What do you like and not like about online university classes?

December 2, 2020 10:07 PM

Help me figure out my optimal online teaching strategy... details inside.

So my university, being in Australia, is continuing our offering of online classes, perhaps though most of 2021 even. I totally approve - we’ve technically eradicated COVID here and we are saving the space for distanced versions of classes that have a higher priority for F2F. (I say eradicated, but we’re all just one quarantine breach away from another cluster unless we keep up precautions.)

But that leads to some questions about how I want to teach online now that I can think about it — I taught last semester in the midst of things, managing to switch from in person to live Zoom pretty seamlessly with my postgrad classes, but that was emergency online teaching. I think I could do even better.

One key point is the structure. Last semester, I rolled into a 3 hour live (scheduled) Zoom that was basically the same as I would do with my in person seminars. In the meantime, this semester, there was a bit more consensus about format and that favored 1.5 hours pre-recorded and 1.5 hours as a scheduled live Zoom workshop / tutorial. (I got all my main teaching done last semester.)

So, not my favorite, but I can do this format if need be. But... apparently the feedback from students was that they HATED the recorded format and didn’t like the work getting flipped back onto them. (I also saw this dislike in my informal reviews from last semester, with people who did my colleague’s recorded lectures but then watched mine for exam review... Yes, I am bragging on myself a bit here, but mostly the same material with a different format for comparison.)

TLDR: when teaching adults online, what do you love/like/accept/dislike/hate? I’ve got some ideas after taking an online sake training for fun (here if you’re interested), so that was a great example from the learner’s side that online live can work, but I may have idiosyncratic preferences...

Anyway, thank you in advance!

posted by ec2y to Education (9 answers total)

I'm currently taking online classes for a Masters in Psychology, from a mix of good and bad teachers.

For format, the classes I've liked best have tended to intersperse lecture and discussion. Typically this would be a 45-60 minute lecture, followed by 20-30 minutes of either discussion or an interactive activity, then back to lecture after a quick break. This pacing seems to work pretty well for the 3 hours classes I have taken. A 90 minute prerecorded lecture feels very long to me. Many students do watch the lectures pre-recorded, but those zoom recordings include most of the class discussions so probably feel more lively.

The first thing I don't like is when professors don't understand the timing of Zoom. Many professors for in-person lectures do that thing where they half-ask a rhetorical question and expect someone to give an answer, to make the class feel interactive and keep students awake. I don't really like this in person, and it completely falls apart on Zoom because with the extra delay and no peripheral version no one is really sure if they should answer. This either results in no one answering and the professor looking sad, or one or two people always answering just to keep the flow going. So, if you want class participation from students, be very clear about what you want and how they should do it. I like the hand raise button in Zoom but for smaller classes just speaking up can work too, if the professor gives an obvious prompt.

The second thing I don't like is when professors fight with their slide deck during class. This often seemed to be because they were using premade slides from either a text book or an old in-person version of the class with a different format. When slides are off for in-person classes, professors normally just roll with it and move on, but something about online messes this up. One of my professors would constantly stop to fix the slides if they had issues, and then get lost trying to move around their slide deck nonlinearly as people asked questions. This was very disruptive to the pacing of the class and made it hard to keep track of concepts.
posted by JZig at 10:31 PM on December 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

I’ve been taking online certificate courses in UI/UX, which overall is a group that thinks about how people do things online. Some key points:

- break your video lectures up. Best implementation I have seen was about 15 minute videos with an online 3-question “quiz” at the end of each; super quick questions but helped to keep things on track
- bringing in other voices where possible, like other people’s videos
- TRANSCRIPTS oh please - I thought I was a good auditory learner but it turns out that watching a video is painful and slow when not accompanied by my other senses
- best feedback I saw was: students submit mini-assignments, professor kindly but thoroughly walked through a selection live, including flipping to his own examples. (He used sandwich feedback.)
- collect/give out questions in advance for Zoom and use the chat to say “I’m going to ask you about this” so less time is spent in dead air
posted by warriorqueen at 4:55 AM on December 3, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm taking online classes to get my master's in public health. I have also taught online graduate classes in UX, but not at the school where I'm enrolled, and not during the pandemic. My school, George Washington University, is excellent at online teaching.

Here's what I like as a grad student online:
- F2F meetings are never used for lecture. Which is good, because in my experience, it's the least effective teaching method for adult learning.
- All the lecture is delivered via asynchronous video. Which I appreciate, because the platform used enables me to listen to it at 2x speed, or slow it down for more difficult material. It also allows me to re-listen to difficult material. The asynch material for a typical 3-credit class is about 2.5-4 hours each week if played at normal speed. All asynch material includes optional closed captioning, and also transcripts & slide decks, in case you want to consume it that way instead.
- F2F meetings are reserved for learning methods that reinforce what we read and heard via lectures: Group presentations, structured discussions where each person is required to participate, mock town hall meetings in which we're assigned stakeholder positions, and even, yes, a trivia game. These are all geared to match the variety of learning styles that adults need--from what I understand.
- Syllabi have precise learning objectives so that I know exactly how & what to study the most to prep for exams.

Here's what I dislike as a grad student online:
- One class is nominally structured as a F2F lecture, but the entire meeting time is spent in a breakout room with the same cohort of 5 students throughout the course. I wonder why the professor is even there. All he does is wait for everyone to join, say a couple words of welcome, puts us in the breakout rooms, and stops by each room for less than 5 minutes to answer questions about the assignment--which is a discussion guide in a google doc. As an MD/MPH/PhD it's not a good use of his time. And we don't get the benefit of his expertise or much of an ability to build a relationship.

Here's what I like as a grad teacher online:
- Having an instructional designer on-call to collaborate on planning adult learning activities.
- Liberal use of Zoom's breakout rooms for small discussion groups during a lecture. Gives me a break, and makes them work together on a common problem, reinforcing lecture material.
- The asynchronous use of discussion boards by students. I would give an assignment by posing a question and tell them how they would be graded on their back and forth discussion of the topic.
- If I had to plan missing a live lecture, I had as an option delivering a recorded lecture during the F2F live meeting. I included a pause in the recording for when I wanted them to do a breakout discussion.

Here's what I don't like as a grad teacher online:
- I wish the learning management system I used would anonymize student names on assignments to reduce bias or prejudice of teachers while grading.
- Hard to engage online with shy or quiet students. I required them to keep their cameras on before that was a norm.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 6:41 AM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

I've been taking a master's this year... it has been mixed. There are some great suggestions here already and I won't detail every thought, but a few things have jumped out.

1. Yes, live classes are better than recorded. Take a 5-minute break for any class over 60 minutes; people can ask questions live if they want to stay and keep learning

2. If you're using powerpoint or screensharing, leave a small open space on each slide. Your viewers will minimize the Zoom screen to a small window overtop of the slides. It is awful to be constantly sliding the little window around as each new slide is formatted differently

3. Break out rooms are great for larger classes, it keeps people engaged and if we hadn't used breakout rooms I would never have "met" any of my classmates.

4. One of my classes was Socratic! This was so hard. The professor did a pretty good job, but I think its a lot about your delivery and having some comfort with the weird silence. I don't think this method works online.
posted by dazedandconfused at 7:45 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

i've had online classes at 3 different schools in the last two years, mostly as part of a small cohort doing pairs of 6 week classes to finish a BA, which was hybrid in-person/online until the pandemic. (i posted a question here almost 17 years ago about going back to school...i certainly took me long enough!)

so i've had weekly 4 hour live lectures (-), 3 hours a week of recorded lectures (-) instructors who only answered questions using recorded video (-), discussion posts graded as essays (-/+), and classes that rely totally external videos for that sort of content, such as TED talks and Crash Course videos on youtube. For systems we have used Blackboard, Canvas, and Google Docs.

my thoughts:

- I have no connection with professors who didn't have some type of live/zoom interaction, which I think is unfortunate. I train users in a corporate setting--increased interaction is always going to lead to better results--just keep it short, and allow for breaks.

- Transcripts need to be available for any video--i'm partially deaf. Even autogenerated transcripts from a zoom recording will work.

- A hours long pre-recorded lecture is a slog to get through, even with a transcript and the ability to watch at a faster speed, i'd rather spend that time reading the textbook or watch 20 short, well-produced videos on youtube.

- Set up your class content so due dates show up in the system calendar. Yes, we know that is in the syllabus.

-breakout sessions, they need to be long enough to actually discuss something, and they need a goal/deliverable. The first couple of minutes of our breakout sessions have been humans checking in on each other, since we haven't seen each other in months. I'm in classes with people who have to sit in their car at night with their laptop, kids in trouble, pandemic panic attacks. We are going to interact in that way first.

- I wish all discussion posts could be as good as any thread on MeFi. I am bored to death with stilted discussion posts about what I learned or think, and then politely replying to someone else.

Good luck! I've read a couple of academic papers talking about how colleges in Australia were hit by the pandemic right at the start of the year (southern hemisphere!) and had to pivot into online and hybrid instruction modes really quickly. That is a lot harder than transitioning a class that has already met together in person and has some relationships. It has been a great resource for my capstone project.
posted by th3ph17 at 8:56 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I look forward to better answers, but as a lecturer rather than a student:

My brief attempt at a virtual flipped classroom with undergrads was a total bust. Nobody actually did the work ahead of time. Without teachers in every room to prompt discussion, there wasn't any discussion. Dropping into an entirely silent breakout room several times in each class made it clear my original plan wasn't working. I don't know how to make it work without making easily-gameable artificial requirements.

A live lecture that includes two ~7 minute breakout room discussions for in-class questions every 1.4 hours - essentially think-pair-share, but with stacked questions to avoid the time overhead - seemed to work much better. Along with lots of office hours at weird times. (Scheduling a long block of time and putting up a sign that says, "I'm here, but working on other things, make some noise to get my attention" has been useful.) Reviews aren't in yet, but informal feedback has been good.

I've not taught a grad class except in-person yet. My general assumption is that grad students are selected for self-motivation and have been trained to put up with bad teaching. Doing something really boring and spending the time writing good assignments and interacting with individual students is my current plan. I'm not sure that's the right choice.
posted by eotvos at 9:46 AM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm at the end of a term of teaching energy policy. We were told 1hr f2f, 1hr online live & 1hr office hours, plus recorded video as we liked. The f2f I have done old school lectures but it has been hard to get discussion going as in previous years. The online I started by splitting off small teams and getting them to do short presentations, like say 4 groups of 2 giving a 3 min ppt.
That worked well with my first years and there was very good engagement, I would round out with my slides to cover anything they missed. The office hours has worked way better than when we had to do then last year IRL, the keenos attend, anyone can ask a question about the assignments, content or wider topic. I also set a news story of the week in case things run dry in those sessions and my director of Ed. reports they have had very good feedback. I have done some videos, direct to camera with ppt, no more than 15min, preferably less than 10. Colleagues have done some outdoor films too. Not sure if they find them useful or not, I'm suspicious they don't see them as part of the teaching, which will cause then problems on the exam if true. I do find making them a bit of a thrower as they are out of step as they need to get done early enough to be captioned. Referring forward and back is the issue.

I also used Mural a bit for ice breaking and to give them an anonymous space for feedback.

I've found students are a bit more needy than usual on coursework, they just don't have the inter-group communications they normally would so its harder for them to work it out themselves.

This is all pretty time consuming so go easy on yourself, aim to minimise your work on marking if possible.
posted by biffa at 5:39 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have taken a variety of college classes online (ecology, anatomy, algebra, accounting etc). Exactly none of my classes have ever had a lecture by the teacher and I hate it. Most are either guided by the built in textbook, or link you to youtube videos from a variety of sources. I would love to have at least one instructor lecture per week/unit. A live session would be best to get real time questions answered. I have also taught college classes (all in person) and I have to wonder what the heck my math teacher is doing to get paid. All quizzes, homework, exams are textbook software generated and graded. It does not feel like I really have a teacher.
posted by ChristineSings at 6:50 PM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Great considerations and suggestions everyone! Keep them coming!

The transcripts are an important point that I will have to take care with next semester, so I appreciate the accessibility reminder. (I think you only get transcripts if you record to zoom cloud but I recorded to my local disk in case of connectivity issues, but I think everyone’s home internet has gotten much better with network upgrades.)
posted by ec2y at 11:22 PM on December 4, 2020