as harshly as we have been in 2020.

Perspective


The best way to survive, and then to thrive, is to be flexible and to be open to new perspectives - and you'll be exposed to some here. The best way for education to survive, and then to thrive, is to help it evolve to meet (and hopefully exceed) the demands of our current environment. The efforts we choose to invest now will pay huge dividends as we proceed to define what the "new normal" will look like. I hope you'll join me in making this process a top priority right now.

Done thoughtfully, we won't just be temporarily shifting instruction online. Instead, we will be seizing this opportunity to create more effective and engaging courses for any mode of instruction. I am not yet a huge fan of online instruction; it is difficult to do well. However, that is true of everything new and of everything worth doing. Although I do believe that in-person instruction is ideal, and I hope to return to it when it is safe, I also believe that face-to-face instruction can be improved - even by adding some components that typify online courses!

Getting Started


To begin, you have to make some big decisions about how to structure your online course. Hopefully, you already have your course learning objectives and content; you're at the point of trying to decide how to translate your face-to-face class to the online environment. This necessarily means you'll be making choices about which tools, like computers and software, you and your students will use. This week, then, I'll focus on ways you might make these decisions in an informed manner and how best to communicate that to your students.

Blog Schedule



Weekly ThemeDateTitle
How to start7/21Where we are headed
7/22Learn about the learners
7/23Syllabus considerations
7/24Communicate now
Media Resources7/27Onboarding students
7/28What, when and why video record
7/29How to record
7/30Video distribution and accessibility
7/31Video concerns
Engagement8/3Synchronous activities
8/4Zoom meetings
8/5Building community
8/6Prompting interaction
8/7Group work
Assessment8/10Deadline flexibility
8/11Format flexibility
8/12Cheat-resistant exams
8/13Assessment accessibility
8/14Tidbits - taking virtual attendance & making Google docs copies for your students
Wrapping Up8/17An eye on the future
8/18Summary