Zoom for E-Tutorial

Having gone through the very useful training for “Zoom for online teaching (Webinar)” by CDTL, by Ms Charina Ong and Ms Kiruthika Ragupathi earlier this week, I decided to start to use this tool to facilitate my tutorials for my module CN2101: Materials and Energy Balances. Since the class is < 50 per session, I decided to go ahead with the face-to-face session, but also make the session available online LIVE to allow students to join remotely and interact with the session.

I would say its quite a successful attempt for a first try. There was not much problems. The tool is quite easy to use. I got students to participate, comment, ask even questions in the session. I asked students what they think of such an arrangement and the feedback were very positive.

Interesting Features:

Students in the class can “see” their friends who logged in online and there was some interaction even between the students in the class and their online classmates.

I used Kahoot to create a Quiz for the students. The screen sharing feature allow the Quiz Game to be accessed by both students online and in class. The interface was smooth using ZOOM. Some of the those who won the “top 3 prize” in the quiz is from the online participants. Students are responding and participating online and offline.

Technical considerations

Computer system: 
I used my personal Surface Pro laptop. The camera is therefore my laptop camera. But i can also plug in my USD webcam. (Problem with Surface Pro is that there is only 1 USB port, since i use it for my presenter, I didn’t do it this time)

Audio System:

Since I am doing a face to face tutorial together with the online streaming, I need to make sure I am still audible when i walk around the classroom for the session. The tool that I used was the Trekz Titanium (Bone conduction) Headset which is hands-free and wire-free (blue

Teaching tools:

I used primarily powerpoint slides to present to the class for the session. I normally do this session with powerpoint and visualizer to work through problems by writing. But since i cannot share visualizer with students using my laptop, I had to prepare all materials as powerpoint slides. Some writing was done using my pen for the Surface Pro.

Proposed Ground Rules:

For short sessions like a tutorial (45-50min), it can be very disrupting when students are late. Both walking into the class or logging into the class late. Therefore it will be really useful to make it very clear to students the importance of being punctual.

I do hope that more experience sharing within the community, we can share how to improve our delivery of online sessions so that students can benefit.

Hope everyone stay SAFE and HEALTHY and continue to learn!

Best Regards,
Cindy

So we have been implementing and providing elearning due to the state of virus alert in the recent weeks.  How does this impact students and teachers?

I believe that eLearning can be as meaningful as physical learning. But the interactive touch with the teachers also need to be present. There are many types of eLearning ranging from video lectures, webcast, online discussion forums and etc. I think that the effectiveness of the eLearning will lean more towards student’s efforts to tune in to these resources and to make use of these resources to facilitate their learning. There should still be channels for interaction with the instructor, be it a forum or online consultation, to reinforce the concepts or for clarification.

Here are some of the E-Learning mode i have provided recently and the tools that I use to create the resources:

WEBCAST

This is mainly provided by our University IT support, where a recording during our lecture session will be made. Quality is good if you use the mic and capture the sound. One feature i like is that LTs like LT6 allow 2 screen projection, So i can keep my powerpoint on one side and also do demo/derivations on the visualiser that will be beamed on the other side. Both sides are captured during the recording simultaneously and so its really nice.

SCREEN RECORDING

For lectures where i have to do self recording during the lecture session, I used screen recording tool Panapto on my laptop. This is a bit tricky in terms of recording the voice. As we walk around during lecture. Also, as i am using a Surface Pro with smart pen. The writing on the laptop screen causes very noisy background sounds and makes the video very difficult to hear. My solution for this was to use my Trekz Titanium bluetooth (bone conduction) earpiece with built-in mic for the voice. Works very well as its hands free and wire free.. And because its bone conduction, it does not hinder my hearing. Downside is because I’m using my laptop, it doesn’t capture my writing on the whiteboard or on the visualizer. Since I’m aware of this, I try to keep my writing on the laptop as much as possible since it has a smart pen. Also, screen capture works very well when doing demo on software like Excel and Matlab.

SELF RECORDED LECTURE

I started this when I missed my lecture due to CNY this year. So we can record in our own office or at home. I used Panapto mainly because it allows the ppt slides to be captured very well and that students can skip to the slides they want to focus on if say they are watching for the 2nd time.  In LumiNUS, we can analyze the statistics and see how many students watch the videos and also how much (%) they watched. Self-recorded lecture tends to be faster paced that webcast as it lacks the interactions with students. In future, i will plan to put in activities like a quiz in intervals during the recording.

SELF RECORDED TUTORIAL

Tutorials are different from lectures, lots of explanations and writing. As such, i used Camtasia which has an easier editing toolbox. Camtasia is also screen capture and I used it in making tutorial videos. For the writing and derivation part, I use a self-made visualizer (Out of recycled materials) together with Whitelines paper to capture my writing and expanation. The screen capture tool allows me to toggle easier through the writing, Excel and MATLAB demonstration.

One alternative that can be used is the ZOOM online webinar. This can be used to facilitate e tutorials and e consultations. Just attended the training from CIT and look forward to testing it with our students by next week.

DISCUSSION FORUM

For Discussion, I used Padlet as the platform to allow students to ask questions and comment on the module. In the beginning of the class, this is not adopted were much by students, but i see students warming up to its use. Perhaps at the beginning, they still not very clear on what to ask etc. Padlet is very easy to use and very convenient for us to keep an overview of the topics of interest or concern to the students.

OTHERS

1. KAHOOT for Quizzes during Flipped classroom sessions.
2. Using Poll on LumiNUS on students’ preference on elearning or F2F sessions during the initial stages of the virus situation
3. Using Survey on LumiNUS to facilitate contact tracing by students.

If there are any queries or suggestions about any of the abovementioned methods/ tools, please feel free to have a chat with me on chellyc@nus.edu.sg

STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY!

Our recent chapter written on invitation on “Process economics and feasibility of subcritical & supercritical fluid processing” for Elsevier is now available online (https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100596-5.22931-4). This chapter looks into aspects of process design and economics of supercritical processes, and highlights the implications for scale-up for supercritical technologies.