eLearning in emergencies

IVLE

Get organised with the IVLE Lesson Plan

CIT recommends that faculty staff set up lesson plans in IVLE for all modules. This will allow students to get a week-by-week (or topic-by-topic) view of the module, as well as the relevant links to resources for that week (or topic). Here’s a quick Lesson Plan tutorial.

eLearning

Virtual Classroom through Web Conferencing

The simplest ways to conduct tutorial sessions online is via IVLE chat rooms (live) or IVLE discussion forums (asynchronous). However, you may want a more dynamic and interactive environment to conduct your lessons. This is where web conferencing is useful.

Faculty Voice

Google Docs – An Apt App

Assoc. Prof. Eleanor Wong, Director of the Legal Skills Programme at the NUS Law School shares how she used Google Docs to aid in improving her students’ writing.

News

Screen Recording simplified

Camtasia Relay is now available to all lecturers for your screen recording needs. Screen recording, also known as screencasting, allows you to record your computer desktop as well as your audio narration. Anything which can be displayed on your computer screen can be recorded.

eLearning was constantly mentioned in the press as the spectre of the H1N1 pandemic flu outbreak threatened to shut down schools. Thankfully, this flu strain is not yet highly fatal. Nevertheless, the question bears asking: What happens if everyone has to be quarantined at home today?

No doubt, this is a drastic scenario to consider. However, it is plausible. A fast-spreading flu might necessitate decisive action such as the implementation of home quarantine for schools or affected areas on very short notice.

Individual preparedness

First things first: there is no eLearning without a few requisite pieces of hardware. Students and teaching staff will require the following at home:

• Vital
  • an internet connection, preferably broadband
  • a computer (desktop or laptop)
• Recommended
  • an audio headset with microphone
  • a webcam

At tertiary level, most students and staff probably have at least basic home access to the internet and a computer. These become a necessity if eLearning is to take place.

An audio headset with microphone is an optional item, especially as many laptops have in-built speakers and microphones. However, audio quality is much better with a headset with microphone. This is essential if teaching staff want to create materials requiring audio input.

Similarly, webcams are also integrated with many laptops and some computer screens. This is probably more important for lecturers who might want to transmit or record video, although students may also engage in web conferences with other students using video.

Choosing an eLearning solution

Teaching staff’s choice of eLearning alternatives comes down to three factors:

• degree of comfort with technology
• class size
• amount of time available for preparation

Your confidence with technology dictates the mix of eLearning tools that you will use. CIT’s H1N1 Flu Pandemic Preparedness website details the various levels of technology use. These are suggestions which can be mixed-and-matched, depending on your needs. Also, there are varying levels of use of each individual software title.

Large classes also lend themselves to certain eLearning options. Lectures for large groups involving limited interactivity can be conducted by pre-recorded webcasts, Breeze presentations or screencasts. Smaller classes might be better served by IVLE chat rooms or virtual classrooms.

Time may be very limited for eLearning preparation as pandemic situations can develop rapidly. It is good practice to maintain a certain level of online presence for every module in IVLE at all times as well as use technology in aid of teaching where possible so that both students and faculty staff are familiar with these tools. Ultimately, there may only be time to implement the simplest options available to tide yourselves over the quarantine period.

Possible issues – General

As quarantine might not only affect NUS, staff and students might find themselves sharing computers at home as people are told not to come to work or school. Households with just one or two computers might have rotate access as family members use the computer(s) to carry on with work or studies. To prevent this situation from occurring, it is good if you can set up a wireless network at home as well as purchase a personal laptop.

Some lecturers and tutors may want live/synchronous eLearning solutions. However, live sessions such as text chat and virtual classrooms can be hindered by real life problems such as unavailability due to shared access to the home computer or even students arriving late for lessons. Things may also go awry for reasons not in our control. Thus, asynchronous (any time) options may be a better choice.

From a macro perspective, Singapore has not faced an actual situation where network capacity is pushed to its limits to deal with thousands of Singaporeans working primarily from home. While this may be theoretically possible, whether things may grind to a halt when it comes to the real thing is anyone’s guess. On an individual level, any failure or unavailability of a link in the technology chain – computer, peripherals, internet connection – can result in non-optimal conditions for eLearning.

Expectations during emergency eLearning

Expectations have to be moderated when eLearning is instituted without lead time for preparation. These attempts are bound to be not as effective as face-to-face lessons. The reality is that there are learning curves to overcome with software and adaptations to make with reduced visual or audio cues.

Lessons from eLearning Week

CIT conducted a small-scale eLearning week with Communications and New Media Programme in 2008 to learn more about our ability to cope with such situations. The following are recommendations which stemmed from the lessons learnt:

1. Be prepared – Have the necessary hardware at home. Also, early preparation is a must, especially if you are not well acquainted with the technologies involved.
2. Keep things simple – A simple solution can be deployed fast and there will be fewer human and technology pitfalls. Experiment with technology when all is well to prepare for pandemic situations.
3. Moderate expectations – Even if you are an expert in your eLearning method of choice, your students need time to get up to speed, unless they are only required to view/participate passively.

You can also view the staff feedback from the previous eLearning Week.

Mask, liquid soap and paper tissue photo by Julien Min GONG
Reproduced under a Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0 Generic License

CIT recommends that faculty staff set up lesson plans in IVLE for all modules. This will allow students to get a week-by-week (or topic-by-topic) view of the module, as well as the relevant links to resources for that week (or topic). Here’s a quick Lesson Plan tutorial.

This tutorial assumes that you have preloaded your modules with the respective tools. E.g. files in the workbin and multimedia, forums, chat rooms and other tools.

1. Click Lesson Plan on the Workspace sidebar or under Tools on the horizontal menu bar.

2. Click Create Lesson Plan.

3. Choose the Parent Module, fill in a Lesson Plan Title and choose a Lesson Plan Type. In this tutorial we will Create a Lesson Plan following NUS Academic Calendar. Click Create. (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

4. You will see the Preferences for the Lesson Plan. Click Lesson Schedule on the sidebar. You will see the an empty week-by-week view of the module. (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

5. Add Week 1’s Weekly Summary by clicking . Fill in the weekly summary in the text box. You can add Instructional Resources if you wish. (These are displayed automatically if you have uploaded files to the Workbin or Multimedia, or if you have created other tools for that module. In this tutorial, we will add Instructional Resources to an Event in step 7.) Click Apply. (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

6. You will see the Weekly Summary for Week 1. (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

7. Click Add Event. Fill in the Event Title, Event Type (lecture in this example), Event Start Date (and time), Event End Time, Event Location and Event Description (in the text box). Add the appropriate Instructional Resources (in this example, week 1’s lecture notes and an audio clip).

You can arrange for event Recurrence to help fill out all the teaching weeks. These can be edited week-by-week later.

Click Apply. (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

8. You can see the lecture summary and the respective instructional resources. You can Add Event again to add a tutorial or other events (e.g. assignment/project deadlines). (Click screenshot below for a larger view.)

9. After you have finished Week 1, you can click Week 2 and repeat steps 1 to 8 for that week. Continue for all the weeks. If you chose for events to recur in step 7, you only need to edit the descriptions and check the appropriate instructional resources for each week.

10. Finally, don’t forget to Publish the Lesson Plan by clicking Yes for the respective weeks and events.

Your Lesson Plan will appear on the Workspace. If you wish, you can unpublish the tools that are duplicated by the Lesson Plan on the Workspace. They can now be accessed via the Lesson Plan.

The simplest ways to conduct tutorial sessions online is via IVLE chat rooms (live) or IVLE discussion forums (asynchronous). However, you may want a more dynamic and interactive environment to conduct your lessons. This is where web conferencing is useful.

The Virtual Classroom (not to be confused with a 3D virtual world such as Second Life), powered by Centra on both Windows and Mac, allows you to conduct a class online, much like you would in real life.

You can:

• share presentations, documents or applications on screen with your students
• communicate with students via voice and text
• use a whiteboard for annotation and collaboration
• display video of yourself
• record sessions for playback later

View a demo of the capabilities of the Virtual Classroom
(Skip intro, then click Centra Live. The Participant and Leader interfaces are most relevant.)

Practical tips for using the Virtual Classroom

Brief the students. First time users may require some guidance before using the Virtual Classroom. You can provide them with this quick reference guide. Also, you can quickly run through some basic functions they will use during the session. For example, you might want to show them how to virtually raise their hands to ask a question, and to indicate if they have stepped away from the computer if they have done so.

Real-life factors. Latecomers will still exist. If the participants are at home, they might get distracted by going-ons in the house. It helps to be aware of these pitfalls, so that you do not get too flustered if it happens.

Moderate expectations. The level of interaction in the Virtual Classroom cannot match a face-to-face experience. Experienced users may be able to come close, but the occasional user may perceive a lag in communication as participants must take turns to be involved. There is also the issue of diminished visual and non-verbal cues as the teacher cannot see the students. Therefore the instructor has to be pro-active in soliciting feedback regarding their understanding of a topic. (Simple quizzes or polls can help to achieve this.)

Start using the Virtual Classroom

The first question to ask is whether the Virtual Classroom is the ideal tool for your needs. The Virtual Classroom is suited to:

• tutorial-size classes that require two-way interaction; or
• users who have small group discussions within a tutorial; and
• users who are comfortable with online technology

If your class fits the bill, and you are interested in using the Virtual Classroom, please contact MR Jum’main MOHD WAHID to set up your Virtual Classroom.

Assoc. Prof. Eleanor Wong, Director of the Legal Skills Programme at the NUS Law School shares how she used Google Docs to aid in improving her students’ writing.

Introduction

Helping students to improve their written communication can be difficult.

Writing tends to be a solitary activity. It is hard to incorporate writing into an in-class activity and still keep the class active and engaging. If the teacher introduces some additional element in order to “spice things up”, it can distort the experience of writing and, perhaps, end up targeting unintended learning objectives. For example, if students are asked to write on the whiteboard in front of the whole class, this may introduce unintended stress into the process.

Thus, traditional methods for improving writing typically involve setting an assignment, letting the student write it at home and commenting on the work at some other time. Such methods permit the teacher to effectively comment on matters such as style and grammar. But a teacher is unable to investigate the student’s thinking process in real-time. This time lag makes it harder for the teacher to help the student improve his/her ability to match thought to expression (which is often a tougher challenge than issues of grammar/style).

In AY 2008-2009, teaching Legal Analysis Writing & Research to a Law 1 class, I discovered how Google Docs can help.

Google Docs

In a corner of the sprawling Google empire is a little gem of an application that permits real-time collaboration on documents, Google Docs at http://docs.google.com/.

You will have to set up an account, which is free. Once within the document collaboration programme (click screenshot below), you can invite others to collaborate on your documents by selecting “share”.

Class Methodology

I used the Google Docs collaboration function to conduct a class on how to effectively craft and organize a written argument. I wanted students to think about 2 main things: (i) the order in which points should be presented to maximize persuasiveness, and (ii) how to use words carefully so as to make a strong impact without over-stating the position on behalf of the client.

Before the class began, I uploaded a “base document” which was couched in objective terms (i.e., it treated the subject matter neutrally without attempting to argue for one side or the other). Students were told to bring their laptops to class. At the start of the class, I divided the tutorial group into teams of 3 students each; I duplicated the “base document” for each team and named each copy according to the teams. Each team was then told to work on its “base document” and to edit it so that it would be a persuasive argument. Students were also told to supplement the “base document” with any additional points they wished.

Observations

Initially, the class seemed quiet compared to the usual (somewhat vocal) tutorial sessions. However, I observed that each team would discuss their thoughts a little and then individual members would attempt to rewrite the “base document” to reflect their discussion. More interestingly, I was able to monitor all the changes in real-time on my own computer (which was linked to a projector). Every few minutes, I would pick one team’s document, bring it up on the projector screen, use it to conduct a short discussion, and then leave the students to make further changes.

At the end of the session, all the teams had significantly changed their base documents to form the start of a persuasive argument.

I observed the following benefits of this method:

1. Because I could see the drafting as it took place, I was able to stop the students at crucial decision points. We could discuss why they had taken those decisions and how to improve their writing to achieve their intentions.
2. Students from all the teams would participate in these discussions and then I would observe them all attempting to incorporate the learning into the document. This allowed me to determine whether or not the students had understood the discussions and, if necessary, I could stop the writing again and have another discussion.
3. Some students crafted multiple versions of the same paragraph (using Cut and Paste), keeping all versions in the document. This allowed us to discuss their relative strengths and weaknesses, something that is virtually impossible to simulate in an in-class white-board situation.
4. Students in the same team would sometimes change each other sentences “on the fly”, thus simulating the writing equivalent of interjections and critique.
5. Although the session was quiet in auditory terms, the students and I were able to observe energy, engagement and “movement” when we watched the changes occurring in documents (whether on their laptop screens or on the projector). Strangely, the class felt quite intense despite the predominant silence (except for the click-click of computer keys).

Conclusion

Most poor writing is due either to poor thinking or to poor transfer of thoughts to words. Google Docs helped shine some light into the solitary, occasionally murky, process of writing and can help teachers get closer to the heart of poor writing. Once there, the rest is up to the teacher.

Assoc. Prof. Eleanor Wong
Director, Legal Skills Programme
NUS Law School

Camtasia Relay is now available to all lecturers for your screen recording needs. Screen recording, also known as screencasting, allows you to record your computer desktop as well as your audio narration. Anything which can be displayed on your computer screen can be recorded.

For example, you might display your lecture notes in PowerPoint, Acrobat or Keynote while recording accompanying audio to create a standalone lecture video that will be uploaded to IVLE. You have the flexibility of switching to a web browser to point out a relevant website or bringing up a programme to demonstrate how to use it.

Screen Recording 1, 2, 3

The process of screen recording is simple. After registering for a Camtasia Relay account, you can log in and download the recorder software. There are Windows and Mac versions, as well as a portable version that can be installed on a thumbdrive, for use on any Windows or Mac computer.

Once the recorder software is installed, you can start creating your screen recording. The recorder software will start recording everything that goes on on your computer screen together with your audio narration.

When you are done, stop the recording. You can preview the recording and trim the ends of the recording. If you are happy with what you have produced, you can submit it to the server. There, it will be encoded and compressed, then published to IVLE (if it is a lecture screen recording).

Quick Tips

• Create keyboard shortcuts so that you don’t need to display the Camtasia Relay software on screen whenever you need to pause or when you are going to stop.
• Keyboard shortcuts to switch between different software are also useful, if you are showing multiple sources: Alt+Tab in Windows, Cmd+Tab in Mac.
• Leave ample space on your hard disk as the screen recording records to your hard disk first.
• Keep recordings to below 30 minutes per segment, so that the video is easier to upload.

How is Camtasia Relay different from Breeze?

Readers who are familiar with CIT service might notice that screen recording is somewhat similar to DIY Courseware using Breeze. The table below highlights the differences between the two.