I’m an independent e-learning consultant, who is focused primarily on educational technology and learning design. I’m home based, work online, at a distance, from offsite locations and through digital channels that suit my client’s specifications. My absence from an office on campus means that my commute to and from work has been drastically reduced. But the physical world intrudes upon my life in other ways. I juggle family routines and work deadlines with my life partner. A cup of coffee is spilled across my keyboard, damaging the computer chassis, the weeks productivity targets, but not my class conversations. Eskom’s loadshedding delays another deadline. Barking dogs interrupt a video introduction. Take-a-Lot courier deliveries interrupt a meeting. My “virtual classroom” is not virtual or apart from the many messy contingencies of the material world.
There’s a fiction about working in the “virtual office” or learning in the “virtual classroom ” that needs interrogating. While apps and platforms might foreground flexibility and present online work or learning as seamless, emancipatory and enabling. I know, from first hand experience, that these devices work within contextual limitations. Their physicality and my routines impose different constraints. The material and social experiences of “virtual classrooms” are not the same as physical classes. And the digital twin of the meeting or lecture is not just a matter of replication.
This comparison between campus or home office, classroom or platforms also reminds me of the many studies comparing face to face learning with online learning. These studies are known as media comparison studies (Moore, 2021) and they show that there is no significant difference between different media format. Digital teaching blurs my work / life boundaries. Remunerated work is not restricted to home office, on a laptop, phone or tablet screen. Design features (either inherent to the platform or third party services, integrated via an API) introduce a host of affordances (and constraints) that require dynamic decision making, leads to unexpected dilemmas, unwanted complexity and additional stresses. Days are neither dull or boring. Nor do they seem to have a definite end point. Whether its because of under recognized divisions of labour, or a vaguely defined workflow, my days work is shaped by a combination of environmental factors and/or individual choices.
Yes, digitally mediated work and learning still offers me benefits. I can be simultaneously employed and able to contribute towards unremunerated household care. But that’s not necessarily true for everyone. Successful engagements, whether on campus or at home, via the lecture theatre data projector or on Zoom are not only reliant on the delivery vehicle, be it “virtual” or the physical. Rather, it’s the situational awareness and design decisions around the delivery that impact the effectiveness of the teaching.
I’m sharing my story because educational technologists, like myself, often appropriate technologies, repurpose them for academics and their students and then attempt to leverage these technologies for specific educational outcomes. But they then leave it there. And don’t question the effects of technologies on latent fragilities. Or explore how they might use design certain practices to humanize the HEI system. I’m hoping to challenge my ed tech brain, my learning design thinking and unpack a few principles and practices that can support remote teaching when using a particular format, the webinar.
It’s easy to see failure to capitalise on the potential of educational technology as the fault of the teacher (Fawns, T. 2018). Mastering a new modality for running post graduate webinars requires more than a set of technical steps on using the conference platform. I set out to avoid producing a webinar manual or a set of technical instructions about a particular conference platform. Rather, I authored a collection of models, activities, experiences that could (hopefully) allow lecturers to be come involved in an embodied and socially meaningful experience. The approach that I took to develop webinar capabilities was micro-teaching – a scaled-down teacher training technique for learning teaching skills. The micro-teaching procedure is to reduce the teaching situation down to a simpler and more controlled class encounter. The intent is to focus on the assimilation of new teacher skills and the development of class room expertise. Teacher trainees plan a short lesson, teach it to a smaller group of students and then reflect on their teaching and receive feedback afterwards. The lesson is recorded, and shortcomings are identified. The trainee teacher re-plans the lesson, reteaches it and receives feedback. Those who move through a micro- teaching procedure learn about certain skills, practice them, and then transfer it to a real setting.
During the pandemic, I’ve witnessed ingenuity, co-operation and resolve from teachers, academics, students and pupils, who have rapidly shifted their tried and tested face to face teaching and learning practices across to a remote environment . And I’ve also seen how utterly unprepared a HEI is for online education, how intuitions often pay lip service to efforts to address inequalities and how a mindset shift is necessary to support digital education. On the one hand, this is the old story about helping academics to become familiar with the affordances of conferencing platforms and comfortable with its use. On the other hand, this is also my thoughts about the ongoing anxiety, stress and trauma of rapid and unexpected change. With many stumbling about, doing herculean work in complex conditions that felt unpredictable and emergent.
My approach will be to interweave my personal experience as an ed techie with critical scrutiny of my practice. I’ll attempt to act as a reflective practitioner, willing to examine my assumptions and approaches. By doing so, I hope to turn my own tacit experiences and iterative processes into practical knowledge that might contribute towards conversations with other third-space professionals.[GU1] Ultimately, I also remain a pragmatic ed techie, and so while the chapter contains my critiques of pandemic pedagogies, it also catalogues the small manageable possibilities for improving webinar pedagogy. So while recognizing the complex daily challenges facing lecturers and being cogniscent and aware of the inequalities that affect student choices, I would also like to share these resources openly in an attempt to share my practices and perhaps to prompt small changes.
Workshop 1 – Encouraging participation, offering support
The first workshop began with an initial consultation. The main reason for running the workshop was to get all staff on board. The centre needed to agree on a common standard and establish a common baseline for its staff. They anticipated that, by the end of the workshop, the department’s online intentions would be clarified, shared and held in common by all members of staff. I took a “participatory culture” approach to this workshop. I modelled the use of technology that emphahsized the low barriers academic expression and class engagement. I emphasized the need for creating and sharing teaching. I hoped that they would see that their unique voices mattered, and let them create a social connection with one another
Staff: At the workshop, staff members said that they had begun the transition from traditional face-to-face academic development to an online mode of provision.
Students: No students were at the workshop. From conversations, I deduced that most of the post-graduate student audience was remote, employed full-time, located far from campus and/or unable to make use of the on-campus workshop opportunities.
The need: Staff identified a standard set of challenges. Varied technology skills. Poor take- up of online options, limited engagement by students and uneven levels of provision by lecturers.
The programme: We discussed suitable use of digital resources to support and extend the scope of their academic consultation services. The day was spent talking about digital footprints, fluency, the different options for interactions. All with the ultimate intent of fostering shared conversation about common goals
My initial reflection: I left workshop 1, assuming that the department could find a way forward. Lockdowns, at that time, seemed like a short interruption. I assumed that the baselines that we had agreed to would be sufficient to guide the department.
Workshop 2 – Matching need to a format
Six months later that year, well into the pandemic, with campus closures and emergency remote teaching, I received a request to run a follow-up workshop. I returned, on Zoom, and attempted to move the needle forwards. To familiarize myself with progress, I reviewed staff members’ use of conferencing packages for offering post- graduate workshops.
Zoom does not automatically replicate the flow of information exchange. Neither does the “webinar” format necessariliy lead to a “seminar” like discussion experience. It’s easy to see failure to capitalise on the potential of educational technology as the fault of the teacher (Fawns, T. 2018). Mastering a new modality for running post graduate webinars requires more than a set of technical steps on using the conference platform. I set out to avoid producing a webinar manual or a set of technical instructions about a particular conference platform. Rather, I authored a collection of models, activities, experiences that could (hopefully) allow lecturers to be come involved in an embodied and socially meaningful experience. The approach that I took to develop webinar capabilities was micro-teaching – a scaled-down teacher training technique for learning teaching skills. The micro-teaching procedure is to reduce the teaching situation down to a simpler and more controlled class encounter. The intent is to focus on the assimilation of new teacher skills and the development of class room expertise. Teacher trainees plan a short lesson, teach it to a smaller group of students and then reflect on their teaching and receive feedback afterwards. The lesson is recorded, and shortcomings are identified. The trainee teacher re-plans the lesson, reteaches it and receives feedback. Those who move through a micro- teaching procedure learn about certain skills, practice them, and then transfer it to a real setting.
The need: Staff were tired. The enthusiasm that had carried us in the first worshop had disappeared. I now saw staff wanting to protect their time.
The programme: Transferring teaching practices and habits from one context to another is not easy. Many of the embodied skills that we call upon in a classroom are context-specific and cannot easily be decontextualised. The webinar format did not preclude a monologue or a webcast, delivered to a passive and isolated audience. Norr did it minimize technical glitches for those who do not have bandwidth or cannot afford the data. Instead
Staff: ERT had contributed towards a flattened healthcare curve. The prohibition of mass gatherings (including on-campus classes) had reduced the transmission rate. And by being forced online, the centre’s original desire to shift their programme online had received an unexpected boost.
Student: The conference platform had offered a substitute environment for the class to meet. But the structure around which meetings were arranged did not resemble the on-campus equivalent. The conference platform was primarily a vehicle for lecture capture and not as a mechanism for interaction, as is normal in a seminar. Did the synchronous and high bandwidth format choice match the students’ requirements?
Workshop 3
ERT repeated an adoption and appropriation pattern we’d seen before. Just at a grander scale. Zoom was another one of the many enticing interactive media tools that offered prospects for enhancing educational results (Amiel & Reeves 2008). But making it human, safe and secure, or offering protection against harmful actors and practices were not always factored in.
This is a living document. It is an open excerpt from a incomplete chapter that I am writing entitled “Designing the Webinar”.
It will appear in the book https://learningdesignvoices.com/
Leave a comment