If you have questions that are not answered below do get in touch and I will do my best to answer them and share the answers so that others can see them too. Do ask as you will be helping others if you do. Contact Rebecca.Bennett@manchester.ac.uk

Q: How long should videos be?

As a general advice aim for short rather than long videos. Generally, a long video may be not engaging, they are a very passive way of learning and you will need to provide at least a transcript for them or, if possible, captioning (subtitles) to make them accessible which for long videos may be a lot of extra work.

It might be better to have shorter videos and to use the time saved focusing on discussion and interaction with students and enabling interaction between students.

Think about what you were planning to do in a longer video. If you were going to read a script or talk to Powerpoint slides, then you might consider giving this information in another way that saves you time from having to record and potentially re-record or edit multiple times. If you want to provide information, this might be done more easily and effectively by providing written content with some simple activities to maintain the interest of your students.

You may want to use video as a way to personalise the way to deliver your content and provide reassurance and to students, or maybe introduce a case study or one concept, but majority of the actual ‘content’ may be easier to provide in a written form either in Blackboard, Spark or using our Word template that can be converted into a PDF and embedded in Blackboard (see elearning website for details and support). In this way you can also add some discussion points or activities. In a similar way to the way I did this in my online course ‘Creating online resources for blended learning’ [this material doesn’t need to be in Spark it might just be in Blackboard].

If you wanted to use video in other ways you might want to try and make it less passive by giving your students something to do while they are watching.

You might find that the online content you create, both written and video, is something that you re-use for many years to come. If you create videos or other materials make sure that this have a long shelf life. Be clever about the time you have available. Short videos and written content with activities and discussions can be easier to keep up to date and reuse than longer video lectures and might actually be more engaging for students.

Further comments that might be useful and an example:

There are lots of reasons why long videos are not a great idea. For the students this is a very passive way to learn (just think about your own experience of watching long video presentations – particularly those where only one person is talking, rather than a discussion or a talk with an audience, also most of us don’t read a script that well either and doing this without a script can take forever) so breaking these up and having some of the material in different forms can work well for the student. For staff, recording hours of videos is very time consuming, however you do it, and will take lots of takes and/or editing. We also need to produce subtitles for each video in order form them to be accessible. The University video portal does this but very badly – it can’t cope with accents and actually didn’t recognise simple terms like ‘Blackboard’ when I tested it. I am doing this by uploading to YouTube and editing my subtitles manually where they are not accurate, but this is going to be a lot of work for lots of long videos.

My suggestion would be to use a variety of different things – some short videos, online activities, handouts, discussion boards, polling etc but with the focus very much on the intended learning outcomes of the session you want to run. So not throwing in the use of online gadgets or gimmicks for the sake of it, but really thinking about what you want to do in that session e.g. I want to get this bit of information across, get the students to reflect on this controversial issue, etc and then just think about the easiest and most effective way of doing this. Long videos, in my experience, are not the easiest and best way here. Remember we might be doing this for the whole year, depending on how things go, and that’s a hell of a lot of recording! Creating these more editable online materials will mean you can also use them for years to come even when we return to campus.

I have started working on a session for induction for the HCEL masters (DL and Campus based) that might be of interest to people. It’s not finished but it might help people to see what they can do without relying on longer videos: https://spark.adobe.com/page/WVLdjmPjisr9F/

This one is in Spark but you can do this without using Spark just posting these things directly into Blackboard if you prefer. I find Spark is probably no more difficult to use than Powerpoint once you have got going and we offer lots of support and training here: https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/humanities/teaching-support/elearning/resources/adobe-spark/

We have editable templates available in Spark and I can even share and editable version of this example if people are interested (Rebecca.Bennett@manchester.ac.uk) but its more about the content than the way it is presented.

People can use the discussion boards in Blackboard as usual or use VoiceThread – again lots of training and support on this: https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/humanities/teaching-support/elearning/resources/voicethread/

Q: How can I ensure engagement from students in an online setting?

Synchronous lectures and seminars can easily become a monologue. Whether live or asynchronously, intersperse your materials with activities and discussion questions so that you make sure that students are active i.e. that they are doing something. But how do you encourage students to interact?

Try and build in questions and prompts in your course materials – either written or video so that students are thinking and reflecting as well as simply taking notes.

Buiding a community – students are more likely to interact with you and their peers if they have got to know each other a bit. Many of your students next semester will not have met each other before so have something at the beginning of the course to let them get to know each other in a non-threatening way. Use ice breakers at the beginning of your course and during your sessions or materials to build confidence. Here are some examples of ice breakers. For instance, use VoiceThread to get them to introduce themselves and say something about what they are looking forward to in the course and something silly and therefore non-threatening like answering a question like ‘If you could have a superpower what would it be?’ – you’d be surprised how much you can find out about people from their answer to this question. VoiceThread allows students to ‘see’ each other too if they choose to record a video rather than type.

Another idea using Zoom: Nice zoom ice-breaker plus engagement checker by dee-ann.johnson@manchester.ac.uk

• Ask participants to edit their Zoom displayed names to something (e.g. which town are you in)
• Repeat with another question (e.g. what is your research area/ programme/favourite food)
• Ask everyone to set their names to what they want to be called in today's session.

Good because:-

• You get individualised text answers from each participant without looking away from the screen.
• Participants can all read each other's replies.
• Can identify who can/cant' work zoom (or isn't paying attention)..
• Invites people to set their engagement level and perhaps be more informal.

Discussion boards in Blackboard and VoiceThread can be a good way of getting asynchronous interaction but make sure that you are clear about what students are asked to do and that you encourage participation by responding with praise and further questions where appropriate. Set expectations for students regarding when you expect them to participate, as well as when you are going to look at the discussion board – that way there is no pressure to be checking discussion boards every day. Tools like VoiceThread will send you an email notification when comments have been received and weekly notifications about all the comments you have received that week.

You might want to have some of your seminar work as asynchronous. You could ask students to consider a question, case or text and discuss this on a discussion board or in pairs before the seminar to encourage confidence and engagement. In synchronous sessions you could ask students to prepare answers in groups before the session and post them in the chat or use break out rooms in Zoom to work together to answer questions set. Also for synchronous sessions you might get the students to vote using their raised hand icon on Zoom or similar or by using some kind of polling software.

For some more tips on getting students to engage more on online synchronous discussions/seminars see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-shapes-zoom-karen-costa/?published=t

Q: Can live student discussions be recorded?

The current advice is that recording and sharing video with student participants should be avoided. Apparently legally we would need to have written permission for sharing each video from all students in them and this is going to be practically difficult and raise many other issues - for instance, what can we do if one student objects? Do consult your Teaching and Learning Director for more information and guidance on this issue.

Q: How can I handle a potential large volume of queries from large cohorts?

Discussion boards are a good way to deal with large cohorts but students may still email you. If students email you, you can feed back their question and your answer on the discussion board.

It can be a really good idea to develop a Frequently Asked Questions document (like this one) for your course and add any new questions and answers as they come up. You can then use this year after year and it will help to avoid having to answer lots of individual questions and also sends out a positive message to students that others have also struggled with certain things which can be reassuring.

Q: But aren’t FAQs non-interactive/non-active and isn’t that a problem?

FAQs are static and do not involve interaction but having them will free you up to spend your time reacting and interacting with students. It is this interaction and reaction that students will value so if you can free time to engage with this by providing course materials that cover some of the ‘content’ and FAQs etc. then this can allow you to be focus your time in ways that will help students more.

Q: How to get students who are not engaging to engage?

In face-to-face environment you have ways to encourage students to engage with discussions etc. but how do I do so online when for instance students do not share their cameras and you have no feedback as in face-to-face environment?

In synchronous ‘live’ sessions consider how you may use chat tool, whiteboard or polls to draw student participation. You could use a simple thing of using the ‘raised hand’ function to vote on things. You can use break out rooms in Zoom to allow students to discuss issues in small groups. Be sure you are clear about the instructions you give. Student’s could prepare answers before seminars in pairs or groups and post them on a discussion boards before or after the session.

Think about why some student’s might not feel comfortable participating, why do they prefer to have their camera’s off etc.? Remember times when you didn’t feel comfortable in participating in similar discussions. What might have made the difference for you? Clearly, being supportive when students do contribute and finding ways of allowing students to contribute in less threatening ways than speaking up on Zoom or Collaborate might help to build confidence for these students.

For asynchronous sessions encourage participation by ensuring there are a variety of activities that allow students to participate in their learning. You could use case-based activities or discussions, pose a question, get students to share thoughts to create a word cloud, polling etc. Do make sure that instructions are clear and that the questions you ask are engaging. You will soon see the sorts of things that get a discussion going and the sorts of things that perhaps are less successful. Your presence and engagement in an online discussion, even if it is at an assigned time once a week, will really increase the amount of participation in that discussion particularly if you can be as encouraging as possible.

Q: How do I set up Zoom breakout rooms?

See training video by UoM MBChB Medicine https://youtu.be/JEx35oD8DeY

Q: You have less time for your seminar if you deliver it online – than compared to face to face. How can I cope with this?

Some staff report that less time is available when delivery online especially checking that the audience can hear you see you, potential connectivity issues.

Given this issue it is important to focus on not necessity trying to replicate completely what you usually do on campus. It is worth really focusing in on what are the absolute keys things that you want the students to get out of this seminar. Think about how you can enable students to meet these outcomes in perhaps a slightly different way. Are there activities or materials that the students can access before the session so that the limited time in the session can be used for things that work better in a discussion, for instance?

What may be constraining in the move to online learning is the model of 2h lectures and 1 hr seminars. While you still need a structure and agreed times for participation and interaction you can be more flexible about how this happens and how to use that time that you are interacting with your students (synchronously and asynchronously) in a more creative way. Think about what you are trying get your students to be able to do in a lecture or seminar. Provide information and activities that prepare the students for discussion and interaction.

Q: How should I use the time I spend with students online both synchronously and asynchronously?

In many cases there is already a lot of materials out there in terms of textbooks etc. It can help to think about the online materials you create, like a Spark page, PDF or short video presentation, as something that adds something that can’t be gained from textbooks and other more generic sources. Use your online sessions (synchronous and asynchronous) to give students something that they could otherwise not get in a textbook. Use your experience as a teacher to guide students through other materials, to help them engage with materials by providing activities and questions to focus their reading etc, and to support and consolidate their learning by providing encouragement and perhaps ways that they can test their learning through activities and quizzes.

For the fully distance learning course I teach I use PDFs and Spark pages to get across the information I want them to have, interspersed with activities and focused reading. But, that's only a small amount of the teaching – these materials allow them to get all the information they need at their own pace, that frees me up to spend time with them to interact and do things. You’re probably not going to get all the way to where I am with my fully distance learning course by next semester and no-one would expect you to, but you might think of a certain number of things that you could create: a PDF with lots of information in it and some activities in it, set out in a clear and useful way (we can provide templates for this in Word); some exercises around the things that you know they always stumble on, in terms of either learning skills, or information, or the assessment. These online materials will still be really, really useful things that you may well use for years to come and that allow you to be freed up from all of those PowerPoint lecture information-giving sessions.

The main thing is to really trust your instincts and be a bit creative. You've got a chance now to step back from the way that you've always taught and do something that, once you get going, shouldn’t mean spending too much more time than usual and you might create materials that save you time in years to come. You know your students, you've taught these courses before in most cases, you know the things that they find tricky, so if you can find ways of coming up with something online that would really help them with that then you'll be able to use them again and again.

Q: I struggle delivering a session and managing the chat live session at the same time

Consider, as you may do in a face-to-face environment, to pause for questions. Break at different points to catch up with the chats. You may also consider other forms for students to send comments e.g. creating a hashtag on Twitter for example.

Q: Are there other things that might help this move online e.g. Netiquette.

Consider having ground rules in synchronous teaching e.g. ensure there are no interruptions during meeting. There are suggestions as to what these might be at the end of the ‘Humanities Principles and guidance for blended learning’ document under ‘Netiquette’.

I am looking into what is being prepared as part of the University and School induction activities about preparing students for online teaching. I will report back on this as I get information.

Where can I find 'free-to-use' images and short video clips?

Finding free to use images and video clips: You cannot just use any image that you find (unless you own it, of course). But there are lots of sources of images and short video clips that you can use you your course materials. Do make sure you double check whether these can be used for your purpose before using. See links below:

https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use, https://www.pexels.com, https://pixabay.com, https://unsplash.com, https://academicimages.wordpress.com, https://morguefile.com, https://www.nappy.co/, https://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/, http://www.eltpics.com/eltpics/eltpics/creativecommons.html

For biology/medical images: https://smart.servier.com/, https://biorender.com/

Can I embed a PDF or Word document in Spark?

Yes. If you upload the files (PDF or Word) using the ‘files’ tab on the left hand margin of Blackboard – then in your course area (click upload in the top left corner). You can then get a link to this by clicking on the small down arrow at the side of the item and going for 360 which then lets you copy a permanent URL which you can link to in Spark.

Last thought:

If you do have a good idea or if you're just stumped on how to do something, get in touch and we will try and help - there's usually a way round it, you've just got to think that little bit more differently from the way you normally do.Don't forget all those things that you normally do as a great teacher and try and find a way to support students in a slightly different way.

It is you as a great teacher that the students are going to value more than anything else, more than a flash piece of technical wizardry that you put out there or really fancy videos. It's you as a teacher and your thinking about how you help students that's going to make a difference to how well they do on your course and what their experience is of your course, so making sure you have time to interact, encourage and support students is really key.

Further questions and more information

Do have a look at my online course ‘Creating online resources for blended learning’ and the resources and links at the end of the course.

Do also have a look at the Humanities blended learning website for more information, access to templates and training.

If you would like more information contact Rebecca.Bennett@manchester.ac.uk or elearning@manchester.ac.uk