Word of Advise: Don't forget to record your teaching session...

I taught a 20-minute session on Thursday, September 29, 2016. I was prepared; I had my PowerPoint, I had some videos, I had polls created. I had practiced (most of it), and I had fixed the one or two things that didn't work. People from the eLearning class were there, a couple of colleagues from work showed up, I had about a half dozen of my online astronomy class pop in for their extra credit points. A friend of mine who teaches Advanced Composition even had her night class watch, because they were learning about argumentative writing. Everything was just right.

And then I forgot to record it.

Fortunately, Sjanni was there, and she did screen shots for me, so I can show you what I did while I tell you how it went.

First, I should explain we are a Blackboard Learn school, so we have acess to Blackboard Collaborate. Collaborate comes in two levels, the web-based Ultra version, and the app-based Original Experience. The Original Experience is similar to Adobe Connect, but the Ultra version is "stripped-down" in comparison.

Since I'm used to Collaborate Ultra, I found Connect a little overwhelming at first. While it was nice having the ability to design your own layout, I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted (i.e., to satisfy my OCD everything must be balanced side...). If it was something I knew I would use in the future, I would have spent more time obsess--er---fixing it. Here's the layout I came up with:

I knew I wanted to use polls to keep students engaged, so I used the poll pod. I wanted a bigger chat pod, but I didn't want a smaller sharing pod. I needed the participant pod since I was giving extra credit to my online students. I tried several different layouts; that probably took the most of my prep time! I finally had to say good enough.

One thing I do like is that you can set your polls up ahead of time, and hide them until you need them. This is the opening layout; when I needed a poll, I just opened it up. The first one goes in where you have the pod arranged, and then new ones come in on top of that. This is what it looked like during the class, with the poll pod open.

(And that empty spot is still driving me nuts.)

If I were to do it again, I would put the chat window to the right of the sharing window, because it was hard to read under the share window, but normal eye flow goes to the right, so that would be easier. Actually, this is probably the layout I would use.

See, I KNOW I will most likely never use this again, but I still had to go back and fix the layout. Sheesh.

I was sharing a PowerPoint and videos. I did find it difficult to switch sharing from one to the other, only because it requires you to pick the menu and then a sub-menu, and I just find that an awkward thing to do. I think because I had the sharing screen all the way to the right, that the submenu popped to the left or something. It just took a lot of practice to do it smoothly.

When we are given the advice to practice and test everything, do it. I had two small videos that were screen captures that I had tested earlier, and they worked beautifully (although I didn't use one, because I was running out of time). But about a half hour before the session, I decided to include an intro video I did in Spark, so I downloaded it as an MP4, uploaded it to Connect...and it did not go well. It kept pausing and hesitating, and the sound cut out.

ETA: I did figure out the problem with the video. I ran it several more times, and I realized it was hesitating on a really beautiful hi-res image of Pluto. I swapped that one out with a low-res version, and not it runs fine. I never noticed that issue before, because I tend to drop these into YouTube rather than play them on Spark or use the mp4's.

Other than that, the sesson went quite well. I use animations in PowerPoint, and although this one didn't have many, they all worked as expected. I usually include videos in my PowerPoint deck, but they wouldn't play within the PowerPoint, so I took them out and used them as shared documents. Except for the one above, that worked fine.

We had quite a lively chat at the end! The English class had a number of questions, as did my Astronomy class. In the future, I think I will go back to a technique I used when I taught in the classroom, putting slides in my PPT deck specifically to make me stop and ask for questions after major points. That is especially important in this format where students can't easily get you attention to ask a question. I do like that you can see when people are typing in the chat, so you know not to move on too quickly.

I have to give my heartfelt thanks to Sjaani who did screen captures of the session and graciously shared them with me so I at least had something to share with everyone! I will poll my Astronomy class to see if I can gather a few this weekend to teach it again and give them a chance to earn their extra credit. If I do, I will be sure to record it...