I've been running sessions for educators adjusting to online teaching and many are facing challenges with live, synchronous teaching...here's some small ways to enhance things...1/ #onlinelearning#onlineteaching
There are so many distractions when teaching via videoconferencing, including the video of yourself. We have a tendency to keep looking at ourselves, so hide this to remove an unnecessary distraction. 2/
Eye contact is an important aspect of communication, but we usually look everywhere but our webcam. Looking into the webcam is hard but good to master - adding post-it notes with key points adjacent to it can help. 3/
We’re all staring at screens so much and this puts strain on our eyes. So consider colour contrasts on anything you share like slides. Too high and it may cause eye strain and impact reading stamina, too low and it’s bad for accessibility. 4/
Good educators ask questions. Consider adding questions to the chat, not just throwing questions out verbally. This might just help include people experiencing poor connectivity that impacts their audio. 5/
Make a greater and more conscious, deliberate effort to acknowledge students and use their names. This could be through welcoming them, highlighting their contributions or even highlighting prior contributions. This helps reduce the distance between you and students. 6/
Back in the first part of the year there was a lot of talk about UK universities partnering with Online Programme Managers (OPM’s) partly sparked by this article palatinate.org.uk/exclusive-univ… and the subsequent fallout. Much was lost in the noise...and misconceptions 1/
so far I’ve noticed 2 x UK universities partner with OPMs including a Russell Group (although I may have missed some). Really, I think these kinds of partnership are about a desire to reach a demographic of students who may not opt for the campus experience....2/
e.g. working professionals. In spite of everything there still seems great appetite for the on-campus experience. With university numbers set to grow - the question is whether the pandemic experience will fuel a greater desire for those who would’ve usually adopted to...3/
There’s always been opportunities for UK universities to meet the demand for learning beyond the narrow demographic of school leavers that tends to characterise who university is for. 1/
The opportunities are still there, particularly given the need for upskilling and growing international demand for education. 2/
Through online learning and a range of offerings of different shapes (microcredentials et al) and sizes there’s potential for universities to seriously serve a much greater proportion of people who need education. 3/
Video is often the go-to for online teaching sometimes pretty unthinkingly as it’s the most obvious transposition of traditional in-person teaching...but don’t overlook text! 1/
Video can be time-consuming in many ways even when you have the best intentions...and from a learning perspective it’s a sequential medium that moves at the pace of the educator not the learner. 2/
Sure, you can pause, rewind, adjust speed etc but it’s fundamentally different to text. 3/
Earlier in the year a distinction was made labelling the rapid pivot as emergency remote teaching, thus distinguishing from online education pre-COVID...1/
..I’m not convinced that we’ve moved much beyond emergency remote teaching, despite many universities talking about how they’ll be offering high-quality blended/online education in the new academic year....2/
..In real terms the amount of time faculty would’ve had to prepare online education between lockdown and now is pretty minimal and if you throw in time spent planning for some in-person teaching which is likely to be disrupted then it will be nothing like approaching...3/
THREAD: Communication with the students you’re teaching will be so critical during this academic year. Here’s a few things to think about - it’s not too late!
1/ Communicate regularly ideally have set times/days i.e. Mon & Fri - so students hear from you regularly and there’s some predictable rhythm to it.
2/ Make the LMS announcements page or equivalent the landing page for your course area, when combined with the above it’ll be one of the most dynamic components of your area and a genuine place of your presence and communication
Those of us who advocated for and were involved in what was a relatively niche world of online education in HE pre-COVID-19 also have to acknowledge that the quality of a proportion of it....1/
wasn’t far off the simple uploading of lecture videos to an LMS, teaching via Zoom et al and sharing of documents digitally...2/
Essentially the kinds of approaches that now many are quite rightly warning against as not bearing the hallmarks of quality online learning...3/