Online lectures: Exploring alternatives to online presence

I have reflected a lot on the use of online lectures, delivered by teaching staff within a specific subject. My questions stem from some analysis a few years ago whereby it became clear that the time I spent preparing for and delivering lectures for online students was potentially wasted. Students weren’t watching them, or if they were, our analytics told us that they were only watching sporadically.

It’s a common issue for higher education educators. It is particularly problematic if we’re requiring students to watch the lectures as preparation for assessment or exams. Anyone following the Twitter feed associated with #academictwitter will be familiar with the discourse surrounding students not reading the syllabus or ‘coming to class’, an online lecture being the online version of that on-campus class.

I have been paring back on online lectures for some time now, but in 2018, I ditched the regular weekly hour-based online lectures. Time-wise, that’s a saving of approximately 30 hours per term, based on two hours per week preparation and delivery, and then a few hours for the rendering, upload, and linking of the video to the subject’s learning management site.

I decided to use this time differently. I will reflect on some strategies I implemented to use this time more effectively on this blog in forthcoming weeks, but they included making time for personal contact after marking student work, and public drafting.

The question became: How do I communicate critical information to students online in a way that communicates a strong sense of presence, but in a way that is most useful for students and time effective for staff?

The starting point for ‘content’

I base my online teaching on a succinct study guide. The study guide is a simple, downloadable PDF converted from a plain MS Word document. Comprising four to six pages, it is a curation of critical points, readings, and activities. The file is not just a list, but the equivalent of a written lecture. I keep the design and approach super-plain, as many of my students are regionally-based and still struggle with access to the internet or the cost of data. I am still very wary of online lessons that look great but still don’t meet the requirements of what I’ll refer to as ‘pragmatic online teaching’ for rural, regional, and remote students (RRR).

This file is supported by minimal links. An example is below:

You will notice here a link in Support Materials/Links.

This is a link to a social media curation tool, whereby I curate links and provide a short narration as to why they are useful. I used to use Storify, but have been trialling Wakelet as an alernative which seems to be OK. One curated link is preferable, I think, to a long list of possible readings.

Students therefore have a simple, easy to access content. No ‘bangs and whistles’. Just a guide to learning.

Establishing ‘presence’ for online students

In my view, we need to be there for students, but we also need to have a life. It’s easy to over-deliver, and that’s frustrating for students AND staff.

I have contained online teaching time to virtual class hours for many years now. During term, I always schedule these on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My Monday morning ‘virtual class hours’ are particularly important. They set me and the student up for the rest of the week. During this period, I routinely post a ‘Welcome to the Week’ forum post. Prior to 2018, I also scheduled regular online sessions – fortnightly generally, but sometimes weekly.

In 2018, I bit the bullet and decided to trial a different approach. I decided to replace routine weekly lectures with a more restricted online presence.

I recorded a three-minute video to include with the weekly post. This video specifically addressed the question: Why this week’s content is important for your assessment in this subject, and what the common issues are. I kept it simple – I recorded it directly on my laptop (PC) using ‘Recorder’ and uploaded the mp3 file as an embedded link within Moodle.

It takes me around 10 – 15 minutes to record these short videos.

To support this, I scheduled three to four online ‘drop-in’ sessions for students during the term. In ‘drop-in’ sessions, I sit online and wait for students to ‘visit’ with questions. (I use Zoom for this, which I love as do students.) I find most students don’t avail themselves of the online drop in sessions, but some do and that’s fine. I know there’s some rhetoric about needing to encourage students to come to consultation, but I have some flipped thinking on that. The more students requiring support to understand the task, the more questions I would ask about my assessment design and delivery approach.  I don’t want to be a ‘set and forget’ teacher, but my subjects should be easy enough to study from a ‘set and forget’ perspective as a student.

My aim is to be available, but to have designed things so well that the students don’t really need me.

The trial in 2018 worked. My satisfaction scores in 2018 were 4.8 and 4.9 (out of 5 in a Likert style evaluation scale) in both subjects I teach (noting I also have a managerial role now, so teaching is not my core job). Satisfaction, though, isn’t the only measure – I’m interested in impact. I was particularly interested in the improvement in grades in one practically-oriented writing unit. In this, students pitch their ideas in an online session early in the term, prior to writing a personal and news feature. High Distinction grades increased from 37% in 2017 to 53% in 2018, despite lectures being removed. [Note, I am aware of the very high percentage here of high grades, and requested validation of quality through external review. Many student assignments were also published in real publications].

The lesson here was that I could successfully adapt my teaching practice. This meant I could invest more time on valuable tasks such as providing feedback to public drafts, and less time in preparing lectures for a very small group of students who turn up, rendering me a private tutor to a few proactive students.

What happened, I believe, is that all students felt a greater sense of presence, despite the fact that the actual time I devoted to that presence was shorter.

Overall, it was a reminder that we do need to challenge established delivery models which may ultimately save me time and result in positive outcomes for students.

Protected: ‘What do you mean, I need to post online?’ Reflections on using social media for assessment in a first year unit.

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Time Management Tips for Online Teaching

Managing time as an academic is tough. Work seeps into every crevice of life, and there’s never enough time for all the reading and writing you want to do.

If you’re a teaching academic, you’ll be juggling marking. When marking, time is quantifiable. In my discipline, marking an assignment can take between half an hour to an hour to mark. The better the assignment, the quicker to mark as a rule. If I have 100 students, I can complete marking for those students in 50 hours, at best, and at worst 100 hours.

Assuming I do nothing else for the week and work the standard 40 hour week, it will take me (at best, with no lunch-breaks) one and a half weeks if I don’t work the weekend and at night. If we factor in a few rest-breaks, lunch, phone calls and some meetings in a two week period, it becomes clear as to how marking becomes all-consuming. A simple lunch with colleagues amounts to two assignments I could mark – a phone call amounts to another. Each task you do that isn’t marking just prolongs the inevitable – those assignments have to be marked.

It makes me feel a little overwhelmed just thinking about it now, but I rarely get overwhelmed in practice. This is because I have developed simple techniques to help manage my time. The bigger the class, the more organised I need to be.

I am often asked to share my practice, and these are my top 5 tips for time management when working with large online assessment-based (not MOOC) classes.

1. Set online contact hours and stick to them. Tell students you will respond to emails AND discussion forums during these hours routinely. Then DON’T respond to students outside those hours. I set my contact hours three times per week, with one block at night during term so distance students can call/email me and get a response immediately. If I work at night after my contact hours have finished, I save emails as drafts and send them during my next contact period. Sticking to this can be tough. In large classes, however, it’s essential. It’s often tempting to do the easy work and ‘just answer quickly’. But when you have a lot of online students, doing this will suck you into a ‘response vortex’ and students become less inclined to solve their own problems. My management tactic was to create a category in Microsoft Outlook for ‘Students’. I categorise student emails as they come in, and respond to them during my contact periods. It’s critical, if you work like this, to stick to your set hours. Treat them as though you are in class – your students should have your full and undivided attention during these periods.
2. Don’t respond to assessment-related questions by email. There’s a good chance that other students have similar questions about assessment. Even if they don’t, any question you answer about assessment will help other students think about their assignments. Advise students that you’ll only respond to assessment questions via the forum. Leave email for personal issues. Most class forums or discussion boards these days have effective search functions. Show students how to use this to search for a topic or your name. I ask students to search for posts by me before they ask a question, just to make sure it hasn’t already been covered. Being assertive doesn’t mean you have to be rude. I may reply by email with a response the first time but I will also advise the student that I will post their question and my reply on the forum. I also make a point of responding to forum posts before emails as this encourages the ‘forum first’ approach. Students start to help one another out while they wait (not too long, but long enough) for my response. It doesn’t take long for collegiality to start to kick in.
3. Create a Frequently Asked Questions page on your unit web site. If multiple students are asking the same question about the assignment, then there’s a flaw in your assessment design somewhere. For example, the instructions might not be clear or the task is too complex. Nonetheless, an FAQ page can help address regular questions and then help you evaluate your practice at the end of term. I ask students to check the FAQ page and search the forums before asking a question. I also let them know that I’ll be updating the FAQ page as common questions arise.
4. Use the phone. Distance students can feel isolated, so not only is getting a phone call about an issue often quicker to solve a problem – it also helps build relationships. If I see a question on a forum that I sense is a real issue or has the potential to become more problematic (for whatever reason), I’ll respond generally on the forum but also make an individual phone call. I make these phone calls during contact hours. One phone call can save many hours of work later.
5. Set students up for success and give good feedback the first time around. Students who don’t understand what they did wrong, and care about their learning, will challenge teachers who don’t provide clear feedback. Making limited comments, and then only grading the student a ‘Pass’ rather than a higher grade – without making reference to where they can improve – is poor practice. Giving meaningful feedback quickly and in a way that targets the individual can be time consuming, but effort put in from the outset will be paid off when students don’t return for a review of grade and when their work improves. Higher quality submissions will take less time to mark. Using exemplars, walking through examples, and identifying common errors from previous terms all takes a bit of time to set up but will save HEAPS of time in the longer run.

My largest unit these days is around 300 students, and sometimes I’m teaching a couple of other units at the same time with much smaller numbers. That means I must be across multiple unit outlines and assessment.

Students who work with me know the rules, and many say they appreciate the routine – it seems to help them manage their own time too. They also appreciate the personal contact when there is a more complex problem to solve…and the only reason I have the time to do this is because I’m not answering the same question 100 times.

I don’t work weekends as a rule unless it’s a marking block, although I do work nights during term. When I’m not in contact hours these days, I’m reviewing papers, doing some research, reading interesting articles, or working with postgraduate students.

Time much better spent.