Strategy, design, production, support and training that make great online delivery part of how you teach.
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What is the purpose of a lecture? If students have constant access to rich resources on pretty much every subject we would want to teach, why should we spend time talking to them about that subject, rather than letting them investigate for themselves?
In this short article, I look at how we can ensure that our lectures add value - both in live teaching settings, and micro-lectures added to asynchronous online courses.
As a teacher, what does it mean to you to ‘cover’ the syllabus? Does it mean that you make use of a good textbook that gives all the essential concepts? Does it mean that you fill the course with learning activities that will help your students achieve the intended learning outcomes? Or does it mean that you verbally deliver to the students every aspect of the syllabus through lecturing and demonstrations? A lot of academics I work with feel that the only way for them to ‘cover’ the syllabus in an online course is for them to lecture all of the content.
My response to these colleagues is generally, ‘Are you the only source of content for what your students need to learn?’
Whether teaching an asynchronous distance learning course or delivering your course through live online classes, there are some commonly perceived challenges in asking your students to take part in group-based activities, such as whether your students will have the motivation to carry out the task, will there be equal participation within the group, how can you avoid disputes or disruption, and can you afford the time in class that the group activities will take up? I’ve previously blogged on the reasons why group activities are a good idea in your online classes. If we accept that, then it’s worth taking the time to think about how we can overcome these challenges to create really engaging and effective learning opportunities when asking our students to work collaboratively with their peers.
Group work in online courses can be challenging to run effectively. However, there are very strong reasons to make sure we give our students the opportunity to work with their classmates. In this blog, I consider some of the pedagogy and some of the classroom management reasons why it is a very good idea to facilitate group activities for your online students. If you would like to discuss this or any other online teaching matter, get in touch!
Will universities invest to embed the lessons learned following the pivot to online teaching? Covid-19, the worldwide lockdowns, and the closing of university campuses caused the great pivot from face-to-face teaching to fully online that has mostly endured throughout the last year. While this caused a huge degree of shock and stress across the teaching and student communities, it has brought the use of online learning technologies to the fore, and in many ways improved their use across the board. The hope is that what has been learned will become embedded in standard practice when we move back to the physical campus. However, unless universities are prepared to invest in staff development and support, there is a real risk that the lessons learned will be forgotten. This blog post is a reflection on the conversation that arose during the ELESIG webinar which introduced the Active Blended Learning approach adopted by the Universit or Northampton. Thanks to Dr Tünde Varga-Atkins for hosting the webinar and to Rob Howe, Alejandro Armellini and Virgínia Teixeira Antunes for their presentations.
As teachers, we usually have an implicit rationale for why we want our students to carry out learning activities at a certain time, in a certain order. You can better motivate your students to learn if you make your implicit rationale explicit to your students. In this short blog and vlog, I suggest why and how you might do this.
During a webinar today, I was asked "Do you distinguish between online courses and offline courses that are being delivered online?". This blog (and vlog) is my response to that question. Thank you Dermot O'Toole for the question.
It can be challenging to motivate students to work between classes. In this blog (and vlog) I suggest ways in which we can approach our online classes that will motivate, encourage and require students to do the tasks between their scheduled lessons so they can get a lot more out of your teaching and their learning.
University classes are still timetabled as they would be if the teaching were happening face-to-face. This faces teaching staff with the question of what to do with that time. For a lot of people, the simplest answer is to lecture. However, I would challenge whether this is the most effective use of your students' time, and in this blog (and vlog) I suggest another approach.
Post-pandemic and post-emergency remote learning, a lot of institutions are recognising that they can and should put some of their programmes online. Acceptance of online and the recognised need to provide alternative modes of learning have helped everyone see that a bigger presence in the online space is desirable if not inevitable, but does a university need an OPM partner to go online?