As part of the ‘Process week’ for a unit on one of our BA courses, I was asked to lead a couple of workshops on sound for live performance and an introductory session preceding them.

The introductory session was held on line.

I had already held a few sessions online, so I wasn’t particularly worried.

I had prepared a PowerPoint presentation to share and was ready to go.

However, a few challenges occurred before and during.

First of all the session was on Collaborate. I had taken sessions on Collaborate, but had never held a session alone.

I quickly learnt that you cannot use the PowerPoint “presenter view” feature and that if you embed links to videos to share you can’t use them. Luckily I was prepared about the “presenter view” issue. So I ended up printing my presentation with the notes (I know it’s a shame in ecological terms, but I had to be able to deliver my session!). The links however were a problem I only discovered during my delivery. A student suggested I copied the link in the chat, send them to watch the video and then come back. A good idea, which I took. But at what cost?

Another problem was the internet connection: I suddenly had to leave my office because I was no longer alone and needed a quiet space to deliver my session. So I relocated, but in the new location I could only use WiFi, which crashed mid-way. Luckily I was able to find a hard wired connection near by and only lost a couple of minutes. And luckily all the students were still there, but at what cost?

First of all as a technician I was incredibly embarrassed about not having foreseen all the potential technical issues and not having solved them well in advance. That said, because of my experience, I also felt very calm about them and knew I could solve them quite quickly. So I communicated the problem to the students and proceeded by making sure we would be back on line quickly in terms of the internet issue and navigated well around the video links inconvenience.

But the problem, the cost, is how did this affect the students?

This opens up the wider question about how is on-line learning received by students? What are the challenges the encounter from this distant platform? How can we still get through to students without making eye contact, without reading their body language, without showing our body language?

Since I haven’t (yet) interviewed students to seek their feedback on this matter, perhaps the first step is to consider my experience of teaching through a screen/camera (in the case of Collaborate here). I usually do a lot of preparation by reciting the presentation out loud, sometimes in front of a mirror (old acting training habit) to see how I may read to the outside, to others. This helps me when presenting on line, especially if presenting by sharing slides or images of some kind and therefore not being able to look at myself during the presentation. By preparing in front of the mirror and in any case saying the presentation out loud helps me learn how to trust the effect of the presentation and so, when in front of the computer camera, I can carry on without doubting myself too much. This is key because when delivering a presentation in person the students’ responses are the feedback necessary to know the effect of the presentation, something that is completely missing when lecturing online.

The other option is to limit the lecture aspect as much as possible and to break up the session in as many activities as possible to try and engage students and tease their participation to ensure they are indeed taking in what is being taught. Asking for feedback in the chat is also a good avenue, however it lacks the immediacy that speaking in real time has. Hence splitting students into groups to focus on a particular activity or discussion and asking them to report back may be better as I have experienced lately in our online sessions on this PGCERT Academic Practice course.

All of this changes dramatically the structure of a session compared to how I used to approach them in person. That said it forces me to think a lot more actively about students’ participation, engagement and so it could be just the necessary push that I need to improve in-person sessions too.