Thread by @EmilioC_

Sharing my impressions for faculty who are taking their courses online in a hurry. At U Bologna, we switched 90% of the courses online 3-4 days after the italian government closed the doors. @Susan_Athey

We do this with live streams.
We have 80.000 students.
So this was big

Software: We use Microsoft Teams. It nicely integrates with all other MSFT products (OneNote & Office & OneDrive, among others). It is basically a professional version of Skype.

Connection: LAN works much better. We were told to do this strictly ON CAMPUS to guarantee a decent quality of service. Students can connect from home. Microsoft Servers smoothly handled the load. We have about 80.000 students. Students can switch their webcam on, no problem.

How you do it: You can talk, use a virtual whiteboard and broadcast any slideshow or document. in my opinion, Using two Display monitors is the way to go. You can share the screen of one monitor (so you know what they are looking at all times) and use the other to control.

Interaction: Microsoft Teams features a chat room. I found it convenient to ask students to pose their questions / comments there. When I notice them, I encourage the student to talk or I do it myself. Interestingly there is more interaction. Even shy students chat.

Feeling: Students are disciplined, and you do not get distracted by them. This makes it easier to teach. However, they tend to keep their webcams off. So, you lose all feedback coming from facial expression and body language. I miss that very much. You basically have no feedback.

I encourage them to use the chat as much as possible. But this is basically why I find online teaching less effective. I can’t fine tune my teaching in real time.
White board: A graphics tablet (lie the Wacom one in the picture below) connected to your laptop will do the trick.

This is how it looks like. Works like a charm. dropbox.com/s/l1igiuhbamoi…

Student Recording: Even if you set zero recording privileges, Students can record at all times using a variety of tools. So be prepared.

Recording 2: If the software you use does not feature a good way to record your classes, I recommend OBS. It is free. It will capture your screen and write very light MP4 files that you than can convert really easily.

You can also set it up in a way that switching source (say monitor 1, monitor 2, webcam, any window) can be performed with a click. Of course, you could just combine the webcam and the slides in one scene and leave it like that.

Exams: I have no clue. There is no obvious or easy solution. We haven't figured this out

In general, it works much better than I expected. Students are happy. But you have little feedback and as a consequence you have no clue if the material is sinking in. This is not an issue for “tested” material. But it is definitely an issue if you are trying out new things.

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