Online teaching

Dear lecturer

The digital future came sooner than expected. But here we are!
We all have to learn and try new things together these days.

Here we've gathered the experiences and lessons learnt by your colleagues in the development and testing of online teaching. Your experiences can also inspire others - please give a shout out on pcs@samf.ku.dk if you want to share.

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Ayo Wahlberg
Professor with special responsibilities
Department of Anthropology
Ayo Wahlberg

Please feel free to comment or ask about this blog post.
Send your question or comment to pcs@samf.ku.dk and we'll answer as quickly as we can.

It’s hard to believe that last week Monday (9 March) I was still desperately clinging on to a withering hope that I would be able to go ahead with a large end-of-grant conference (https://vital.ku.dk/) that we have been planning for 2 years now. 400 participants from 40 countries at the end of April, well… it’s not going to happen. I lectured as usual on our Theory of Science course for 2nd year BA students at Anthropology (around 90 or so students) in that windowless, most dreary of lecture halls affectionately (!) known as the “ice box” (fryseboksen, 18.01.11) from 13.00-15.00, and our three wonderful tutors (Luna, Sofie and Sidsel Marie) met with their seminar groups two days later on Wednesday (11 March) to talk through the readings and lecture in more detail. At 20.30 that same evening, the Prime Minister sent us all home.
 
I’ve never really engaged in online, distance teaching apart from a few Skype supervisions and I did do a lecture for our first year students from Singapore last semester via Skype and in the early days I did have scholars whose work we’d read Skypeing into a seminar. Our Head of Department and Head of Studies convened an urgent meeting for the Thursday (12 March) for all teachers where they shared with us the many resources that the Faculty had been putting together in the lead up to lock down. Thank goodness! My immediate thought was that there is no way I’m going to be able to put together a quality blended learning, flipped classroom course with such short notice. Instead I decided that I’m going to digitalize the course, so basically digitally replicate what we had been doing offline: lectures for 90 students, followed by three seminars with 30 students each led by our tutors. After our emergency Departmental meeting, I met with the tutors to discuss how we would carry out Theory of Science teaching digitally. I committed myself to delivering all of my lectures, either pre-recorded or using one of the streaming options that the Teaching and Learning Unit had provided us with. I assured our tutors that it was absolutely acceptable for them to prepare some questions, divide their students into working groups of 4-5 and get them to submit some kind of written response to the questions all by email or via Absalon, while at the same giving them all the freedom they wanted to experiment with various online options. So this is what we’ve done:
 
Over the weekend I figured that Absalon would be under immense pressure because of user numbers, and I had also heard that although Adobe Connect was a good option for live streaming a lecture, the university had run out of licenses! I thus explored some of the many options included in the very handy guide prepared for us by our Faculty’s Teaching and Learning Unit and the University. I downloaded the free OBS Studio software which turns your home PC basically into a home studio for broadcasting. I established a Twitch account (basically allows you to have your own TV channel from which to broadcast) and linked it up to the OBS Studio software and did a bunch of tests at home Sunday night in preparation for Monday’s (16 March) lecture. Since I use Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/ayowah/) , in principle anyone in the world can follow my lecture. I have no problems with this since I view my lectures at the University as public and open to anyone. Moreover, I have maxed all privacy settings on my Twitch account and disabled the chat function, insisting that students use a Discussion Forum on our Absalon course site to pose any questions. I sent out a message to our students Sunday night advising them to make themselves a good cup of coffee/tea and to be ready at 13.15 sharp on Monday informing them that “all you need is a browser and you can watch the lecture in Fullscreen mode or Chromecast it to your TV if you want to use your laptop while watching the lecture”.
 
So there I was on Monday afternoon standing in front of my newly assembled home studio consisting of a desktop PC with OBS studio software linked up to my Twitch TV account. I had to pin up a picture of students in a lecture hall to offset the awkwardness of talking to a screen!

Ayo Wahlbergs home studio
 
At 13.15 I pressed “Start Live Streaming” as well as “Start Recording” in the OBS Studio software programme and started talking into my screen (with in-built camera), broadcasting live to the world from my home! It was weird. I had no idea whether anyone out there was watching/listening. Having the picture of a lecture hall definitely helped but awkward it was, seeing as it is one way communication. But it went brilliantly as I slowly got into the groove and at the end of the first 45 minutes I asked the students to send in any questions, which they did! Questions that I could then address after the break:

Screenshot: question from student
 
The lecture went beyond my expectation and for next Monday (23 March) I’ve asked the students to pair up with a fellow student so that I can get them to ‘warm up’ by discussing an opening question about the day’s readings with their ‘neighbour’ for a few minutes, only they will do this by talking to each other by phone, Whats App or FaceTime. The feedback has been fantastic, although apparently I got a bit too animated and spoke too fast along the way! I will try to slow things down on Monday. Having recorded the lecuters, I was able to upload them together with the slides on to Absalon for those who were unable to follow the live lecture or in case they wanted to revisit some of the points made during my fast-talking.

Screenshot: Comment from student
 
Meanwhile our tutors Luna, Sofie and Sidsel Marie were preparing their Wednesday seminars. They decided to use Zoom to allow for face-to-face, voice-to-voice interaction combined with asking the 30 or so students in their seminars to work in groups of 4-5 using Skype, google drive and other communication platforms. I understand the seminars also went very well:

Screenshot: Positive feedback from students

In short, what we’ve done in our case is digitalise our teaching, basically meaning that we are digitally mimicking what we did offline: giving a once weekly lecture (mostly one-way communication with possibilities for asking questions, and now also some interaction between students) followed up by seminar groups of facilitated discussion using Zoom for tutors to set up the day’s seminar combined with group work involving students’ own telephones and laptops to connect via, e.g. Skype. It’s not perfect, but it seems to be working! Such a privilege to be working with an amazing tutor-team and with such brilliant students! Good luck out there and feel free to get in touch if you want to hear anything more about the semi-tech-complicated set up, happy to share any thoughts.


Please feel free to comment or ask about this blog post.
Send your question or comment to pcs@samf.ku.dk and we'll answer as quickly as we can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visual overview

Here you will find a visual overview with some important points of attention when you teach online

You will also find a document that supports and elaborate the visual overview. The document contains solutions and good advices for developing the online teaching process