Guest post by Bryce Tingle on teaching remotely

07/11/2020

Guest post by Bryce Tingle on teaching remotely

Our latest guest blogger is Bryce Tingle, N. Murray Edwards Chair in Business Law Director Financial Markets Regulation Programme, School of Public Policy Faculty of Law, University of Calgary.

I have a tremendously creative brother who manages the communications of the vast provincial health authority — most of the advice has come from him.

My experience with teaching online is very similar to yours. I had an engaged, motivated class of students in Corporate Finance for the first two months and then after we moved online, they became passive and disinclined to participate. I have personally long believed that the single most boring cultural artifact we have developed as a civilization is the webinar, so it was with chagrin that I eventually realized webinars is what I was offering the students.

Based on my experience this spring, I am recording my lectures for the fall and letting students listen to them asynchronously. Each of the recorded lectures is no more than 15 minutes — which has meant splitting each week's lectures into smaller parts. If I can’t stand to watch a lecture that’s longer than 15 minutes at a go, I can’t imagine my students will manage it.

At my brother’s recommendation, I used my iPhone to record videos of me lecturing. (My brother advises that when the subject is sitting still, even iPhones that are several years old shoot video that is indistinguishable from high-end cameras. He did recommend that I get a high-quality microphone to plug into the phone, as the sound on cell phone videos is poor.)

I found the usual things when I reviewed the first few lectures: I say “umm” and pause way too much; I don’t think my head presents a compelling object to stare at for hours on end; and it is boring to watch any person engage in a monologue. Consequently, I have adopted the following plan:

1. I use the voice app of the iPhone to record my lectures (no video);

2. I send the sound file of each lecture to my RA this summer (we were provided with student help to move our courses online — and to ameliorate a terrible labour market for summer jobs). The first thing he does is extensively edit the sound file to remove “umms”, pregnant pauses, sentences that end so poorly they must be redone, etc.

3. He then uses vyond.com to animate the videos. My brother recommended Vyond as the simplest animation software to use. Based on my experience so far, the animated videos — likely because they involve movement and change — are much easier to watch than a talking head. I should note that my RA has no experience in computer graphics and had never used Vyond before. He picked it up quite quickly.

4. These videos will be posted on a password-protected website (created and hosted on Squarespace in less than a day).

5. I will likely only spend an hour each week with the students synchronously on Zoom. The in-person class will allow them to ask questions, we will work through problems together (which is part of how I normally teach), and I will have them take a quiz on the readings each class. I am not going to record the classes for both privacy reasons and because I think that encourages students to skip class with the dubious plan of watching the recording later.

6. I am concerned that the strong tendency of even good students this fall will be to let things slide. What I saw this spring is that students have difficulty motivating themselves when they are at home all day. This is why I am introducing a weekly quiz on the readings. Their over-all performance on the quizzes over the semester will be worth something like 20% of their final grade. I want to give them an incentive to stay current on the readings and to attend our synchronous online classes. I am using Tophat to administer the quizzes.

7. In my Entrepreneurial Law class, I usually have each student do a paper on a startup of their choice (drawn either from a list of books or one they have encountered in real life). This year, I am going to have each of them do up a 10 minute presentation and randomly select one or two each week to give their presentation over Zoom. I think it will be helpful for students to be engaged if I am not the only one talking.

Posted at 04:07 PM in Guest Posts, Higher Education, Law School | Permalink

Comments

Our latest guest blogger is Bryce Tingle, N. Murray Edwards Chair in Business Law Director Financial Markets Regulation Programme, School of Public Policy Faculty of Law, University of Calgary.

I have a tremendously creative brother who manages the communications of the vast provincial health authority — most of the advice has come from him.

My experience with teaching online is very similar to yours. I had an engaged, motivated class of students in Corporate Finance for the first two months and then after we moved online, they became passive and disinclined to participate. I have personally long believed that the single most boring cultural artifact we have developed as a civilization is the webinar, so it was with chagrin that I eventually realized webinars is what I was offering the students.

Based on my experience this spring, I am recording my lectures for the fall and letting students listen to them asynchronously. Each of the recorded lectures is no more than 15 minutes — which has meant splitting each week's lectures into smaller parts. If I can’t stand to watch a lecture that’s longer than 15 minutes at a go, I can’t imagine my students will manage it.

At my brother’s recommendation, I used my iPhone to record videos of me lecturing. (My brother advises that when the subject is sitting still, even iPhones that are several years old shoot video that is indistinguishable from high-end cameras. He did recommend that I get a high-quality microphone to plug into the phone, as the sound on cell phone videos is poor.)

I found the usual things when I reviewed the first few lectures: I say “umm” and pause way too much; I don’t think my head presents a compelling object to stare at for hours on end; and it is boring to watch any person engage in a monologue. Consequently, I have adopted the following plan:

1. I use the voice app of the iPhone to record my lectures (no video);

2. I send the sound file of each lecture to my RA this summer (we were provided with student help to move our courses online — and to ameliorate a terrible labour market for summer jobs). The first thing he does is extensively edit the sound file to remove “umms”, pregnant pauses, sentences that end so poorly they must be redone, etc.

3. He then uses vyond.com to animate the videos. My brother recommended Vyond as the simplest animation software to use. Based on my experience so far, the animated videos — likely because they involve movement and change — are much easier to watch than a talking head. I should note that my RA has no experience in computer graphics and had never used Vyond before. He picked it up quite quickly.

4. These videos will be posted on a password-protected website (created and hosted on Squarespace in less than a day).

5. I will likely only spend an hour each week with the students synchronously on Zoom. The in-person class will allow them to ask questions, we will work through problems together (which is part of how I normally teach), and I will have them take a quiz on the readings each class. I am not going to record the classes for both privacy reasons and because I think that encourages students to skip class with the dubious plan of watching the recording later.

6. I am concerned that the strong tendency of even good students this fall will be to let things slide. What I saw this spring is that students have difficulty motivating themselves when they are at home all day. This is why I am introducing a weekly quiz on the readings. Their over-all performance on the quizzes over the semester will be worth something like 20% of their final grade. I want to give them an incentive to stay current on the readings and to attend our synchronous online classes. I am using Tophat to administer the quizzes.

7. In my Entrepreneurial Law class, I usually have each student do a paper on a startup of their choice (drawn either from a list of books or one they have encountered in real life). This year, I am going to have each of them do up a 10 minute presentation and randomly select one or two each week to give their presentation over Zoom. I think it will be helpful for students to be engaged if I am not the only one talking.