Panel 2: Student engagement

A 'live document' was used to record comment, reflection and discussion during the panel. These are captured below for reference:

• Heather - how have you dealt with cases where students have poor connections - also have you had problems where they speak to each other in their own language?
  -Response in video

• Heather, can you list your 3 standing items again? Would you change any of those next term?
  - Guest speaker slot, ‘pub’ quiz, chat based on a topic?

• I think Heather’s model of a Cafe is a great idea - provides students with additional useful input, and allows Uni teams to put key info in front of the students, rather than relying on students accessing the mountain of links we give them at induction. :-)

• Comment in chat re element of ‘performance’ compared to structured module activities - Was this reduced?
  - “ I think the cafe is less formal than other webinars but there is still an element of performance there, sadly”
  “there’s still lots of feeling the way re. balancing a structured and ‘free’ online space…sounds like the tasks and regular breakouts are helpful..” (comment via chat)- Importance of clarity, structure and regular communication and feedback

• Daniel - how representative do you think your experience is of your peers?

• Great point, Daniel. Online learning requires some different pedagogies that academics have had to adopt quickly.

• I find that students engage well with asynchronous online teaching, but many choose not to come to the few synchronous online support sessions - my attendance at those was only 50%. I had thought the synchronous workshops would be really popular because there is the chance for real connection & support, but students seem not to want to come, and if they do, it is mostly cameras off, limited engagement. How do we foster better synchronous online teaching? Dave Smith

• Re. PAL - one of the findings we found with the Student Engagement Project (a project I ran last year which looked at factors behind student engagement in learning) was that participation can be hindered when students are not confident in their abilities. Some of the students we spoke to said this was particularly the case in technical / numerical subjects, and that talking to peers helped them as they found that other students were in the same boat. Is that your experience? David Gent

• One reason why students may not switch cameras on in synchronous online learning (other than technical issues) is a fear of being judged - students can be socially anxious, and having a camera on exposes their personal space. Reactions I’ve seen to when staff have had ‘non-professional’ things happen on camera (e.g. an interruption from their dog) seems to suggest that this might help students. David G.
  - Totally agree David - my (David Smith) bigger problem is that student attendance at such sessions when I deliver them face-to-face would be 80%, online it is 50%, and I am not sure why students are opting out - the sessions are not recorded either, as they include student contributions. The only questions I got in my synchronous teaching sessions were to ask the name of my cat (in both online sessions with different groups!).
  I (Sally) teach Cyberpsychology and there is a bunch of literature that suggests that if people are high in social anxiety, they prefer more anonymous online communication - so fewer cues (visual and auditory). This is why anon online polling software like Menti.com is a great way to get students to ask questions and respond to questions you ask. I also agree with the pet thing - it definitely makes you look more human! That’s really interesting Sally. SteveK: I’m using my dogs for teaching next term!

• Yes I think the link between the asynchronous and synchronous was critical for f2f seminar conversation to flow (I put this in my video in the extra materials). (Nicola)

• I personally enjoyed the fact that in my online seminars I could face everyone without turning around or having to shout across the room. One of the PAL speakers mentioned today that they appreciated the ability to use emojis and reactions, which doesnt exist in “live sessions” So i think looking at these things as tools, that we havent considered in live-teaching because they werent present - can be ways to help with synchronous seminars (in addition to Menti which is mentioned above etc…) hope this answer is better than earlier but happy to keep brainstorming this long term if anyone is interested! (Daniel)
  - Yes - I made use of reactions, polls, break-out rooms etc - all of which were good. I think the students quite enjoyed the session in reality - but 50% of them didn’t ‘turn up’ in the first place. It’s those I worry about.
  - Ah! that i think may be a bit of anxiety towards how online seminars will be?, so perhaps sending an agenda beforehands with all the activities that will take place so people can mentally prepare, how it will differs from live sessions, reassurance that they can keep cameras off if they prefer and type instead of speak (if you are ok with that). Polling students as to how they would prefer to do seminars (breakout rooms vs whole group discussions, polls vs talking, what kind of tasks they would like, what they hope to gain from seminars etc...) Anything to remove those perceived barriers and fears. These are all random thoughts that would help me as a person, but of course may be totally different for your students. In the end I think its a long term approach where online synchronous sessions are normalised when we reach a new paradigm of what education looks like (Daniel)

• I think there's clearly the 'current situation' to take into account. There may be genuine reasons for non-participation in synchronous teaching which might not be there in 'normal' times so we should probably hold off on making conclusions based on our experiences this year (Sally).
  - Yes, eg the state of the bedroom, wanting to stay in pyjamas all day, not doing hair or makeup, eating while attending - other things that may help someone to learn but not be ok to show. I like to be stood up as much as possible so a camera is sometimes not a good idea.
  - Agreed - I have no problem with cameras off - but am worried if student anxiety about such things stops them attending sessions at all, because it will significantly adversely impact their overall performance if they are opting out of synchronous teaching.. I think that’s why it’s really important to understand what is underlying it.
  - A further reason may simply be lack of technical capacity - for some students, the only device they have (off campus) is their phone.
  - If so, may we get special cases claims for poor performance that students could not access the synchronous support sessions properly?
  - Possibly - I’m just guessing here. I know the University has made funding available for laptops. It was an issue raised in a significant research project on online learning in the pandemic run by WonkHE, but that was sector-wide.
  - This is definitely an equality issue which I think has been raised several times in several places but I’m not sure if anything has been put in place to mitigate this. There is the Emergency Student Support Fund which could be useful for some students.

• Sue is pointing out the time demands on teaching staff this term - this is something I also found highly problematic this term (and reference in my video reflection with a student). I wonder how different this time investment was by tutors across different departments, and within departments, and whether this will have any impact on student engagement, feedback and assessment performance. Hard to measure at all, and especially retrospectively, but highly significant for workload modelling until this pandemic is over. Time was problematic on multiple ways (including time differences) (Nicola)
  - I calculate that producing screencasts took at least 5 times as long as normal lectures. So what would be 1 hour of lecture took 5-7 hours to prepare as screencast (including captioning, rewriting etc.). The alt-text was also hideous for describing complex scientific schemes. This was hugely demanding as I had 25 hours of material to prepare for the start of term. I was working 14 hour days through September and early October. It was so much work that it actually influences me to want to keep using some of it in flipped learning because of how much got invested in it. In honesty, I am surprised there has been little institutional recognition of this - the institution was quick enough to offer us *unpaid* leave as soon as the students left in June/July, but then expected everything to be ready for delivery for the new academic year with little adjustment of any other activities.
  - Totally agree.!
  - Yes - this was incredibly time consuming, especially alongside making powerpoints etc fully accessible (in history of art this requires a LOT of alt text and slide reading order intervention.) Powerpoints took hours more than normal. I worked the same hours (16 hour days) for 2 modules - also very demanding having to be intellectually immersed in the future week session (to launch the video on time) while also being intellectually immersed in the current week’s readings. (Nicola)