Migrating to online teaching pt. 1

Royal Holloway aims to deliver as much teaching online as possible by Mar 23.  We have a rich portfolio of established institutional system and third-party services, alongside a mixture of nascent and niche tools.

The guiding principle for the next few weeks of teaching should be supporting our students to meet the learning outcomes of their modules with the most straightforward and appropriate approaches; Consider the affordances of each online teaching tool/service and KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Institutional portfolio:

• Moodle is the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) of choice at Royal Holloway, University of London. Each taught module has a designated area in Moodle where, if used as part of a blended learning approach, students can access content, submit coursework, participate in online activities, and communicate with staff and students.

• RePlay/Panopto is a lecture recording service and has been used successfully for several years by many colleagues across the College. Lecture recording is carried out through an automated system, which in its most common form, as an audio recording to the PowerPoint presentation used in the class (alternative recording possibilities are available to accommodate different class formats).

• TurningPoint Mobile You may have heard about Clickers. These devices allow learners to respond quickly and anonymously to pre-prepared questions incorporated into a PowerPoint presentation.  The results of the polls/tests can be displayed instantly on the screen, to guide teaching and fuel discussions.TurningPoint Mobile extends the power of Clickers by turning learners’ web-enabled smartphones, tablets and laptops into ‘virtual Clickers’. Learners are then able to respond to polls and tests online via an app or the web.

…and from established 3rd party services:

• Padlet (we have an institutional account used in support of MOOCs that can be commandeered for those that wish to use it)
• Twitter.  You can create a class hashtag, e.g., #EN101 and create a course backchannel

…and from nascent online services:

• Zoom (webinar, freeware, unsupported)
• MS Teams (collaboration, institutional, locally supported)

Moving face-to-face activities online

Lecture content

1. RePlay/Panopto can be used to pre-record lectures.   Like all RePlay content, pre-recorded lectures are streamed via Moodle.  This maintains IP rights while providing learners with ease-of-access.
2. RePlay/Panopto can be used to record lectures live, while also recording them for review and revision.
3. Alternatively, PowerPoint slides can be enhanced with voiceover and then uploaded to RePlay.
4. Some colleagues already use screen capture technology, such as Camtasia, and such content should also be uploaded to RePlay.

Lecture interactivity

1. RePlay can be used to record lectures live or pre-record them.  Discussion points and quizzes can be added to the recordings to provide interactivity.
2. TurningPoint polls can be used to test knowleledge, understanding, application and  sysnthesis of material in both real-time and self-paced modes.

Seminars/Workshops/Small group meetings

1. For in-depth discussions, use the rich feaures of Moodle Forums.
2. For off-the-cuff conversations, it is possible to use Moodle Chat
3. We will accelerate the rollout of the MS Teams service.

One-to-one meetings

1. For synchronous conversations, add a Moodle Chat tool to your course. These can be scheduled for specific and recurring times.
2. For aysnchronous converations, Moodle messaging is a sound choice.

Quizzes/Tests

1. Moodle has a powerful quiz tool which currently provides over 400 modules with over 2500 online tests.
2. TurningPoint Mobile can be used to deliver tests to logged-in learners.

Presentations

1. Again, RePlay/Panopto supports the uploading of student presentations .  This is achieved through the use of an Assignment folders which provides protected access to recordings.  This is established practice at Royal Holloway and this blog post descibes the activity.  Students can use any device to record work and can upload either directly to RePlay or via the Panopto App.

This post will be updated throughout the w/c Mar 16 and is part of a short series aimed at those pivoting to online teaching.