** Remote Pandemic Univ Thread ** 1/25
It’s the end of week 3. I’m sharing what i’ve learned in the hope it's of some use. w/ thanks to everyone on here whose feedback has helped, notably Tobias Smith. And whoever had that cereal-soup icebreaker: it worked a treat!

2/ doing this not to imply i know what i’m doing (i don't), but as a living archive of such a sector-wide learning curve, & b/c some people are being thrown into online v. suddenly due to lockdowns. this thread is about how sausage gets made, not whether there should be sausage.

3/ context: i teach at an undergrad institution. the university made the call on fully online in May and asked us to teach largely asynchronously. i teach a 2:2, TT.

4/ approach: each week, i record about 60-90 mins of lecture material in 10-20 min capsules. i provide reading questions for individual journaling and study guide Qs for small group work. i hold 1 hour a week of optional synchronous review by zoom. group work is required.

5/ materials: the uni. gave us a $500 stipend for material - bought a Rode lavalier mic w/ 10 ft extension cable, big whiteboard flipchart, a music stand, and 2 softboxes (Neewer 700W 24X24). Lighting made more of a difference than the mic. i film using my Macbook Air camera

6/ Students
i spend +++time explaining how asynchronous remote learning works. I had all summer to think about it, students: 3 weeks. they are bewildered. i repeat the syllabus & give rationales. their profs are all doing something different (contrasted w/ ++ convergence in F2F)

7/ i send a weekly memo (loose ends, logistics and tech, any reply to feedback form, reminders on deadlines). i aim for one-shot communication (we are all bombarded with emails from the univ., our students even more so)

8/ I have a weekly anonymous feedback form: access to lectures/readings/small groups (Y/N) & what’s working / not working. 50% of how i’m teaching is new, hence continuous rather than periodic quality assessment & improvement. results give a temperature check i used to get F2F

Recordings
9/ if i can attain the production values of early 1990s high school TV stations, i will have surpassed myself.

10/ after much time wasted, i learned i have to do the readings before recording & i have to work on the lecture. “skipping it” to just record, in the way one might, ahem, not be prepared & just turn up for class results in blathering. But it’s recorded & i have to re-watch

11/ planning out the whole lecture and then writing out the capsules is a heavy upfront cost that I recoup during recording. since the recording is under bright lights, i prefer the time spent upfront on lecture writing

12/ i use a mixture of formats: voice-over on ppt slides, integrating clips like ted talks; standing up talking & writing diagrams on my flipchart; sitting down at the desk & talking at the screen like I’m on a Skype call. apparently the mix of formats helps with concentration

13/ recording myself drawing on a flipchart is a game-changer for me b/c i draw diagrams faster than i make slides. the narrated ppt allows me to record when i'm dog tired & it shows. i have used finger puppets for the parts of my lecture that can't be changed from socratic.

14/ i plan out how each capsule will be recorded beforehand it, so that if, in F2F, i might have asked them to talk to a neighbour about a question, i have some other prompt. friends, i have had to abort a recording after reading aloud the words, “now turn to your neighbour”

15/ i write a recording checklist and drill through it, every time. because, friends, i have had to delete a recording after forgetting to unplug my headphones and plug in the microphone.

16/ the least error-prone recording method is to write out a lecture, verbatim, & paste it into http://cueprompter.com . i fuss w/ scrolling speed & use a wireless keyboard propped on the music stand (which also has back up copy of notes) to pause for gesticulations or diagrams.

17/ it looked much better once i got the laptop camera at eye level, rather than filming looking up. it’s on a wine crate on the desk. the lights also make a huge difference. h/t Georgia.

18/ all our videos get dumped in a large ‘bucket’ file folder during the post-production process - can’t be sorted between courses or class sessions. it helps to wear something bright, different per class and per week, so it’s easier to sort thumbnail images of clips.

19/ i broadcast videos for a week's lecture all at once, with a content list (1 capsule = 1 section of lecture w/ title, run time, file name), any websites shown during the recordings, & questions / homework. i have met the broadcast deadline i put in the syllabus … a few times.

20/ i have two TAs who do some light video editing and much review and correction of captions. the auto-captioning is really approximate.

21/ i’m at 5x: 10 minutes of content takes 50 minutes (down from 8-10x in August). W/ TAs post-production, it comes to 8x. this doesn’t count the sunk / F2F / fixed cost of designing the module and writing the lecture.

Live / Synchronous Sessions
22/ for students, the minutes before the start of live session are awkward, b/c zoom makes small talk hard. i play music out of my computer speakers and then fade it out once i’m ready to convene the session.

23/ i use Padlet to create a virtual blackboard. students can all write on it and see it in real-time. this works well for class brainstorming, and the interface is cleaner and faster than anything else i’ve seen. http://padlet.com  h/t @LMcHugh_Russell

24/ Padlet is a godsend when students are in breakout rooms. it’s hard to talk to all of them at once, b/c you can’t broadcast long messages. i.e. to clarify instructions, i write on padlet & then broadcast “check padlet”. they can feedback from group work directly to the padlet

25/ lots of students find it easier to intervene in the chat box. i jot it down in the parking lot on padlet when students bring up something that might not fit in the immediate chain of conversation (otherwise the thread scrolls up & i forget) / Good luck everyone! / END