Digital Technologies in my practice (Examples)

As a considerably young academic I can still recall my experience being a student and this helps me in consistently working on my module, e.g. delivery of the relevant content, interaction with students. The latter is of the highest priority in my teaching philosophy and I am seeking for the ways to make the sessions both seminars and lectures be as interactive and engaging as they can get.

COVID Pandemic has impacted and changed the world dramatically. Education as well as other critical areas of economy had to adapt and carry on. The need for educational institutions to embrace the digital technologies and work on digital solutions for students was already highlighted decades ago (Delich, 2005). Also, being digitally literate has become a prerequisite for effective teaching (Kennedy, Latham, Jacinto 2015) and in current circumstances critical. As a lecturer, I have immediately faced the biggest disadvantage of online education – lack of interaction with students and opportunities to facilitate a learning process. The research shows that interaction with students is vital as it increases the students’ motivation to learn considerably (Meguid & Collins, 2017).

Universities try to get rid of unnecessary overloaded lecture notes and slides and focus on delivery of key ideas during the session and encourage participation and discussion. However, in the conditions of a pandemic, these lecture notes and slides have become the only effective means of lecturing due to the fact that there is no real possibilities of interaction via Video Conferencing.

Such an approach will affect the student experience directly as with no interaction the sessions’ value to students will drop considerably. Instead of being present in the session, students may well watch the recorded session any time later. On the other side, no interaction might demotivate the lecturer as well – why to bother getting well prepared if there are no questions or discussion during the session or there are no students at all.

Keeping the above-mentioned points in mind, it is easy to visualize the session where the lecturer is simply delivering the information using power point slides and sharing the screen. On the other end students ‘watch’ the lecture often being distracted by other devices, e.g. staring at their smartphones and chatting online.

The solution that I have found out for my sessions derives from the worst scenario of a session described above. If students are set to be distracted by their devices, why not to make it a useful exercise – get the voice of the student heard during the session and adjust the session as it goes to make the best of it for those students who participate in the class.

I found the platform for interactive presentations called Zeetings. The features it provides are quite interactive for live sessions in front of the big audience. Although the concept initially was not considering the online sessions it perfectly meets the requirements of the online audience as well. Unlike the majority of the online solutions, Zeetings is not only free for educators, but also provides all the functions and there are no limitations.

The concept of the platform is as follows: during the presentation (lecture, seminar) the speaker will be delivering certain content and will have the opportunity to survey the audience along the way: it can be a multiple-choice question, agree or disagree type question, idea gathering using wordclouds etc.

Such input from audience (students) can be vital as it:

• Shows how effective the session is
• Provides the opportunity for the speaker to adjust the presentation
• Students will have more opportunities for reflection

With multiple choice questions and the results the speaker can instantly understand whether the information delivered is also perceived correctly. The lecturer can focus more on what is important to the specific audience using the results of the interactive options during the lecture. Providing questions which generate different views can be a facilitator of a good discussion points and allow the students to express themselves to certain degree and have a proper learning environment.

Just as an example, as one can have a different approach in using the platform based on the needs, I would like to tell about my experience with Zeetings. As this platform is meant to facilitate the lecture, it cannot substitute the need for Video Conferencing required to have contact with students. I tend to believe that Video conferencing is only required to give the chance to students to see the lecturer – it is not the place for lecture slides and notes to appear.

All the important information together with the interactive options are to be gathered in Zeetings and sent to students prior to the session so that students can have it on their device of choice at a good quality (screen sharing usually lags and is limited to device connected). I mix the lecture notes and slides with the interactive options and go on narrating the lecture and using the Video conferencing only for letting students see me – I can use other tools effectively during the session when it is needed, for example draw something on the whiteboard. Below I am providing some screenshots from a short session about Quentin Tarantino prepared for my colleagues to demonstrate the possibilities of Zeetings.

 Collecting ideas as wordcloud at the beginning of the session.

Checking the progress (Student’s view)

Asking for opinion from students to discuss the topic further on

Providing options to choose and shape the lecture

Focusing on students’ needs (Student’s view)

 

Using the interactive options provided by Zeetings both the students and the lecturer will be more encouraged to be active and it will make the lectures lively.

Unfortunately Zeetings is no longer available due to financial issues. Hovewer, there are number of alternatives to choose from if one wants to make teaching more interactive and agile. The one I actually started my exploration of digital technologies in teaching is caled Polleverywhere. Although Zeetings is more superior as a platform, allowing the integrations with presentation and provide instant reports, Polleverywhere had most of the features of Zeetings already back in 2017. 

As I started my lecturing career and had the pleasure (and stress) of lecturing a cohort of 200+ students, I found it quite difficult to get students involved in the lecture: first, there are too many of them, secondly, students were not used to providing inputs during the lectures. So I decided to make certain changes and explored the web for digital solutions. Once I used Polleverywhere and tested the features myself, I decided to take it to my class. It was a great lecture in the end as students did creat a wordcloud and then prioritized the features and once revoted it was evident that the results might differ if there is a limited number of possibilities to choose (priorities change). Below are the snapshots of that lecture (Operations Management, Academic Year 2017-2018). 

References

Abdel Meguid E, Collins M. Students’ perceptions of lecturing approaches: traditional versus interactive teaching. Adv Med Educ Pract. 2017;8:229-241

Kennedy G, Latham G and Jacinto H: Education Skills for 21st Century Teachers: Voices From a Global Online Educators’ Forum, SpringerBriefs in Education, Springer, 2015

Delich, P. Pedagogical and interface modifications: What instructors change after teaching online. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University. 2005

Official website of Zeetings: https://www.zeetings.com/

Official website of Polleverywhere: https://www.polleverywhere.com/ 

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