Welcome to the World of Online Teaching
As you probably know by now, in mid-March post-secondary institutions across the country - and across North America - moved courses online to protect students, faculty and staff from the spread of COVID. Every university handled this process a little differently, and every faculty within our University also had a slightly different approach. In addition, how professors chose to transition their class to an online format varied.
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I think that from both a teaching and learning perspective there is a big difference between a class that is designed from the start to be taught and taken (at least in part) online and an offline class that has to be moved online due to unforeseen circumstances. In addition, for both professors and students, the transition to an online learning environment was also impacted by other factors. Among other things, I had students living in residence that were required to move, students from other countries trying to get back home before borders closed up, and students dealing with other effects stemming from the virus (including loss of employment, sick loved ones, and even children or siblings home from school that they had to care for).
I took all of this into consideration when transitioning my course to a virtual environment and made the decision to create asynchronous modules in our existing online learning management system (we use Brightspace) that students could follow along with at their own pace. No additional work was added for students and the deadline for completing the online modules was extended to the date of the final exam.
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In total, I migrated 3 lessons online plus the virtual exhibit from my last blog post. Let me walk you through what I did! Read on to see Online Module 1: Monsters, Monsters Everywhere and Online Module 3: Sorting Hats and "The Boy Who Lived" - Harry Potter and Popular Culture in their online form.
Online module 1: monsters, monsters Everywhere
A good introduction is key! So, the first thing that I did in my online module was introduce not only the educational context (that we were going to be resuming our course in an online format, with instructions for how to do so and where to find the readings) but also the real-world context (as luck would have it, our first online module was all about monsters and one of the readings even dealt with using zombies as an educational tool for learning about pandemic awareness and preparedness).
The introduction
Organization
From there, I broke down the course content into smaller manageable (bite-sized!) chunks, using headings to structure the content. I tried to keep the tone the same that it would have been in class (by adding in jokes or sayings that I would have used such as “It’s not just about zombies!”)
An example of some the headings that were used in Online Module 1
Interactivity
A very important part of this lecture is a comparison that students normally do in person between, first, monsters and humans, and then zombies and people living with Alzheimer’s Disease. In a classroom setting, half of the class would get a worksheet on monsters and the other half would get one on humans. At the same time, the ‘monster’ half of the class would get a worksheet on zombies and the ‘human’ half would get a worksheet on people living with Alzheimer’s Disease. These worksheets have the exact same questions but a different prompt (you can see these below).
Once students have completed their separate worksheets, the worksheets are taken up in class without reading the questions. First, I would ask one side of the room what they wrote in Box 1, then the other. This is followed by Boxes 2 and 3. Finally, I ask one student from each side to read the title and prompt at the top of the worksheet. The results from this exercise allow students to see similarities in their answers despite the different subject of the each worksheet. (If you’d like to read about the content of this lecture, click here.)
In the online version of this exercise, students were asked to download and complete each worksheet on their own. Then, they were asked to pull up the worksheets side by side and answer two questions:
Are there any similarities between the appearances, characteristics or behaviours that you listed?
How about any differences?
After they had done their own comparison, they were encouraged to take a look at a third file (below) to see how students in years past have answered the same questions.
Although it wasn’t the same as doing the exercise in class, students who completed the exercise said that they were surprised to find that their own worksheets on zombies and Alzheimer’s disease contained similar language and ideas. They also found the answers from former students to be helpful and insightful as it demonstrated an ongoing association between the two conditions.
Online Module 3: Sorting Hats and "The Boy Who Lived" - Harry Potter and Popular Culture
The final module of the semester explored two different ways to look at Harry Potter - one related to personality quizzes and how Harry Potter - and popular culture - can influence our behaviour and perceptions (which I blogged about here) and the other looked at the notion of celebrity inside of and surrounding the novels and films (which I also blogged about here).
The set-up
Like with previous online modules, I provided an introduction noting (sadly!) that it was our last module and ‘class’ and included some preliminary background information about Harry Potter. I also used headings to guide the students through the various elements of the readings.
A brief introduction to the module and to Harry Potter
The headings that were used for this module to establish structure and context
keep it interactive
As with the module on zombies, interactivity was an important aspect of this lecture - had we been in class, students would have been given time to complete, first, the Pottermore Quiz and then The Big 5 Personality Quiz. After explaining the hypothesis of the assigned reading, which was essentially that what we read can influence how we see ourselves, the remainder of the module walked students through part of the experiment conducted by Crysel et al. in their paper. In particular, each of the headings used lined up with a different step of the experiment:
Under What House Are You? students were invited and encouraged to complete the Sorting Hat quiz on the Wizarding World website.
Then, they were invited to complete The Big Five Trait Personality Quiz referred to in the article.
And, finally, they were asked to answer the question What Does It All Mean? by comparing their results to the findings and discussion section of the assigned reading.
Here’s an example of what the module looked like:
Recognizing that some students might not be able to complete the exercise due to technological issues - and that it would be difficult to troubleshoot these issues at a distance - I shared my own results in each of the steps.
In their weekly journal entry, I found that many of the students actually undertook the exercise. To cap it off, they not only compared their results to the findings of the article, but also reflected on mine!
What’s next in this online teaching adventure?
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I think that I learned a lot from this experience - the most important thing being how much time it takes to build an online environment.
Since moving classes online, I’ve been fortunate enough to take several webinars offered by the University of Ottawa’s Teaching and Learning Support Service about building, communicating and teaching in an online environment. I’ve also applied to teach a fully, synchronous (or at least blended) online course in the summer semester. I’m really excited about the possibility of building an entirely online course and delivering high-quality content in a fun and engaging manner from a distance.