Stage

In December of 2015 I received the following message from a group of 4 students attending my DFDS3101 Digital Systems course: "we are watching all your videos at the cinema today. Having discussions. All the other rooms on campus are in use for exams" (I had created a set of short video lectures covering the full content of the course).

Fig. 1: Message sent by a student group while watching my YouTube lectures in one of Krona’s cinema rooms.

This was a very interesting message, because it confirmed an idea that had been maturing in my mind over the years — if we bring together an appropriate toolset (e.g. shared storage space, video conferencing, collaborative documents, etc.), a website providing access to the full learning content, and a teaching and learning model that connects everything together gracefully, the classroom will suddenly have no walls anymore. This vision started to materialize in 2013/14, when I created the first Google Site combining the toolset, the model and the content. Ever since that first year, all my students have equal opportunities to access class activities, be it at university, at home, or at work as illustrated below:

Fig. 2: Group of students discussing a coursework assignment with the teacher on Skype for Business. All the participants were attending from different locations, and one of them was at work. Symbolically appropriate in a student-centered model, the teacher’s webcam image is displayed in thumbnail size at the bottom right.

In reality, the location of the students became irrelevant, provided that he/she has Internet access, and that the equipment used will not compromise his/her role. Using a mobile phone while walking is not appropriate if the student is expected to show the results of an assignment — but it will do if he only needs to listen and talk, as illustrated below.

Fig. 3: Student participating in class activities on Google Hangouts while walking across the university campus. Thumbnail images (left to right): teacher’s computer screen sharing lecture notes used for discussion; three students participating in this session; second teacher’s computer displaying his webcam image.

The same will happen if the student is sitting in a bus during a longer journey as shown ahead — a mobile phone was being used in this case, but if the student had to share assignment results or deliver a presentation, a tablet or laptop might be used instead. Indeed I’ve even had a student attending class from a fire truck, where she was on shift that day...

Fig. 4: Student participating in class activities during an intercity bus journey. Thumbnail images (left to right): The four students participating in this session, and the teacher.

On the other hand, the resources required in many courses for practical experimentation became sufficiently small and cheap to enable institutions to lend them out to students, and consequently some of the demonstrations that previously required access to a laboratory can nowadays be carried out from home, as in the case shown below:

Fig. 5: Student demonstrating his assignment results to 15 classmates on Skype for Business (an electronic circuit that used leds to replicate the operation of a cheating dice). Most of the participants were not broadcasting the image of their webcam, with the exception of the student presenting (one of the larger windows) and the teacher (smaller thumbnail image at bottom right).

It should be added that many resources required for class activities consist of software tools that are already installed on the equipment used by the students or available in the cloud, and consequently any discussions and/or presentations are in no way compromised when teachers and students are in separate locations. Coding is one of such cases, as shown below, where screen sharing enables any student or teacher to illustrate specific processes or results.

Fig. 6: Screen sharing being used by two students on Google Hangouts to explain the code developed during a coursework assignment. Thumbnail images (left to right): one student’s computer sharing the code on the left and its structural representation on the right; teacher’s computer (actually an iPad) broadcasting his own webcam image; another student’s computer broadcasting his webcam image; a second teacher’s computer (idle at this specific moment).

Screen sharing also enables the teacher or any student to use a virtual whiteboard when drawings are needed to provide visual support, as illustrated below.

Fig. 7: Virtual whiteboard on Google Hangouts. Blank slides are used to create the whiteboard, and a Surface Book 2 digital pen is used to draw directly on the slides (the drawings were distributed to the participants at the end of this session). Thumbnail images (left to right): student’s computer streaming an image of the room where they were located; teacher’s computer screen sharing the slide presentation where the drawings were being made (displayed in the main window above); another student’s computer, connected but idle at this specific moment; the second teacher’s computer (an iPad) broadcasting his webcam image.

University premises provide an ample choice of spaces that can be used by student groups to participate in online activities. Besides offering high speed eduroam wi-fi across the campus, many institutions provide access to rooms of the type shown ahead, equipped with desks and a large screen that can be used to share the whiteboard shown before (or any other desktop application), or the image of any participants connected by video conferencing as shown below .

Fig. 8: Google Hangouts session with a group in a student room equipped with desks and a large screen. Thumbnail images (left to right): teacher’s computer (actually an iPad) sharing his webcam image (connected to the large screen in the room); student’s computer streaming an image of the room where they were located; a second teacher’s computer (also sharing his webcam image); and another student’s computer streaming the webcam image shown in the main window above .

The video stream displayed in the main window can switch from one channel to another automatically (triggered by audio), or be locked into any specific channel that may contain detailed information to be shared by any of the participants, as shown below .

Fig. 9: Assignment work being shared from one of the students’ computers for display in the large screen in the room and also on the teacher’s computer via Google Hangouts. Thumbnail images (left to right): teacher’s computer (an iPad) sharing his webcam image; student’s computer streaming an image of the room where they were located; another student’s computer screen sharing the results of their work (connected to the large screen in the room); and the second teacher’s computer displaying those results in the main window above. Figure 8, shown previously, illustrates a period of discussion with the students (when the main window in the teacher’s computer shows the group in larger size), and this figure above was captured a few minutes later during their presentation.

Last but by no means least, the on-campus classrooms continue to provide the prime location for learning activities. Even when such classrooms still inherit layouts that were born out of teacher-centered models, the student can take the stage by reverting roles with the teacher as shown below:

Fig. 10: Flipped classroom activity on-campus — One of the students presents his assignment results to the class.

Broadcasting the on-campus classroom activities enables access to a wider audience, which may include non-academic attendants. I look with suspicion to regular lecture capture and broadcasting, but livestreaming a presentation offers an added value that should not be disregarded. The example illustrated below shows a code management seminar that was delivered by a masters student and broadcast live in one of my YouTube accounts. As a result the student was later invited to repeat the seminar in one of the Kongsberg Group companies.

Fig. 11: Seminar on code management using GitHub delivered on-campus by a student and streamed live in one of the teacher’s YouTube accounts (https://youtu.be/5iW9rz8Sva0). YouTube live streams are recorded by default and continue to be available in the account owner’s channel unless deleted.