Moving to online teaching in light of the current pandemic (Muhammad A K)
I’m currently involve in teaching since last term. I demonstrate Computer programming and Electronic Engineering Communication labs to Masters and undergrad students. Many of whom had very basic knowledge to these courses. The main duty is to help them to understand some of the basic concepts to bring up their knowledge. To achieve this lab based task are given to student each week to build their concept in a supportive environment where they are supported and answered to their queries.
As in the current pandemic where face to face interaction is cancel I moved to online teaching support for students to practise their skills outside the lab. After all, practice helps with both information retrieval and retention (Brown, Roediger & McDaniel, 2014). To develop remote learning there were various online platform but also need understanding the basics of online courses pedagogy and develop the skills necessary to design effective online lab material. Though some of them requires licence such as Microsoft Team which were not initially available. I want to share my experience as I used Microsoft Team platform and Piazza both in different modules. I found MS team is more user friendly as compare to Piazza, while moving to online teaching slide cast is posted on moodle before the lesson. In the slide cast the video is uploaded explaining the lesson which is further answer during the session.
Seven steps by (Gráinne Conole's) is essential while designing an online course are conceptualise, capture, create, communicate, collaborate, consider and consolidate. These steps are dependent on the platform for example in piazza the options are limited as compare to MS team which gives good interaction between the instructor and the students. Keeping these seven principles in mind as you design and develop online lecture will help you achieve a good quality of learning; one that both you and student find high satisfaction with. Maintaining consistency in the layout of an online course has been shown to influence student success (Swan et al., 2000). Take the time to look at other online courses, including those available at your institution will help to engage students in effective way while keeping your course quality.
Reference
Brown, Peter C., Roediger, Henry L. and McDaniel, Mark A. “Make it stick: the science of successful learning.” Harvard University Press, 2014.
Gráinne Conole's 7Cs of learning design focus on the decisions you will need to make when designing an online course: www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/7Cs
Swan, K., Shea, P., Fredericksen, E., Pickett, A., Pelz, W. & Maher, G. (2000) Building Knowledge Building Communities: Consistency, Contact and Communication in the Virtual Classroom', in Journal of Educational Computing Research, 23(4): pp.359–83.
Response: I also teach programming (in Computer Science) and I am thinking about how the sessions will be structured if the course is moved online. MS teams sounds like a good option. In the last few weeks of last term, we opted for a video chat room based approach. Each lab helper had a dedicated room, students were able to join rooms and ask questions about the set task. If many students are anticipated this is a good way to get a better 1-1 (or a few) interaction for questions.
Response:
I am from the Psychology department and have also been involved with online teaching via MS Teams. As you mentioned, creating a supportive environment is key where students feel comfortable in asking questions. In my experience, the lack of face-to-face interaction has made it somewhat difficult to gauge how students are progressing. Certainly, the seven steps are a useful conceptualisation of designing an online course, however I wonder if they need to followed in such a linear fashion. For example, can consolidation begin at the very beginning of a session with a reflection of what has been learnt so far? (Iqra Arshad)
The joys of 'Paint' (Mohammed Manzar Maqbool)
I have been involved in teaching online to many students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching mathematics is quite difficult without the use of a white board, and, at the start of this academic year, I was faced with the question of how best to redesign my teaching methodology such that it may reflect the same academic vigour whilst being online. While designing the course materials I came up with a very simple yet effective idea that would save me and my students from a great deal of time and effort wasted on trying to teach and learn mathematics from slides.
The idea that I came up with was very simple indeed. I divided the curriculum into many manageable parts which I then used to make PowerPoint slides with. Each chapter was further divided into a list of slides starting with the main concepts, diagrams to aid the learning of that concept, some example questions and then as many practice questions on each subsequent slide as there are students in the classroom. I would begin the lesson by introduction to the topic and then, after taking a snapshot of an example question, I would paste it in the Microsoft Paint software ubiquitous to all windows powered desktop personal computing devices. This simple, light yet effective tool provides everything that one needs in order to deliver the whiteboard experience on screen. After sharing my screen with the students, I would simply write with paint brushes of different colours and sizes to show my working and use the highlighter to highlight anything important. I am also able to select from many different common shapes should I wish to draw a diagram. This process works well with a mouse if one doesn’t have a digitized pen handy. Finally, I would go back to the slides containing practice questions and divide them between the students to offer them a chance to practice.
I have used this method with much success over the past year and have delivered hours of maths related teaching sessions seamlessly.