Digital Education

Three great lecture recording options for remote education rookies

rudmehta — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:26:28 +0000

Three great lecture recording options for remote education rookies rudmehta Tue, 07/19/2022 - 13:26

This article was originally published on July 27, 2020.

As ��-Dearborn prepares for a fall semester that’s heavy on remote learning, many faculty will soon be recording lectures for their first fully online courses. If you find yourself in this boat, don’t panic. Even with tight timelines imposed by the pandemic, ��-Dearborn’s digital learning experts say the challenge is totally manageable if you don’t try to do too much, too fast. Here are three straightforward approaches they say will deliver solid results, even if you’re a rookie.

Option A: Simple at-home recording

Tech you’ll need: Can be as simple as a laptop or phone; add an external camera and mic for better quality. Annotation devices can give your students a whiteboard-style experience.

For many faculty, recording a lecture at home will be the most straightforward choice and Instructional Designer Alfonso Sintjago says producing high-quality videos at home is totally doable. The built-in camera and mic on your smartphone or laptop can be adequate, but if you want to go the extra mile, the university is supplying faculty with external cameras and mics that will deliver better video and audio. Once on camera, experiment with the lighting. Sintjago says first make sure you have enough of it; if your image looks grainy, you probably need more light. Your light source should also be in front or slightly to one side of your face, rather than behind you. Using natural light from a window is great if you can record during the day. You’ll also want to make sure the camera position is at eye level or a little above, because shooting from below is typically unflattering. For faculty who write on the board a lot during their lectures, Sintjago says consider adding an annotation device, which is basically a tablet that you can write on with a stylus. Whatever you’re scribbling down can either be displayed as its own screen, or superimposed overtop an existing screen, like a PowerPoint slide.

For software, Sintjago says both Kaltura Capture, which is integrated right into Canvas, or PowerPoint 365 work great for beginners. PowerPoint has an added advantage of recording a single video file for each slide, which makes it easier to correct something if you discover a mistake or decide to do a small retake. Importantly, both platforms automatically generate on-screen captions for accessibility. They’re typically 80 percent accurate, and correcting transcription mistakes is as easy as editing a text file.

One last tip: The casual, personal vibe of an at-home lecture can totally be an asset. “I saw a great example from someone in Minnesota where you could see her dog and fireplace in the background. The whole scene was very cozy and you felt invited into her home,” Sintjago says. Another way to make the whole experience more personal for students: Record casual, short beginning- or end-of-week videos where you go over important reminders or respond to interesting discussion points from students.

Option B: At-home recording with style points

Tech you’ll need: Laptop, external camera, wireless lavalier mic and green screen.

If you’re aiming for something with a little more polish, adopting Mercedes Miranda as your online learning guru can dramatically shorten the learning curve. The Business Economics and Finance lecturer has been teaching online since 2009, and her colleagues rave about her video lectures. Miranda says she does everything at home, and her setup is pretty simple: An external camera, wireless lavalier mic, and the Kaltura Capture software that’s integrated into Canvas. But she does have one secret ingredient: a $20 green screen she got at Walmart. This allows her to lecture onscreen with a slide in the background, kind of like a TV meteorologist showing off a weather map. She says studies have revealed that showing your face makes a lecture appear more personal to students, though too much of you can be distracting. She finds being onscreen to introduce the topic and then letting the PowerPoint slides and voiceover carry the load to be the right balance.

More than technology, Miranda’s secret to successful lectures lies in how she organizes them. “If you simply try to reproduce your classroom lecture on screen, you’ll end up with a one- or two-hour monologue, and that’s not very engaging,” Miranda says. Instead, she says dissect your lecture and break it down into no more than five main points. Then record a no longer than 10-minute lecture on each point. She even further segments those individual mini lectures with short quizzes, which appear periodically during the video. That helps add some interactivity and also checks for comprehension. The Video Quiz function is integrated right into Kaltura Capture and you can insert quizzes easily at any point after you record your lecture.

Two of Miranda’s next-level tips: First, have your mini lectures focus on core concepts, but avoid referring to specific examples, pages of a particular textbook, or things that could get out of date quickly. If you end up teaching online for multiple semesters, you can reuse your core concept videos and simply update your examples as needed. Second, leave yourself enough time to produce your lectures. Miranda says it typically takes her two eight-hour days to finish one. And you never want to start a course with fewer than two weeks worth of lectures in the bank.

Option C: On-campus lecture capture

Tech you’ll need: None, but you can bring your own devices.

If your home situation makes recording challenging, or you just find using all this technology a little daunting, recording on-campus might be a better bet. The Professional Education Center (PEC) recently opened up its lecture capture classrooms to all faculty, and they’re equipped with high-quality cameras, microphones, document readers, annotation tools, the Canvas-integrated Mediasite Desktop Recorder software (which you can also use at home, by the way), and staff to guide you through the recording session. To make things even easier, much of the process is automated. Video Production Coordinator Joe Goraj told us the recording automatically begins at the start of your booked time and your videos get uploaded immediately after you finish. If you need some light editing at the beginning or end of a session, they can help with that too. Typically, the finished videos will be ready for your students the following day. In addition, they have portable equipment to shoot short supplemental videos if faculty want to do some show-and-tell from their labs. Check out this clip to see an example of what your finished video lecture will look like.

Two tips for beginners if you go this route: As much as possible, try to look directly into the camera. It may feel awkward at first, but from the student’s perspective, that amounts to looking them in the eye. In addition, if you’re used to pointing a lot during a lecture, say, at a whiteboard or projection screen, be aware that may not be in view of the camera. As an alternative, you can annotate your screen with a digital stylus or use your mouse pointer.

Bonus tip: Make a plan before you record and get help if you need it.

Whichever route faculty end up choosing for lecture recording, Sintjago says don’t get too hung up on the technology. What makes a lecture video “good” isn’t so much its production values but what you’re doing with your time on screen and how it fits into the rest of your course. If you need help figuring out an approach that works for you, Sintjago says to reach out to the instructional designers at The Hub. They can help you talk through what you want to do in the course and figure out what tools and techniques will get you there. The Hub is also hosting weekly course design tutorials in August to help faculty get ready for fall.

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Need help getting started? Reach out to The Hub. Or if you want to learn more about CECS’s on-campus lecture capture, send an email to ��D-CECSOnline@umich.edu. Ready to record? Complete this form to schedule a recording appointment on campus in the PEC.

Extended Learning & Outreach

Digital Education

Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources

Off

Mon, 07/27/2020 - 05:00

Recording lectures can be a daunting challenge for faculty who are new to online learning. Here are three solid approaches, vetted by our ��-Dearborn experts.

remotelearning_recording_final

A SURE thing: Guided education for the future

stuxbury — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 19:47:53 +0000

A SURE thing: Guided education for the future stuxbury Mon, 08/30/2021 - 15:47

The song Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers became an international hit in 1969, reaching No . 4 on the U.S. Singles Chart, No. 1 in France and Germany, and — 20 years later — transformed parts of Japanese culture. The first Gospel song to hit the secular chart was even featured in movies like Secretariat, BlacKkKlansman and Sister Act 2.

Photo of ��-Dearborn student Davian Bennett

��-Dearborn Junior Davian Bennett remembers hearing the song in his home. But outside of its mainstream presence in pop culture, he didn’t know much about it. That is, until a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience opportunity with English and Humanities Professor Deborah Smith Pollard, a renowned Gospel music scholar, gave the future therapist insight.

“I have a passion for Gospel music, but that song was so overplayed that I didn’t really give the listen, nor time, it truly deserved. But research changes your perspective on everything,” said Bennett, a criminal justice major who plans to attend graduate school for psychology. “During my research, I learned through interviews how that song changed lives. It gave people positive affirmation and inspiration to leave abusive relationships, rethink suicidal thoughts, endure hardships and even break language barriers. It makes people not only happy, but celebrate their accomplishments! If that’s not power through music, I don’t know what is.”

Smith Pollard and Bennett’s project documents the transformative presence and impact of Oh Happy Day — a recording only sold to the choir group’s friends and family in the late 1960s, but went on to sell millions of copies after it was discovered by an underground rock DJ — on individuals and organizations around the world. And that’s just one of 25 projects completed through campus’ four-month SURE Program.

Other projects, which will be featured on the ��-Dearborn news site on Tuesdays in September, include The Ethics of Vaccination, Driver Style Transfer for Autonomous Driving, Supply-Base Concentration and Supply Chain Resilience, and more. Students will present their research at the virtual 2021 SURE Showcase at 1 p.m. Sept. 10.

The program, started in 2018 to highlight and support the undergraduate research work happening across campus, transitioned out of the Office of Research and into Experience+ — which promotes a Dearborn Wolverine's academic, personal and professional growth — to emphasize the student focus of the SURE program.

“SURE is a perfect fit for Experience+ because it brings together research, digital literacy and transferable skills such as communication and critical thinking into one package that students can put in their professional toolbox,” said Experience+ Senior Associate Director Laurie Sutch.

Sutch and Linker said the SURE Program provides ��-Dearborn students with expert guidance in the practice of research and it shares potential educational and research-oriented career paths. Faculty projects and students were matched based on interests and skillsets.

“These are faculty with real research needs serving as mentors to create professional development opportunities for our students,” Linker said. “It’s a well thought out experience that pays our students (up to $3200 for the summer) and offers skill building, an expanded network, and the opportunity for getting experience to put on their resume or CV,” Linker said, noting that several students from previous years had their work published in major industry journals.

In addition to faculty-mentored research, students regularly met throughout the summer for workshops covering topics such as responsible conduct in research, using library research resources, graduate school applications and successful presentation techniques.

“I learned research isn’t sitting in front of your computer for hours at a time. It’s gaining a respect and a deep understanding of a topic through asking questions, listening, looking through history and knowing how to present what you’ve learned so others can benefit,” Bennett said.

There were also student mentoring sessions with guest speakers. Chancellor Domenico Grasso shared his undergraduate research experiences and lessons learned. Associate Professors Natalie Sampson and Carmel Price spoke about how to get a community engaged with a research project. Business Career Center Director Tuere Wheeler gave insight on the connections between research work and job or educational opportunities. And Associate Professor Will Clarkson, who is a part of an international research team that assembled an extensive map of the Milky Way, spoke about the importance of collaboration and sharing your research in presentations.

The SURE program brings people from across campus together — faculty from all four colleges participated — to keep building upon past SURE achievements and offer a holistic summer research experience.

Bennett called the program “An opportunity of a lifetime.”

“It really was a development process — of both the research project and of myself,” Bennett said. “I want to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there or how to prepare. I had Dr. Pollard, one of the best researchers in her field and a published author, showing me what’s what. I’m better prepared for graduate school. I’m more confident in wanting to be a therapist. And I’m now one of the many people who can say their life has changed because of the song, Oh Happy Day.”

Interview by Sarah Tuxbury.

Student Success

Undergraduate Research

Off

Mon, 08/30/2021 - 19:46

Mentored by faculty, 25 students completed Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) projects in 2021.

SURE Program participants did research over the summer.

How the switch to remote learning impacts English Language Learners

lblouin — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 15:21:58 +0000

How the switch to remote learning impacts English Language Learners lblouin Tue, 01/19/2021 - 10:21

Anyone who knows Geri Pappas knows she’s an imaginative, pedagogy-loving instructor who’s continuously trying out new things to help her students. But the CEHHS lecturer is pretty open about the fact that the quick pivot to remote learning has been a challenge even for her. That’s partly because of the very specific group of students she serves. For years, Pappas has been a chief faculty advocate for one of the smallest and most unique groups studying at ��-Dearborn: international students who are provisionally admitted to their academic programs on the condition that they first complete the university’s English Language Proficiency Program. And perhaps as much as any other, Pappas says it’s a program that thrives on energetic in-person instruction. In a non-pandemic world, that means lots of scribbling on whiteboards, face-to-face conversation, active gesturing to help close gaps in understanding, and good-natured laughter.

“Learning a language is kind of a unique learning experience because communication is essentially both what you’re learning and how you’re learning,” Pappas explains. “And I think students enroll in our program because they have this opportunity to meet other English learners and talk together in a setting where there’s no judgment because everybody is kind of in the same boat. So comradery and togetherness is a huge part of the way learning happens, and I think physically being around each other contributes to that. I’ve heard from several students that not being able to be in the same classroom has felt isolating. And I agree — the energy in our Zoom classroom just isn’t the same.”

Rather than trying to recreate every part of that atmosphere, Pappas has tackled this challenge by doubling down on the kinds of learning experiences that research shows benefit language learners the most. One of her favorite strategies is personalized, project-based work. “The one big thing with ELs [English learners] is you have to have a personal connection to the language you’re learning, otherwise it doesn’t stick,” Pappas says. So for example, when she assigns each student to watch a TED Talk, the particular TED Talk is from his or her academic discipline. Similarly, each student gets to choose the subject of their DIY instructional video (the digital substitute for her usual in-class presentation assignment). This semester, she even worked in a language lesson on the pandemic, so the students could learn obscure words like “placebo.” “Basically, the more relevant I can make the lessons to their lives, the better they learn,” she says.

Pappas says the remote learning environment has also changed her as an instructor, particularly when it comes to exploring new technologies. Blue Canoe, which gives students oral feedback on their pronunciation and intonation, has been one of her favorite discoveries so far. And she’s attended dozens of online workshops to see how colleagues are dealing with similar challenges. She says many of the new tools and strategies are likely to find a place in her course even once she’s able to return to in-person instruction. That is still her preferred format for teaching, but “it definitely won’t be the same course.”

COB student Abdullah Al Balushi

COB student and English Language Proficiency Program graduate Abdullah Al Balushi can testify about many of the challenges English learners commonly face with remote learning. During the summer, he took classes from Oman, which meant coping with unreliable internet and a time zone difference of eight hours between him and group members back in Dearborn. “I’ve had the internet crash in the middle of an exam. And with the time difference, sometimes I would have to wake up at 4 a.m. for assignments,” Al Balushi says. This fall, he’s back in the U.S. and says remote classes are going much more smoothly. He likes that he can rewatch and rewind lectures if he doesn’t understand something on first listen, and he’s been using his instructor’s Zoom office hours to get clarification on assignments. One downside: He’s spending a lot of time on discussion posts, which involve a multi-step process of first writing his response in Word, then checking it with the online tool Grammarly, then posting to Canvas. “Another thing I noticed this semester, I have an instructor who makes a lot of jokes, and I find that because I might not understand certain words or the tone he’s using, I don’t always know if he’s joking or serious.” Luckily, Al Balushi says he has a classmate-friend who helps him decode the subtleties of his instructor’s American humor.

Pappas thinks many of the techniques she uses in her own remote courses could be helpful for other faculty who have English learners in their classrooms, or even native speakers who are still adjusting to academic language. One thing she hopes faculty are particularly sensitive about are discussion forums — a common feature of many online courses that are sort of a stand-in for spontaneous in-class discussion. “Learning a language is totally anchored in building confidence, and for English learners, putting your writing out there in a public format adds a big layer of vulnerability. It doesn’t take much to completely crush someone’s confidence. In fact, I think that’s true of many native English speakers too.” For this reason, Pappas always asks her students if it’s OK to share their work publicly. Other faculty at ��-Dearborn have also recommended students who feel less than confident about their writing find a classmate to give feedback on their discussion posts prior to publishing.

In addition, Pappas says faculty can also support ELs by being sympathetic to how the isolation imposed by the pandemic may be impacting them socially and emotionally. “I really feel for my students because they didn’t come here just to study, they came to explore the U.S.,” Pappas says. “Now they’re basically locked in their apartments! I actually had one of my students say, ‘You know, the apartments here are nice, they’re better than the ones back home. But I want to see America.’ I totally want that for them, too, and I really hope they’ll be able to restart that part of their adventure soon.”

Student Success

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Digital Education

English Language Proficiency Program (ELPP)

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Tue, 01/19/2021 - 15:20

Lecturer Geri Pappas talks about the challenges digital education poses for students who are English learners and how faculty can give them the support they need.

Credit: Nenad Stojkovic via Flickr/Creative Commons

Does Canvas allow faculty to track students online?

lblouin — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:32:21 +0000

Does Canvas allow faculty to track students online? lblouin Wed, 01/13/2021 - 10:32

��-Dearborn’s Coordinator of Digital Education Chris Casey isn’t all that surprised that the pivot to remote learning has inspired some rumors about the surveillance powers of learning management systems like Canvas. In fact, busting myths about the kinds of student activity Canvas can and can’t track has become a pretty frequent activity for him.

One of the ideas Casey hears most often is that if a student is logged into their Canvas account, faculty can see if they open other browser tabs or websites outside of Canvas. “This one is definitely false,” Casey says. The basic idea here is that a student could be taking a quiz in Canvas in one tab or browser, while in another, seeking out answers through Google or sites like Chegg (more on Chegg below). If faculty could see which other tabs were open, they could potentially identify academic integrity violations. But Casey says Canvas simply doesn’t have this capability.

Another thing he hears a lot: Faculty can see when students have viewed a video. “This one is a bit murkier, but it’s mostly true.” It’s somewhat of a gray area because there are different kinds of video that can be viewed in Canvas. If faculty are simply posting a YouTube link, then no, the instructor can’t see which students are watching it. “But if they use the integrated video system in Canvas to, say, post a lecture, faculty can see which students have viewed it, how much of the video they watched, and if they rewatched a video,” Casey says.

A headshot of University Coordinator of Digital Education Chris Casey

The main intention of this feature is to help faculty do end-of-semester course improvement. For example, if faculty can correlate viewing certain content with better grades, or conversely, conclude that a video didn’t help students much, then they would know what content to keep and what to revise. But he says, in practice, some faculty use this feature to incentivize watching videos — giving students points if Canvas registers that they’ve watched. For several reasons, though, Casey says this isn’t a best practice. Most obviously, students can play videos while scrolling through Instagram and still get full credit. Even more problematic: Some common ad blocking and privacy extensions are known to anonymize student Canvas identities, meaning a student could watch a video and not get the credit. Furthermore, if students were watching the video in a small group, then only the student who was logged in through Canvas would show up as having watched. Because of this murkiness, Casey says faculty are discouraged from awarding points based on viewing videos.

Finally, the other big myth he often has to bust is that faculty can see if students have posted on Chegg. If you’re not familiar with Chegg, it’s an educational technology website that’s a little notorious in the higher education world because students have been known to use its forums to cheat on assignments and exams. But Casey says this one is indeed false. “Well, I should say false with an asterisk.” Casey says it’s false because Canvas does not allow faculty to directly correlate a student account with a student’s Chegg account. The one caveat is that some faculty have started personalizing questions on assignments and tests. “So the students might all get the same basic question, but one number in the equation might be different for each student.” This essentially gives the question an ID tag that’s correlated with each student. And if the instructor searches Chegg forums and sees that that question has been posted, it could be interpreted as evidence of an academic integrity violation.

Casey says folks in his office and instructional designers at The Hub generally discourage this kind of approach. “It can definitely devolve into a kind of academic integrity arms race,” he says. “And that’s not the kind of environment we think is most conducive to learning. Ultimately, we think a big part of the solution will be to change the way that assessment is done. If we have more authentic assessments, and fewer multiple choice tests, we can deal with a lot of these academic integrity issues while improving education.”

Casey says people in his office understand that paradigm shift is not going to happen overnight, and certainly not while many faculty are scrambling to adjust to all the other nuances of a remote learning environment. But for anyone who’s interested, he says they’re always here to help.

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The ��-Dearborn community is committed to promoting academic integrity at the university. For more on this topic, check out some other perspectives from faculty and student government. The Office of Digital Education also recently worked with Student Government and The Hub to create a new privacy statement for Canvas. You can find it under “Getting Started With Canvas” on the main student Canvas support page. And as always, if you’re a faculty member who wants to do more with your online course, you can schedule an appointment with one of the instructional designers at The Hub.

Online Learning

Student Success

Digital Education

Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources

Off

Wed, 01/13/2021 - 14:55

Learning management systems like Canvas do allow faculty to see some student activity. But a ��-Dearborn Canvas support specialist says it’s far from being a surveillance system.