Transition to Online Facilitation and Teaching - By Prof. Akshay D. Lahe

 

All Faculty as well as Students are now facing the challenges regarding moving to Online Instruction Teaching Learning. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, more and more online education is preferred and students are also learning from home. So question is, how do we exploit Power of Online Teaching Learning and utilize it to provide effective and efficient Student Centric Learning?

In order to answer this question, we need to first know all the available options for online teaching learning along with their features, advantages & disadvantages.

Modes of Online Teaching:

There are two major modes in which online teaching occur: Synchronous & Asynchronous.

In Synchronous mode, Teacher and Student interact on the same online platform at the same time in real time. This mode majorly include Live Class using various video conferencing technologies like Zoom, jitsi Meet, Google Meet, Cisco’s Webex, Zoho Meeting, etc.

The Major advantage of this mode is that it offers immediate response and feeling of personal engagement. But availability of bandwidth for all the participants in live session is the major issue in synchronous mode. There are other challenges in this like challenges in scheduling the meets, managing sessions with its all features (Chat, Mute all, etc.), audio or video glitches due to bandwidth or rural area problem, student & teacher fatigue with longer lectures.

On the other Hand, in Asynchronous Mode, Teachers already prepares the course content and material, schedule and arrange it to be seen by students in advance. Students have the luxury to access the course contents and materials at a time of their choosing. Obviously, Teacher will set some deadlines in which student must complete particular material. This in advance prepared materials can be a Video Lecture having some quizzes built-in, Notes, quizzes, etc. Teacher usually make use of a Learning Management System (LMS) in this mode to facilitate learning and schedule all the lessons properly. By making use of LMS, it becomes somewhat efficient to schedule a course, have quizzes set for students, have discussion forums for discussing various topics, conducting online tests, Assessment of student. LMS such as Moodle, Canvas, Google Classroom, Bodhi Tree, etc can be used by the Institute for this purpose.

 

This approach is a flexible approach and gives learner self-paced, anywhere-anytime access to the course content. It offers greater engagement of students in this way. Students can Watch the recorded videos/materials repeatedly and for longer duration of time.

But Asynchronous Mode lack of immediate response and feeling of personal connection. It may happen that student may not look at the material posted by the teacher.

 

Now, We have seen what synchronous and asynchronous Online teaching is. Each have its own set of advantages and disadvantages. So We should use mix of both the modes.  In my opinion, We should use a LMS to facilitate the Course, Schedule the recorded content to be studied by the students at home at their pace with deadlines. There should be use of discussion forum/ slack platform/ WhatsApp groups for the interaction among students & teacher. All the Tests, Quizzes should be done through LMS and Assessment with certain rubrics cube should be automatically evaluated.

Along with above Asynchronous Approach, Teacher should use Synchronous Approach also in which live interaction session over the difficult topics, live doubt Clearing Sessions and Q & A Sessions should be conducted on videoconferencing platforms.

To get a deeper idea about “How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All”, I urge you to go through this article by Daniel Stanford: https://www.iddblog.org/videoconferencing-alternatives-how-low-bandwidth-teaching-will-save-us-all/

 

Learner-Centric MOOCs (LCM) Model

 

I would like to introduce Learner-Centric MOOCs (LCM) Model Proposed by IIT, Bombay which I came across 1 month Training organized by NPTEL on “Transition to Online Facilitation”.

Access Details of this Model here: https://lcm-model.org/

The LCM Model is a suitable conceptual basis for online instruction. It is important for Teachers to become familiar with some key concepts and terminology from this model. Hence I am providing a brief summary of model terminologies here.

Learning Dialog (LeD):

                

Learning Dialogs(LeD) are pre-recorded short videos with in-video Quizzes/Activities created carefully by the teacher. These are very short videos and each video will have one or two reflection spots where student should pause the video and rethink what student has learned and solve/attend quizzes/activities given by teacher in the video so as teacher will have the idea of extent of understanding of students. These in-video quizzes are not for assessment purposes, rather they are used to keep the attention of students and check whether student is understanding what he is being taught in the video.

Learning by Doing (LbD):

In Normal Classroom setting, Teacher assigns some tasks, Activities, Practice Problems or Exercises to the student which he/she will solve at home and teacher will assess them in next session. But in Online settings, this activity is ineffective. Instead some online MCQs or short Questions interspersed with LeDs, is more appropriate. These activities are called as Learning by Doing (LbD).

Learning extension Trajectories (LxT):

In Online Teaching learning Process, it is ineffective to simply give the list of reference resources and expect that student will follow those references to get deeper knowledge regarding the topic. Instead, Teacher should think what different extensions of that topic are, student can follow and make various resources available at appropriate points in the course to the student along with some questions on each extension. The addition of questions on Each Extension trajectory of the topic makes sure that student will go through the reference resources and answer the questions. These Extensions are nothing but Leaning Extension Trajectories (LxT).

 

Learner experience Interactions (LxI):

I have already mentioned various ways for interaction among students and teacher-student like Discussion forums, Whatsapp Groups, Slack Groups, etc. But by only providing these platform for the discussion does not foster the meaningful discussions and peer learning among students. Teacher should form Focus Questions and steer online discussion by creating discussion threads along with simple questions to ensure that every student will participate. This approach is more appropriate and termed as Learner Experience Interactions (Lxl).

 

Here is a quick Mapping of components in face-to-face teaching and online instruction:

For a high-level overview of the LCM Model, watch this video. : 

For research evidence regarding the LCM Model, visit this website: https://lcm-model.org/

 

Principles for Effective Online Instruction

Content Creations is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. It is very good if the teacher is creating his/her own content but there are a lot of good content already available and I think it is better to re-use them whenever required. If the teacher feels that some topic will be explained then teacher can add to that topic by creating his content.

Curation is not just pointing students to content from other sources. Curation requires the instructor to state how the curated content fits into one's course plan, and create activities for students to assimilate the content. So CURATE BEFORE YOU CREATE..!

Teacher should keep videos short and simple. Split the video and include one or two reflection spot in the video to make student attentive and check whether what is being taught is being understood by the student. Reflection spot can include in-video quizzes (MCQs, short answer questions, Thought provocative questions, Discussion forum activity, or any other activities). Create you LeD (Learning Dialog) video; use this Formats: https://lcm-model.org/constructors/

Giving immediate feedback to Activities or practice questions given to students is a very important task and should be planned relating to a particular topic.

Teacher should provide diverse Resources to students to student along with some focus questions.

Recall-level Quiz can be given to ensure students go through all the resources.

 

 Content Creation Stages:

1.       Chunking Long videos into Smaller Videos:

Long video lectures tend to bore the students so instead of the long videos, teacher should chunk the long video into smaller video chunks with reflection spots. Chunking is an important process as teacher has to identify where there is a slight topic switch is there and chunk the content accordingly.

2.       Curate before Create:

Creating videos involves planning, rehearsing, and recording, editing, rendering and uploading. So it takes much more time and effort than preparing for the corresponding face-to-face class. A lot of content to be delivered can be found online in form of videos, PDFs, websites, simulations etc. It is advisable to start by finding and using online content that fits one's topic and objectives. This process is called content curation.

3.       Creating your Own Content:

The video created should be small usually less than 10 min. If some topic takes very to explain then make two video parts of that video. Each video should include reflection spots i.e. Quizzes/Activities.

There are many types to create a Video Content:

1.     A.      Talking Head

Talking Head video means that there in only teacher talking in the video without any content or screen sharing for most of the time. This gives Learners a feeling of making eye contact with the teacher and they feel more connected. In this, Gestures and expressions of the teacher is very important and make a huge impact on the learners. Motivational talks use this kind of video.

 

        B.      Slidecast

      In this type of video, Teacher presents his PPT/PDF presentation and his/her voice-over along with the video to explain the presentations. Students are able to follow the lesson with teacher’s voice narrating the content. Use of pointer, pen or annotations is important to keep student attentive.

        C.      Screencast

ScreenCast is most popular of all the types of videos. In this, Screen of the teacher is captured using any screencast software along with voice-over of the teacher. Using this type of video, teacher can share actions he/she is doing on the computer to the students.

        D.      Picture-in-Picture

This type of video is useful when teacher wants eye contact with student along with some screen or presentation sharing with students. This is combination of multiple types.

E.       Table Top:

Whenever Teacher wants to share freehand written content with the student table top video creation is used. It facilitates traditional board in the classroom. It is very useful to demonstrate step by step processes or in mathematics.

F.       Video Demonstration

Video Demonstration is nothing but a live demonstration of some equipment being used.

I hope this post will be useful for many teachers and students who taking traditional classroom teaching to Online Teaching. I have put forth multiple options for each task through various blog posts. Teachers can choose one that suits them or can use combinations of tools to create and curate their content.