Responses and approaches to online teaching and the online pivot

The following is a collection of links suggested by ECA ESALA colleagues during a discussion on teaching innovation in online and hybrid learning and teaching

HYBRID teaching in Art

HYBRID approach in School of Art:

innovative and resilient, online-offline model of teaching provision drawing on the University of Edinburgh Near Future Teaching Project

For background, see book chapter by Neil Mulholland: link-springer-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20629-1_6

Synchronous

What currently synchronous teaching (course inductions, lectures, demonstrations, etc.), can be easily made asynchronous?

  • e.g. record course inductions, lectures and demonstrations in advance and place in the VLE.
  • Follow up asynchronous with synchronous Q&A on Blackboard Collaborate.

Aim to teach all synchronous activity on campus at 2m distance.
If campus is closed; have a clear backup plan to teach synchronously online.
only schedule synchronous activity on campus if it can be backed-up online. Only assess an assignment/LO if it can be assessed online. No backup, don’t run it!

Need to accommodate different time zones:

  • ∴ use of Calendy for 1:1 appointments and surgeries calendly.com (tells local time in the zone students are working in)
  • ∴ running repeat sync Q&A sessions for groups using Blackboard Collaborate
  • ∴ Mixed mode triad crits: 1x staff, 1x student on campus, 1x student online. Enables 2m social distancing while keeping on/off campus students in dialogue. Minimises transactional distance elearningindustry.com/tips-minimize-transactional-distance-elearning.
  • Telepresence to minimise transactional distance.: placing “always- on” or “drop-in” VoIP camera and monitor in each studio to ensure that staff and students can study together at any time.
  • Use of time-boxed stand-up meetings on MS Teams for courses to minimise transactional distance. Stand-ups last no more than 15mins and take place 2-3 time per week. Keeps people connected and informed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting

List of tools that are currently being used for synchronous teaching in the School of Art:

  • MS Teams (using groups set up by Admin) / MS Teams can also be used for formative feedback
  • Blackboard Collaborate (set up within MyEd and add to Learn)
  • Skype (for Business)
  • Whiteboard in Microsoft Office 365 for live whiteboarding
  • WordPress can be adapted for live conferences and webinars:
    wordpress.org/plugins/tags/conference/
    – Conferencer for WP BuddyPress for WP
    – Hopin for live conferences and webinars hopin.to/

Synchronous resources used outside of University of Edinburgh that students often use for their work:

  • Zoom for very large groups; webinars; large swarms, hackathons, edit-athons. (NB: University of Edinburgh doesn’t recommend Zoom; it’s known to spread malware.)
  • House Party for larger groups that want to have breakout rooms (Quarantini) netsanity.net/what-is-house-party-app/
    app.houseparty.com/login
  • Whatsapp (secure end-to-end but need mobile numbers)
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • minecraft.net and other sandboxes people meet in virtually such as Roblox, etc.

Asynchronous, Time-Shifting

List of resources that are currently being used for asynchronous teaching in the School of Art, supported by UoE IS:

Asynchronous workspaces currently being used for asynchronous teaching in the School of Art (non-UoE supported):

[From Neil Mulholland]

Approaches from elsewhere

Ideas about hybrid teaching are starting to emerge across the community, at least of UoE. Here we will list some materials produced by others in UoE, and also further afield. As ever, suggestions welcome.

Edinburgh Hybrid Learning Exchange:
blogs.ed.ac.uk/learningexchange/
and a digest that it has recently published:
blogs.ed.ac.uk/learningexchange/2020/07/20/hybrid-teaching-exchange-digest-21st-july-2020/

UoE Staff Guidance on Hybrid Working:
uoe.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/sites/Covid19/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BF88A67A8-EBB9-42D8-9768-04BAFD143E43%7D

IAD page on Hybrid Teaching:
www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/support-hybrid-teaching

Moray House introduction to hybrid teaching:
www.digitalservices.education.ed.ac.uk/MHSEShybrid/

Rapid ABC for hybrid teaching (course design process from IS):
www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/learning-design/abc/course-design-for-uncertain-times

Information on accessibility (from IS):
www.ed.ac.uk/student-disability-service/staff/supporting-students/accessible-technology
www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/accessibility

Advice from Bristol on how to teach over low bandwidth connections:
www.bristol.ac.uk/digital-education/guides/low-bandwidth/

How to be a better online teacher (from Chronicle of Higher Education):
www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching

Homepage of the European Maturity model for Blended Education
embed.eadtu.eu

Ten simple rules for supporting a temporary online pivot in higher education psyarxiv.com/qdh25/

Developing practices in universities in China returning to campus: education-services.britishcouncil.org/insights-blog/east-asia-watch-chinese-universities-begin-return-campus-some-major-changes-%E2%80%93-what-can

Guidance from QAA: www.qaa.ac.uk/scotland/focus-on/technology-enhanced-learning

Academia in the time of Covid-19: towards an ethics of care
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2020.1757891?fbclid=IwAR3RHQ-HGOMXl47K2RS8-aaPpvNn0FvrDPO9IFACkVRg_ugH6r-uLcXDYIw

OU: teaching design online at a distance
www.open.ac.uk/blogs/design/distance-and-online-design-education-a-not-so-quick-introduction/

Student experience of a “virtual field trip”: blogs.ed.ac.uk/geosciences/2020/05/my-virtual-field-trip-the-orkney-experience/

Ubiquitous video?

Hybrid teaching will often tend to revolve around video, in at least the forms of:

  • captured lectures, and perhaps discussions
  • pre-prepared lectures or lecture segments
  • captured demonstrations and critiques of creative activities
  • recorded Collaborate sessions
  • live-streamed instances of all of the above

Perhaps students can and should be encouraged to collect video as part of learning activities:

  • small-group discussions
  • captures of activities within workshops and studios
  • out-and-about investigations of the environment
  • screen captures of interaction with 3D models, animations, or other things they have created using technology
  • short “I Learned Today” summaries

(this can be done with cameras, phones or various other tools).

Video can also have an important role in assessment and feedback, in many different ways.

Often “production” quality, in the conventional sense, isn’t an important consideration: immediacy and authenticity are more important. Audio may be more important than video (or occasionally vice versa). Editing may be crude or absent. Materials can be quickly shared by upload to MediaHopper, or similar.

But how can we use these kinds of resources? Although video is a linear medium, it has much potential beyond simply being watched. It can become the focus of discussion, interaction, and activity that ties in with other material accessible online. Creative exploitation of things like MediaHopper will be important here. Other media platforms (Youtube, Vimeo, …) may have useful possibilities, though ethical and other considerations need to be taken into account.

Experimental software such as our Rich Media Linker may be useful (vid-linker-dev.eca.ed.ac.uk/linker.html). Why not try this out? If you have suggestions for improving it, or other similar kinds of functionalities that would be even better, then please contact J.Lee@ed.ac.uk.

The Rich Media Linker being used for dialogue around a pre-recorded “viewtorial” video.

Workshop practices

This page addresses the potential for hybrid learning in workshop contexts. Access to workshops will be restricted to small numbers at any one time: capturing the activity of students and technical staff will allow at least some learning of techniques and possibilities to be shared beyond a given group present in the space.

‘Getting at the tacit understandings of an artful practice is critical in coming to understand the processes of creativity.’ (Erin O’Connor)

  • WHY online workshop support is not just relevant, but is ESSENTIAL.
  • If no workshop access is supported, students will become completely distanced from the making process, undermining the entire ethos of what we do at ECA.
  • It’s essential to keep students in touch with materials and workshops for their learning experience and understanding of process. Even when our students can’t physically be present with us in the workshops, keeping our students minds focussed on the end goal is an important factor to how we keep our students engaged with the process.
  • When returning to campus and workshops, if no technical information has been shared, there will be an overwhelming amount of information to catch up on. It is important to keep these connections with materials and workshops to prepare students for entry into workshop spaces when the time comes, ensuring that they will know and be familiar with their instructors and Technicians, the environment, tools and materials.
  • Communication skills are an essential part of the sharing of ideas. These skills need to be learned, and by online discussions and tutorials, these skills will be hugely improved on.
  • It will considerably improve and ease the transition from purely online supported teaching to actual workshop making when campus workshop spaces are operating again
  • Continuity of teaching
  • Workshop online access will aid in limiting feelings of disconnection within student groups, assisting in the building of the student’s community. We can begin forming bonds between student and teacher and begin creating the very important community that they will be a part of. This is ESSENTIAL regardless of environment and circumstance.
  • All online resources will provide an excellent back up for students to refer to. This will definitely enhance and support their learning
  • Iteration: Active conversation with technical reality.
  • Improving observational and listening skills through the videoing of technical support.
  • Resource only focused teaching will deny all technical skills which will be detrimental to student experience on return to campus.
  • Support can be given in various ways:
  • Videos uploaded to LEARN
  • Online worksheets
  • Guided tours of workshops, including H+S instructions
  • Remote inductions of machines
  • Videos of techniques
  • Online one to one discussions/tutorials with Technicians
  • Relevant support material shared
  • Live video feed of demos
  • Practical work undertaken by technicians and collected from a pick up point
  • Possible live feed so that student observes the process, and can give direct feedback
  • Live feed, discussions in a group with all students
  • Possibly create ‘workshops’ in TEAMS: We don’t have to lose the workshops essence, we could have one teams area for The Workshops, then individual channels inside it for each of the workshops. This could hold documents etc., be a place for people to congregate online, for technicians to be if anyone needs them (doesn’t always have to be live in person can be asynchronous)
  • Next Steps:
  • Identify what can be supported online
  • General workshop introductions
  • Video walk through of workshop spaces, identifying machinery
  • Video inductions of machinery, how to use them safely, what the machine is used for
  • Online worksheet to accompany video
  • What processes can be videoed? Communication and collaboration with Academic staff: Each Technician to have discussions with Academic staff to identify / prioritise which processes will be needed first in order to support the teaching programme / course.
  • Processes could also be accompanied with worksheets
  • Live feed of process: Communicate with Academic staff to identify what is needed essentially (speak to Jenny Gray and Susan Cross)

Could have students watching Technician working live on their designs/ projects, giving real time feedback

  • Problems to solve:
  • FILMING: What to film on? Mobile phones? GoPro? How many are there?
  • AUDIO: Do we need separate microphones?
  • Film first and then add the audio/voice over?
  • How to film? Second person to hold camera? Tripod needed?
  • Access to workshop facilities in order to film
  • Some Staff might not be comfortable being filmed (check sheet, to find out how comfortable people are? Or just audio record, with accompanying photos)
  • Need tips on how best to produce a small film: ie

PREP: WHAT exactly needs to be demonstrated?

STORY BOARD to ensure all essential information is covered

  • EDITING process: Premier Pro? Staff will need software and possibly training
  • Information for staff on how to upload videos and accompanying instruction documents to Media Hopper (Learn)  (Resources are online)
  • Wifi connections, if live streaming.
  • Workload- upskilling/training- hours/staffing
[From Alistair Craig and the workshop team.]

Theory/practice papers

A variety of theories are relevant to hybrid teaching, and there is a literature around experiences of it in practice, lessons learned etc. There are references in the UoE document (see digital.eca.ed.ac.uk/hybridteaching/). Also, a related idea driven by some of the same people is Near Future Teaching (resource site at www.nearfutureteaching.ed.ac.uk).

Here are some further pointers, initially relating to the work of our “Digitals” group — do contribute suggestions for more.

Coyne, Richard, John Lee, and Denitsa Petrova. 2017. Re-visiting the flipped classroom in a design context. Journal of Learning Design, (10) 2, 1-13. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1134650.pdf

“Paragogy”: hybrid and other forms of teaching and learning in art. Developed in

“Vicarious Learning” is the idea of learning from the learning experiences of others. Exemplified in the traditional concept of a “masterclass”, the design crit, the tutorial group, and many other familiar situations, some believe it to be a key factor in the effectiveness of hybrid teaching and learning.

DDM/DMD

In ESALA, the MSc in Design and Digital Media has run for over 20 years; MSc in Digital Media Design was introduced in 2015 as a fully online version of the programme.

Presented here is an overview of our (still emerging) practice, and it’s acknowledged that it represents only a small fraction of activities and approaches to teaching and learning at ECA.

In summary, for Design and Digital Media (DDM) and Digital Media Design (DMD):

  • All courses are taught in “hybrid” form to both on-campus and online students
  • There’s pervasive use of lecture recording and live streaming
  • Extensive use of flipped classrooms
  • Examples of group projects shared between both cohorts, and cooperation between cohorts

In terms of the UoE hybrid teaching paper prepared by Siân Bayne and colleagues, these run together effectively as one programme that is hybrid, blended (at times) and flipped.

Responding to “2. What is hybrid teaching”

DDM & DMD aim to design courses for a fluid, hybrid cohort that merges teaching and learning for online (OL) and on-campus (OC) cohorts in shared courses, and addresses the groups identified by the DE hybrid teaching paper

Due to the size of the DDM cohort our OC students may not always be co-present, but are taught in smaller groups

Online materials, activities and documentation are as beneficial for them as for OL students, particularly for an overview of guidance and advice, and also for incorporating into flipped classes.

Responding to “4. prototypes for hybrid teaching”

General

Discussion board in Learn

DDM & DMD use LEARN as a single point of entry to a range of co-created material for courses across the Learn Foundations tools.

Co-created is used here to acknowledge the role that students play in contributing material through, for example, discussion boards and blogs.

Both OC & OL students contribute to the discussion, often as part of an asynchronous crit dialogue.

Perhaps there’s even more scope to develop this through TIL (today I learned) posts, and Yammer-style updates on what’s been added.

Lectures

Chat channel accompanies a live-streamed lecture

OL students are able to watch and contribute to OC lectures in realtime through live streaming and chat.

Staff and (delegated) students review and respond to comments during and after lectures, and draw attention to or collate these queries, comments and responses through regular posts and announcements from LEARN.

A series of short lectures in the Media and Culture course

Media and Culture classes take the form of a flipped class.

Richard Coyne demonstrates the flipped classroom model

The majority of lectures for Media and Culture take the form of a series of short prepared videos per lecture (also available as a podcast), which are easy for students to consume online prior to class activities. Both OC and OL student use this content.

As a possible development of this approach, for the upcoming session for Design For Interactive Media, contextual ‘lecture’ material may be made available as a 2 ‘season’ set of 10 * 25min episodes to be binge watched at the beginning of each 6 week teaching block (e.g. Season 1 in week 1, Season 2 in week 7), in order to get to the heart of practice based/led teaching and learning more quickly.

Our flipped classes are given activities for completing (variously) before, during or after the class (depending on the nature of the activity), which then inform further activity including critique and discussion.

Flipped classroom activities in the Media and Culture course
Flipped classroom activities in the Media and Culture course
Activities in the Dynamic Web Design course
Outcomes from activities in Media and Culture

Some OL students participate directly and telepresently with the flipped OC activities and students through video and chat channels where time-zones and availability allow (e.g. via Skype, Collaborate).

The same is true of tutorial activities, where some OL students engage with OC tutorial groups and activities through video and chat channels.

Activity material (crits, plenary) is recorded and contributed by students and staff on mobile phones for effective sharing and review. OL specific collaborate tutorials/crits are recorded for sharing between cohorts.

Solstice/BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has occasionally been used during OC activity to share live capture of video from a mobile devices of physical objects and sketches to the lecture screen/stream and subsequent capture.

A design crit video-captured by mobile phone camera and shared via LEARN, Introduction to Digital Design course
Video-capturing a discussion with a mobile phone in Media and Culture

Labs, workshops and studios

OC computing lab demonstrations and workshops are streamed and captured. Using BYOD technologies students can also share images to distributed screens, or upload material to online channels.

Our practical demonstrations are supported by integrating material from LinkedInLearning, and also short bespoke tutorial (viewtorial) material with supporting files.

Discussion alongside live stream, Game Design Studio
Integrating LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) resources, Game Design Studio
Supplemental “viewtorial” videos, Design for Interactive Media

The Rich Media Linker allows for comments/queries, links and documents to be tagged to specific times in the video by staff and students.

Dialogue in the experimental Rich Media Linker application, Dynamic Web Design

Lecture capture material is sometimes edited down into much shorter chunks for repurposing across courses, and a range of discussions/critiques can be captured, including of written material.

Short video content usable across courses, here in Digital Playgrounds for the Online Public
Talking about writing

As well as staff facilitated channels, the OL and OC cohorts have shared social media chat channels that include Facebook Groups, Discord and Slack, and these are often used to coordinate group activities.

Feedback

During OC and OL tutorials and crits, staff make note of recurring feedback/comments and make short overview recordings, especially where large cohorts mean multiple sessions. In this way, common queries or advice can reach a wide audience.

Tutors may hold OL office hours via a doodle poll or similar, within a common framework of Collaborate or other video/chat channels for screen sharing etc. We’re mindful that not everyone will choose to, or may be unable to, participate equally and synchronously.

For online crits, tutors can ask students to send material in advance, normally by uploading to discussion boards, so there’s a reduced overhead of preparation for staff, or work in iterative asynchronous sessions.

Tutors can also request individual students to send screenshots or take images with mobile devices of representative/notable/interesting approaches or work that were seen in OC and OL to share during a catch-up overview session.

Watch some examples of video feedback and updates

Video feedback in the Design for Interactive Media course
Jules Rawlinson provides video feedback for a tutorial, Design for Interactive Media
Jules Rawlinson provides video feedback for a tutorial, Design for Interactive Media
Jules Rawlinson provides video feedback for a tutorial, Design for Interactive Media

Where appropriate, tutors share responses to individual questions received in email or on discussion forums via video. Again, this video material is supported by regular announcements/email on LEARN to alert students to this supplemental material.

There’s a fine balance between supporting and overwhelming students with online material.

Make it clear exactly what the expectation is in terms of what people should engage with as the minimum.

As with all learning resources and activities, keep them focused and consider whether there’s scope for students to have a role in curating, editing and annotating existing resources.

That said, it’s important to also note that we don’t tend to go to extreme lengths of editing etc., things are left to be fresh and spontaneous, if a bit rough at the edges!

Submissions

For some ‘studio’ based group work, students collate blog material on shared sites.

View some example blog content

A project group’s blog site for Digital Media Studio Project
A project group’s blog site for Digital Media Studio Project

For some individual submissions students are asked to supply video material of work in progress, demonstrations/account of practical submissions and video essays/interviews via MediaHopper.

Student crit video in Media Hopper Create for Design for Interactive Media

Watch an example student screencast (with kind permission from Qing Mu)

View an example of a student project blog (with kind permission from Qing Mu)

Jules Rawlinson provides video feedback for a tutorial, Design for Interactive Media

As a way to close courses (and for formative submissions), an overview is often made of submissions by the CO, so that students get a view of what was achieved by the cohort similar to general feedback, and where feasible and appropriate links are shared to allow students to see each others work.

Jules Rawlinson provides video feedback for a tutorial, Design for Interactive Media

This last point is perhaps the most important, our OL students positively comment on how ‘present’ we are as remote teachers, partly by being responsive to email and participating in discussion boards etc, but also by the frequency with which we’ll directly acknowledge remote viewers (as a group, not necessarily as individuals, but sometimes that happens too) by addressing the camera, even in live lecture capture so that there’s not a sense of this is something that is being repurposed as a second hand experience.

Oh, and keep an archive, you’ll never know when you’ll want to refer to, repurpose and remix something!

Specifically acknowledging online students by addressing the camera
[Words and image curation by Jules Rawlinson, 2020.]

Hybrid Teaching

Experiences, reflections, tips, suggestions, resources. What “hybrid teaching” might mean for ECA.

UoE suggests that all teaching should become hybrid teaching. A dynamically developing document explains what this is intended to mean. Here is the version from 28/04/20.

On these pages, we want to interpret this concept for ECA, include examples of colleagues’ experiences and ideas, anything that might help us to develop our practices.
UPDATE: a key element here is now the ECA documentation for our approach to hybrid teaching — see the first link below.