Originally published by Active Learning in Political Science on 16 September 2020. We have just entered the third week of the new academic year here. With regards to the Covid-19 challenges, our faculty has decided that we should offer students one on-campus meeting per week. This particularly concerns our new BA and MA students, who want to help adapt to this new environment. Obviously, this comes with huge challenges as to how to organise teaching, including students who have simply not been able to come to Maastricht. I myself am currently in the process of designing a new course and updating an old one. So far, I have given lectures in two different set-ups: once completely online and once in a hybrid setting with on-campus and online students. I have experience with Zoom lectures and decided for a similar approach for my online lecture on interdisciplinarity for our new BA students. This included a short video introducing topic and initial questions for discussion. This worked well. Many students seemed to have prepared the questions, which resulted in some good ideas and suggestions (including some funny memes about academic research and writing): The only real problem was that I was only co-hosting the session, which complicated things a bit as far as technicalities (breakout groups, integrating Wooclap) were concerned and which, hence, created a bit of fuss. Something to avoid in the future. Yet, with all students being at the other side of the screen, it was easy to engage with all of them in a similar way. My hybrid experience was vastly different, though. Engaging with students was just one of the problems. Going hybrid My hybrid lecture was part of our Research Master. The lecture took place in ‘Tent 1’ – the faculty has set up tents to allow for more on-campus activities. The acoustics were awful. And the A/C, despite making lots of noise, was unable to keep the temperature below boiling point… This was a lecture that I have just inherited from a colleague, which meant I had to adapt it. This, together with the fact that some students would be online and some on-campus, made me opt for a plainer set-up. Following Chad’s experience with breakout rooms I decided not to use audience response tools. As the group was quite small, I thought it would also work to simply ask questions as we went along.
Unfortunately, response was slow and only came from on-campus students. The only comment raised online concerned an echo on the portable mic that I had been asked to use. The latter was not the only challenge resulting from the hybrid setting. As ‘Tent 1’ comes with an in-built laptop camera, I had to stay in front of that laptop. I couldn’t walk around – something that usually helps me to stimulate interaction – and using the (real-world) whiteboard was near impossible, as it meant having to juggle with the laptop camera. But the most problematic thing of all was me overlooking the online students. When you have real people in front of you, this is whom you engage with. At first, I thought this might be due to the online students not having turned their camera on. I asked them to do so after the break, but, again, my attention drifted towards the on-campus students very quickly. Lessons learned I can imagine Simon being anxious towards teaching this semester. At any rate, my hybrid teaching experience was similar to Chad’s: quite terrible. I will meet most of the Research Master students again from the end of October. At least one of them is unlikely to make it to Maastricht. Hence, given that this will be one of my own courses, I have decided to:
But in any other setting I would certainly suggest not to go hybrid. This may mean having to split up students in on-campus and online groups. Yet, if resources allow you to do so, all students will benefit; either from your best on-campus teaching or from your best online teaching.
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Originally published by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 29 May 2020. Throughout the last couple of months I have joined several nationaland international webinars, observed colleagues’ online tutorials and lectures, and read several blogs and papers to inform myself about online teaching and learning. This includes excellent posts by FASoS colleagues on this blog. But see also this contribution by Anna Harris and Andrea Wojcik or post on The Educationalist and Active Learning in Political Science. Because like many of you, I was (and still am) a novice when it comes to online teaching and learning. I particularly wanted to use videos to support students’ learning. I had considered doing this pre-Corona, but never actually came round to trying. Now I had to redesign three lectures and these were ideal for introducing video. (In addition, John and I recorded a short conversation to support students working on their final BA thesis.) For two lectures in our BA ES mentor programme I went for a completely asynchronous approach, with the help of Pia and Resi. These are normally lectures in which we present students with some need-to-know information about the upcoming second or third year and some of the important choices to be made (elective courses, Erasmus exchange, internship). We decided to adapt existing slides and accompany them with short videos, plus a short instruction on how to best view this material. My videos – one for each year – were mostly meant as introduction to the other material. Given that our BA curriculum will undergo quite substantial changes, they were one-off, shot-from my garden, using my iPhone. Using her home computer, Pia shot an excellent video that we can reuse in the future. Resi went a step further by recording a video about studying abroad and internships that is also suitable for students in our other BA programmes. She shot the video using recording facilities in the Turnzaal – and unfortunately had to do so twice, due to technical issues. The third lecture was one on Euroscepticism for our first-year BA ES students. Here I decided for a flipped-classroom approach by pre-recording a video that would serve as input for an interactive online discussion with the students. But I went a step further by inviting well-know colleagues in the field to each contribute a short clip. The resulting video is nearly 27 minutes long, which is a bit risky given online attentions spans. Yet, it has (so far) been watched over 200 times, with most having watched the full video. And students’ contributions to the interactive online discussion were excellent. So what did I take away from this first experience shooting videos? First two challenges:
But the benefits make me want to use more videos in the future to contribute to (not replace) my lectures, also when in-class teaching resumes:
There are two final issues that are worth highlighting. First, the Euroscepticism video could be used and shared with other colleagues and students, something that we also discussed during a recent faculty webinar and a recent University Association for Contemporary European Studies online meet-up. This comes with an important hurdle, though: copyrights. Here we are confronted with a challenge that complicates innovative teaching and learning. Second, videos are a wonderful tool, but shooting and editing them costs time. This time is currently not remunerated in SOLVER hours. If you record a full lecture using lecture capture (in, for instance, PowerPoint) this will probably not be a big thing. But if you want to try out something new and innovative, this should also be rewarded. These are issues that we need to think about as a faculty community. And a first opportunity to do so, is the upcoming webinar organised by the new FASoS Support Team Online Teaching & Learning on 11 June. I hope to see you there! DISCLAIMER: All videos are only viewable by students and staff of Maastricht University. A related blog can be found on the website of Active Learning in Political Science. |
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