Following on from my last post on the web becoming a digital landfill site, here's more reason for concern. The limited release of Sora, a new AI generated text-to-video application, shows how fast this technology is developing and the terrifying potential it offers for disinformation Watch the video above where Marques Brownlee presents and discusses the demo videos released by OpenAI Sora and compares them to the hilariously inept AI-generated videos of just one year ago. He points out that there are still tell-tale signs of AI in the videos but in many cases you need an experienced eye to spot them. Most people, however, will not even suspect that the films are not real and if we consider the astounding improvements that AI-generated applications have made in the last year we can expect near perfection in the coming year or so.
AI-generated content is of course completely based on existing, copyrighted content but at the same time makes copyright legislation irrelevant. Why use human models in the fashion industry when you can generate totally realistic digital versions? Why pay people or companies for photos, music, graphic design, advertising copy or whatever when you can generate it yourself in seconds for free? I already see lots of ridiculous AI images in my social media feeds and at the moment they're extremely obvious but what happens when I can't tell the difference anymore? No amount of digital literacy is going to help unless you're prepared to analyze the content in depth. We are fast approaching a time when you simply can't believe what you see, hear or read. We could regulate the use of AI and have strict guidelines but that would mean governments taking responsibility, standing up to big business and cooperating globally. Can you seriously believe such a development given the nature of today's governments and power structures? I certainly can't but I would love to be proved wrong.
There is a tendency to record webinars and online classes as a matter of course. A recording can increase the impact of a webinar and a recorded class session allows absent students to catch up and gives those who attended the chance to revise what was discussed. At the same time vast amounts of storage space are taken up with recordings that are seldom, if ever, viewed and the mountain just keeps growing. Often the red recording light discourages people from participating, cameras and microphones are switched off and the chat contributions are minimal. It's time to regularly ask ourselves whether we really need to record this session, who we might exclude if we record and what more inclusive practices we can replace it with.
A timely article by Per Axbom looks at the sensitive issue of permission to record, Consent for recording meetings. Too often we simply ask at the beginning of a meeting if it's ok to record and if no one objects within a few seconds then we press the button.
Asking if it is okay to record when everyone is already in the meeting does not provide basis for a well-founded consent. Requiring someone to raise their voice in a situation with a clear risk of peer pressure is not a context that gives power to those who need to opt out.
Always strive to request recording consent before a meeting takes place. This ensures that people who want to object do not risk ending up vulnerable in a situation where their position is judged or questioned by others.
There are many people who do not want their names, faces or voices recorded for public viewing and few are brave enough to say so. Of course they can simply turn off their microphones and cameras and not contribute to the chat but then you are excluding them from the communication that is or should be the focus of online meetings. The default should probably be not to record. If we do record there must be a clear reason for doing so and this must be communicated before the session. Axbom also suggests making it clear where the recording will be posted and how long it will be available.
One option is to only record the input from speakers (with permission of course) and edit out any comments from participants. If recording is in progress, the speaker and moderator should avoid referring to the names of people who have asked a question in the chat or the Q&A. Just say that we have an interesting question here in the chat and keep the name out of the discussion. It's maybe impersonal and I admit to using names in such situations but not revealing names may encourage more participants to speak or chat if that red button is on.
In online classes many teachers use collaborative note-taking as an alternative to recording. Nominate a couple of students to take notes for each session and let them do so on a shared document that the whole class has access to. At the end of the lesson the class can check the notes and add comments or links that may have been missed. In this way everyone is involved in the recording process and the skills of note-taking and summarising will be essential in their future careers.
Axbom concludes with the reason for not pressing the record button so often in future:
Consider and think through needs, power structures, vulnerability and inclusion before you risk normalizing something that can lead to people feeling uncomfortable, unwilling to participate or unwilling to contribute.
Conferences are reverting to their traditional on-site format but the effects of the pandemic can still be felt in that it has become difficult to attract speakers to attend in person. Many speakers prefer to contribute online for both environmental and time-saving reasons. Travelling half way round the world to speak for 45 minutes, with the resultant massive carbon footprint, is simply not sustainable. The appearance can take several days out of a speaker's schedule and although the experience of seeing new places and making new contacts is very enjoyable, it disrupts regular work activities. During the pandemic we all realised that keynote presentations work very well online and now that the conferences are back on site many of the speakers are not. But what happens to an on-site conference when the speakers are all on screen and no one is actually on stage? Why pay high fees to watch a video meeting?Conference organisers are now trying to put pressure on speakers to attend in person according to an article in Times Higher Education, Academic conferences scale back hybrid ambitions. Having the keynote speakers on-site means that they also attend other sessions and chat with participants during the breaks, meals and mingles. This adds value to the conference and justifies the fee.
The moves follow concerns that the travel-free option for speakers is leading to empty podiums and an “us and them” culture between remote panellists and assembled delegates. Some organisers have also flagged the logistical complexity of enabling online speakers and the vastly inflated cost of running hybrid events, which often require numerous video and audio production staff, producers and technical support.
Many conferences are adopting a hybrid format, or at least a semblance of one, but the default is still on-site. Online participants can only attend some of the sessions and few have attempted hybrid mingling or social events. Of course there are technical difficulties with hybrid. Just as in teaching you need an advanced technical set-up to make hybrid work reasonably well and in my experience the online participants tend to take a back seat in the sessions. Online keynotes work best when everyone else is online but when you mix online and on-site there are always risks of bandwidth issues, sound and video quality or other technical hitches.
I generally present live on Zoom or Teams but when the conference venue is far away I prefer to record my session and let them play the recording in the conference hall. Then I am available live for questions afterwards. This minimises the risk of bandwidth issues and they get a high quality video to watch. At the same time I never get any real impression of the audience and no sense of place at all. The question time is often rather awkward since I can't hear or even see the people asking the questions and need to rely on a moderator. In addition, few participants are willing to ask a question in a hall at the best of times and even more so when the speaker isn't even in the room.
I have written on this theme several times here and firmly believe that large on-site international conferences are not sustainable and need to be phased out. It is absurd that while our colleagues in environmental science are sounding the alarm bells about the climate crisis, higher education is still responsible for high levels of carbon emissions due to our reliance on international air travel. On-site conferences are very rewarding but only for those who can afford them. Online conferences are not the same as on-site ones and we should stop comparing the two. They are still evolving and need time to develop new forms of interaction rather than trying to replicate traditional practice. They can be more inclusive and diverse and offer opportunities for longer collaborative processes.
But it's not a matter of a free choice between two alternatives. One offers us hope for the future, the other doesn't.
With so many of our social media tools controlled by multi-billionaires and thriving on our personal data, it's no surprise to find that more and more people are opting out. In the wake of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter there has been a significant rise in subscriptions to Mastodon, the non-profit open source alternative. This week, the European Union's European Data Protection Supervisor announced the pilot testing of two new platforms, EU Voice and EU Video, that are open source and meet the data privacy conditions set down by GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the Schrems II ruling (EDPS launches pilot phase of two social media platforms). They are based on existing non-commercial social platforms, PeerTubeand Mastodon, and are now being pilot tested by a number of EU agencies. Wojciech Wiewiórowski, EDPS, makes the case for this initiative:
With the pilot launch of EU Voice and EU Video, we aim to offer alternative social media platforms that prioritise individuals and their rights to privacy and data protection. In concrete terms this means, for example, that EU Voice and EU Video do not rely on transfers of personal data to countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area; there are no advertisements on the platforms; and there is no profiling of individuals that may use the platforms. These measures, amongst others, give individuals the choice on and control over how their personal data is used.
I hope this initiative succeeds. I love social media but find the present set-up increasingly distasteful and long for the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of networking without commercial exploitation.
In addition there is now a growing number of open source social platforms that are interconnected under the banner of Fediverse. This means that if you belong to one platform you can interact with members of other platforms seamlessly even if you are not a member of the other platforms. Similar to using e-mail or good old telephony; you can contact anyone thanks to common standards. The video below explains the concept quite nicely.
Here's a film about PeerTube, offering a safe alternative to YouTube and Vimeo for posting video material.
Of course these communities are dwarfed by the commercial giants but maybe, just maybe, the tide could be turning as more people realise that you can be social without accepting tracking, profiling and exploitation. The idea of interconnected communities is so obvious that I wonder how we have been duped into accepting the commercial walled gardens as normal. I wish I could say that I have moved my digital activities over to Fediverse,but the fact is that I have so many valuable contacts, groups and communities that are only on Facebook, Twitter etc and don't want to lose them. My contacts on Mastodon number only a handful compared to Twitter. I also wonder if people really want security and protection and that the attraction of the commercial platforms is that absolutely everything and everyone is there, from the sublime to the ridiculous and beyond. Don't underestimate the thrill and fascination generated by all the insane photos and film clips available on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, even the vitriolic comments that follow. Maybe it's the crazy stuff that keeps us scrolling. Will we be equally fascinated by a nicely organised and clean version, no matter how secure and respectful it may be?
Of course I welcome an alternative to the insanity and surveillance but although it may only become a niche phenomenon, it's a vital safe haven for those of us who need to find a safer and more respectful part of the internet to live in. I don't see the giants being felled any time soon by the power of open source, but's what's important is showing that there are other ways of organising how we communicate on the internet and that big tech is not the only solution.
Educational institutions all over the world are busy redesigning their classrooms and buying lots of hardware to facilitate hybrid teaching. The pandemic has revealed a need to offer more flexibility in how courses are run, offering students the choice of whether to attend classes on site or online. Many institutions have been doing this for many years but suddenly hybrid has become mainstream and there is a frenzy of ed tech investment. The challenge is to ensure that the online students are not simply passive observers but can participate as fully as their counterparts on site. This inevitably involves more advanced technology in the classroom with multiple screens, microphones and cameras so that everyone can be seen and heard clearly and that slideshows, whiteboards and collaborative tools can be easily shared.
Some excellent examples of hybrid classrooms are described in a detailed post by Zac Woolfitt, The future is bright - the future is hybrid. He describes how four European universities are redesigning their classrooms for a hybrid future: University of Amsterdam, KU Leuven, Imperial College London and Oulu University of Applied Sciences. All are very impressive and I urge you to read the article to get the details. Online students are visible on large screens, cameras automatically focus on the speaker in the classroom and high quality microphones ensure that everyone is heard. Not only have they upgraded their larger lecture theatres to cope with hundreds of students at a time but they have also equipped smaller classrooms and group rooms for hybrid sessions. Some solutions are like sophisticated TV studios and each lesson will require careful planning between teachers and production staff. Others are less complex but still demand that teachers rethink their teaching to adapt to the technical affordances.
However, all of them admit that they have still not found the best solution and that hybrid teaching still presents many challenges. Complex technical solutions demand qualified staff to assist the teacher, or require teachers to be well trained in using the equipment; resulting in an almost impossible juggling act trying to focus on both teaching and on managing the technology.
Finding ways to combine collaboration online and on campus remains a challenge. Those presenting here thought that there is more hybrid collaboration than every before. The solutions provided currently work, but it is expected the demands and context will change in a few years. Some have only been running Hybrid classrooms for less than a year. The feedback from students will provide lots of input. Creating really good hybrid breakout rooms has not yet been achieved yet and requires improvements in the technology. For some students, it is not easy to learn remotely, and they want to be in class, in contact with fellow students.
They are all impressive initiatives that aim at providing all students with a high quality experience no matter how they choose to participate. However, I wonder if we are asking the right questions here. These solutions are expensive and unrealistic for many institutions, especially in less developed countries. I also wonder if we place too much importance on synchronous events. No matter how much technology you have in the classroom, any gathering of more than 30 students means that the majority of them will not say a word during the session and that interaction will be limited. Large lecture theatres, no matter how much technology you buy, will always favour lecturing with the teacher in focus. Of course there is value in gathering all students in a synchronous event from time to time. It reinforces a sense of community and common purpose. But I would like to see a greater emphasis on group work, investigating, analysing and solving problems, and this is done in a combination of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration rather than in large class meetings. Maybe the hybrid classroom does not need to be so sophisticated. Shorter focused hybrid sessions to set up the task and then let the students work together in hybrid groups. This requires lots of flexible group rooms on campus but those require often only a screen, webcam and microphone. Learning to work in virtual teams to solve problems and find solutions are also vital skills to learn for most professions in a world where international travel is likely to become increasingly unfeasible.
Over the last couple of years I have been learning about how we can make webinars and online meetings more accessible for blind and deaf people. This has come through collaboration with a remarkable guy called Oleg Kolpashchikov, who is president of the Russian White Cane organisation. He is totally blind and when we first met at a conference in Kazan in Russia three years ago I was so impressed with how easily he was able to use his iPad, mobile and laptop with the help of all the accessibility tools available today. Since then I have learned how blind people in particular can participate in webinars and online conferences and how we can facilitate their involvement. I admit I have only scratched the surface of this issue but I can share a few insights here.
A central theme of Oleg's work is the concept of extrability. What we so often describe as disability is in fact an extra ability, an extrability. For instance the loss of one sense demands greater use of other senses. Blind people need to develop extremely good memories or their ability to listen effectively. They have a keen awareness of the soundscape around them and this gives them an awareness of space that abled people lack. His organisation works a lot with activities where the abilities of abled and disabled people complement each other and where the development of trust is crucial. In a physical setting this can mean blindfolded seeing people being guided around a town by a blind person or even making food together in a blacked out kitchen. Or even working as a team to sail a yacht where the extrabilities can become very useful (sensitivity to wind direction, sounds etc).
How does this link into online collaboration. It can work very well as long as we make necessary adjustments. Firstly we have to learn to describe ourselves. We usually introduce ourselves by saying our name, what we do and where we live but for blind people you just add a few phrases to describe what you look like - I'm a man in my 60s with short greying hair, glasses, clean shaven and wearing a blue open-necked shirt. For deaf people we need automatic captioning or a sign language interpreter. Blind people can learn from videos as long as they have an audio commentary that describes the visual features of the film as well as the commentary. Here's an example of this that describes the work of Oleg's organisation.
We can also help blind people by making simple adjustments to our PowerPoint presentations in webinars and meetings. These are summarised in an article by Holly Tuke, How to make your PowerPoint presentations more accessible. In short it means using the accessibility templates in PowerPoint and being consistent with the use of headings, sub-headings and normal text. Each headline should be unique and describe the contents clearly. Bullet points should end with a full stop so that text-to-speech apps don't just read out all the points as one sentence. Indeed punctuation is extremely important to avoid misunderstanding. Links should not be written as URL but as the title of the web page and a hyperlink, otherwise the text reader will read the whole URL character by character. It's also important to remember to add alt-text to images in the slideshow - just a short description of what the image shows. If you can post your slides before the session they can listen to them in advance and follow you even better. For those with hearing disabilities the presence of sign language interpreters or automatic captioning make the session accessible. Manual captioning is also an option but requires a skilled typist who can listen and type simultaneously.
We can't realistically make online events 100% accessible for everyone but a few adjustments in our practice can lower the barriers that exist today. Working in mixed breakout groups of sighted and blind people is an excellent lesson that makes us realise the limitations of our "normal" interaction. It can be very confusing at first but with curiosity and a willingness to learn and adapt, the collaboration can work surprisingly well.
The key is shifting our perception from disability to extrability.
After so many months of Zoom meetings (or Teams/Google Meet etc) we are now trying to grapple with the novelty of being back in the office. The trouble is that many of the old routines now seem rather inefficient, especially meetings. Of course it's good to see colleagues again and we have all missed the social interaction around physical meetings but I suspect many people will want very convincing reasons to come to a physical meeting in future. Online meetings are generally more efficient and you don't have all the transition time of going from place to place.
One colleague who helps students with special needs said that her level of service had increased while working from home because she could help more students, no matter where they were, and could schedule meetings more tightly than office appointments. It also levelled the playing field for online students and this is important to remember as we move back to campus. Classes and meetings held in Zoom give all participants the same conditions (all can be seen and heard and have access to the chat) whilst hybrid setups nearly always give an advantage to those who are on-site. If we're going to normalise hybrid teaching all students must feel fully included in the session.
However, video meetings can present a problem to all who work in an open plan office. Conditions are not ideal and to get privacy or sometimes even reliable bandwidth many people prefer to take such meetings from home to minimise the risk of disturbance as in this post in Inside Higher Ed, Zooming From the Office.
I knew something was different when I had to leave work early to get home in time for a Zoom meeting. That happened last week a few times. I had 5:30 Zoom calls several nights in a row, and I live about a half hour from campus. So I left a little early in order to be able to be online in time to keep working into the evening. Until 2020, that paragraph wouldn’t have made any sense. Yet, here we are.
Similarly absurd is commuting to the office to take part in a succession of video meetings. I used to do that most days before the pandemic but now I will think twice.
Another feature of tha past year has been having to experience major life events by Zoom: special birthdays, graduations, new grandchildren, weddings, funerals. Another article in Inside Higher Ed, by Leah Blatt Glasser, Zooming Into Retirement, describes the poignant experience of watching the students in her last lesson before retirement disappear one after the other on her Zoom screen. Same for her farewell to her colleagues. Somehow the closing of video windows and finally being alone on the screen says a lot about today's society.
Retiring on Zoom has been one of the strangest experiences I’ve had in all my years at Mount Holyoke College. The rituals of on-campus toasts, collegial hugs, fond farewells, expressions of mutual gratitude, even love, were all postponed indefinitely. What I had at this critical moment of parting was my computer screen. It was all so unreal that even now, several months after that last class, I find it hard to grasp that I did, in fact, retire.
The pandemic has been an emergency situation and digital media at least kept us together and allowed contact that in former times would not have been possible except by letter. However, we have also learnt that online communication can increase accessibility, equity and flexibility and so when we organise physical events in future we need to consider who is excluded and use digital media to widen access.
In comparisons between online and in-person communication we tend to assume that the in-person meeting is always best and that the online version is a limited substitute. After a year and a half of restrictions and lockdowns there is an understandable desire to get back to normal again and as a result that notion of normal gets idealised. Classroom interaction and in-person meetings are presented in glowing terms whilst online versions are often questioned. However, if you look back honestly you remember how so many in-person meetings and classes were extremely uninspiring and ineffective.
Online and in-person meetings provide different frameworks and affordances, but the success of these meetings is dependent on the planning and communication skills of the teachers/managers and participants. Being there in person is no guarantee of good communication. This is the gist of an excellent article by Elizabeth Stokoe and colleagues, Is communicating in person the “gold standard”? You’re asking the wrong question.
Communicating in person can also be highly unsatisfactory. We have all been in a terrible meeting, poor medical consultation, or a dire first date. Numerous books, articles and courses are dedicated to how to chair, participate in, and lead, an effective in-person meeting. Why? A meeting can ‘stink’ not because technology makes it hard for us to communicate, but because people are not trained in how to lead or participate in one — or are just poor communicators. Being co-present does not equate to or guarantee quality, inclusion, equality, satisfaction, productivity, interaction, engagement, or connection.
One of the most common complaints about online meetings is that we cannot see each other's body language but the article questions whether this is such a crucial factor. The body language argument has become a communication myth that has spread over the years thanks to misinterpretation and wishful thinking. Body language is a factor but not as major as we assume. In most physical meetings we all sit behind desks and can only see each other from the waist up, very similar to the view we get in online meetings. Of course we can make eye contact with each other in a way that is almost impossible in online meetings, but on the other hand online meetings compensate by using chat messages, emojis etc. Hybrid meetings are especially problematic since we are mixing the two modes and the risk of missing essential communication is high. There are differences between the modes but we are very resourceful in making the most of what is available. We have been using voice communication and radio for over a century and still do, despite the complete lack of body language.
It's not about the mode of communication but the skills of those using it. The key takeaway is this:
Good communication depends not on the modality or technology but on the communication skills of the people using it. We noted earlier that being in person is no guarantee of a high-quality interaction. Communication succeeds when everyone knows why they are talking and where there is parity of opportunity to participate.
Another issue is the language used to describe in-person meetings and work. An article by Joshua Kim in Inside Higher Ed, Stop Using the Language of “Normal” for Face-to-Face Academic Work, questions the use of the word normal. What we consider normal work or education does not suit everyone and never has. Many people accepted it because there was no choice, but now that we have seen that many tasks can be performed as well if not better online then there are strong arguments against forcing a return to the office or campus. The rituals of office life need to be questioned and a more flexible approach is needed. Less commuting benefits the environment and the opportunity for more home working can increase productivity and efficiency. Physical presence does not always guarantee focused activity. Normality is in the eye of the beholder.
What needs to change is the language around work.
Let us all try to remember that what feels “normal” to many (especially many leaders) is particularly challenging for some.
Let us not devalue the lived experience of our colleagues who are more productive and happier when working from home.
And in recognition that “normal” means different things for different people, let us strive to listen to what many of our colleagues are telling us about where and how they wish to work.
Instead of going back to normal we need to move forward to something different. The climate, environment and society depends on it.
The past couple of years have seen an explosion in the number of webinars aimed at educators. Many of these are recorded and many recordings get many more views than the original live session. However, watching a recording is a very different experience to participating live. Live webinars feature interactive elements like chat, polls and external tools and those are generally missing from the recordings. What's left is the content minus a lot of the discussion. Here are a few thoughts on what's missing and suggestions on how to make recordings more valuable.Chat.
In many webinars the chat contains valuable comments, links and information that offer added value. It's a space to share ideas and experience and sometimes the chat is more interesting than the speaker. I used to use Adobe Connect and there the chat is included in the recording, raising the value considerably, often including lots of valuable links to related articles and projects. Some people focused on the chat during the live session and watched the recording to hear what the speakers said. However in Zoom the chat is not included in the recording and as a result an important element of the webinar communication is lost. I can understand that including the chat in the recording requires the approval of all participants and that this was not fully respected before. You can, of course, download a text file of the chat but that needs to be edited and converted so that the links become active and unnecessary comments removed. I would like to see the return of the chat window in the recording, maybe with the option to anonymise the names of those commenting.
Context
Participants' anonymity in recordings is important but it can backfire. In Zoom recordings the names of those who appear are hidden and so it's not always clear who is speaking. You see the face and hear the voice but who is it? Another issue is that the speakers refer to comments in the chat that viewers of the recording cannot see or the results of a poll that are invisible in the recording. That's why it's important to read out the comment first before answering it. It's very frustrating to hear comments like "Thanks for that insightful comment Anna" and not tell us what the comment was. Many presenters are unaware that the results of a poll are not shown in the recording so please avoid saying, "as you can see from the poll results ..." Awareness of what is recorded and what it will look like is essential.
Video
It's important to be aware of what is being recorded. Whoever initiates the recording must make sure that they stay in speaker view so that the speaker is in focus. It's easy to forget this and by accident you show the full gallery of participants in the recording with the risk that one of them does something distracting, forgetting that they are in full view. At the same time it can also be effective to switch briefly to gallery view at some point to show viewers of the recording that there were many people present in the session. That requires the consent of the participants of course but it gives a sense of community to the recording, that you are part of an event. Otherwise the recording can be focused on one face for lengthy periods and there is no sense that anyone else was present.
Editing.
Many of us tend to just upload an unedited recording and share the link. Watching a recording means that you often have to press the forward wind button to skip the small talk and transitions. An edited version of maybe 25 minutes with the key points would be the best option and get more attention than a long and 60 minutes, warts and all. Watch a recording and you'll be surprised how much time is spent on pleasantries, introductions and transitions. Important for the flow of the live event but irrelevant in the recording. An edited version should also include captioning. All that takes time of course, something that most teachers lack, but the value of the recording is increased significantly.
Synchronous meetings in Zoom/Teams/Google Meet have become the default teaching method over the past year but fatigue is setting in and many wonder if we really need to meet this way so often. Lecture sessions can be pre-recorded and discussions can often become more reflective in asynchronous forums or other discussion tools where everyone has time to consider their opinion and not simply react spontaneously as in a synchronous meeting. Could the frequency of video meetings be due to the feeling that that is what we are expected to do? Lots of meetings make everyone feel like they are working hard, but could learning take place just as well, if not better, without them?
Some answers to these questions are discussed in an interesting article by Lucy Biederman in Inside Higher Ed, Goodbye, Zoom Fatigue. She teaches several classes very successfully without the use of video meetings and gives the following examples:
An advanced poetry seminar where students work together during the scheduled course times each week, communicating on Google chat as they do, to create a website that features a deep dive into one significant American poem each week. They collaborated to provide background, context, close readings, writing prompts based on the poem and more.
A business and professional writing course taught entirely on Slack, providing students experience with a new-to-them workplace application. Students communicated with me and one another on channels devoted to course topics and through direct messages.
An introductory creative writing course where students maintain individual blogs in which they explore course texts and their own writing processes throughout the semester. A page on the learning management system shares every students' blog address. Students create a community of writers by reading and commenting on each other's blogs.
In these examples the students are very active, learning together and interacting. These methods are also more inclusive in that they do not make high demands on bandwidth, devices or time constraints. The process is visible to all and the teacher is able to offer feedback at all stages. It also mirrors how virtual teamwork is conducted in professional life. This approach may not be valid for all subjects and levels but it raises questions around why we are so dependent on synchronous meetings even when many people feel that they are repetitive and uninspiring.
This does not mean that we should stop having video meetings but that we should always consider if they are essential and whether other methods would be more effective. Video lessons, like classroom time, can sometimes give us a sense of activity without really contributing to learning. We need to match each learning outcome to an appropriate method and space and be ready to challenge comfortable traditions.
CC0 Image created by Catherine Cordasco by @unitednations on Unsplash
Over the past year teachers all over the world have recorded and stored millions of videos, from short instructions to long lectures. Most of them can only be used once but are seldom deleted and as a result many institutions' servers are bursting with terabytes of video content. Storage is not as cheap as many think and as servers fill up we need to think of ways to free up space for more valuable content. Many institutions including my own compress and save seldom used content in archives but as production levels continue to mushroom we need to start asking why we need to produce all this. Why do teachers put so much time and effort into content production?
One obvious solution is sharing such material as OER (open educational resources) and allowing others to reuse and adapt the material. Why record a lecture when there are hundreds of similar lectures already freely available? I'm sure you can be a good teacher without ever recording a lecture of your own and spending time focusing on facilitation, tutorials and feedback. But sadly OER has still not become mainstream despite greater awareness, according to a American recent survey reported by Campus technology, Faculty Awareness of OER Has Increased for 5 Years Straight, Yet Adoption Is Flat.
While OER awareness went up, for the first time in the past decade, adoption of OER as required course materials did not increase. Why? The researchers hypothesized that with last year's pandemic-induced shift from face-to-face to online instruction, faculty time was monopolized by pedagogical concerns. "[Flat OER adoption rates] may have been the result of the considerable amounts of time faculty had to put into converting their courses, leaving them no time to invest in the exploration and evaluation of new materials,"
Teachers feel bound by tradition to deliver content and the students expect the teacher to deliver content and it's very hard to escape from this mindset. Even if we know there is open content available we feel that we are not doing our job if we use other's material. If it's fine to recommend other people's books and articles it should be okay to recommend their recorded lectures.
Suddenly academics became video editors – mostly bad ones – and our students turned to YouTube, because on YouTube you can get a better explanation of the same thing (for free I might add). Universities turned from communities of learning and collaboration into B-grade content providers. This is the death march of higher education. Universities are not content providers. Somewhere along this unplanned journey we lost our way.
The main point of this article is that instead of producing vast volumes of content that already exist the university should focus on creating communities, providing context rather than content. The campus itself creates a sense of belonging with spaces that facilitate meetings, discussions and networking as well as having a strong identity in its architecture and setting. The article quotes Eli Noam: the strength of the future physical university lies less in pure information and more in college as a community.
Today's online spaces lack these advantages and tend to be a collection of closed silos. The lessons of the pandemic must include the need to develop more social, interactive and engaging digital spaces that can complement the campus spaces. The endless production of video content is a distraction from this crucial challenge.
Many of us spend several hours a day in online meetings and the term Zoom fatigue has become a popular topic of discussion. Our extreme dependence on video meeting platforms is of course due to the exceptional times we live in and when we are able to meet face-to-face again the number of online meetings will no doubt decrease, though still much more frequent than before the pandemic. But what is missing in these online sessions? We can certainly see each other, smile, laugh, gesticulate and interact but what makes it all so tiring and rather repetitive?
Eye-gaze at a close distance. We see a gallery of faces, many complete strangers, looking at us all the time. This would never happen in a physical meeting and can be rather disconcerting. Are they really looking at me and what are they thinking? Do I look all right or do they notice that my hair is a bit untidy or there's a pile of junk on the desk behind me?
Cognitive load. We often exaggerate our non-verbal signals to make them clear, like nodding very deliberately or looking straight into the camera. It's impossible to turn and smile at a colleague or exchange a knowing glance when a common issue is mentioned. We also have chat messages and other communication tools to deal with.
All-day mirror. We spend a lot of time looking at ourselves and being very aware of our appearance. This is a distraction and something we never have to deal with in physical meetings. One remedy for this is to cancel the self-view option in the platform.
Reduced mobility. In physical meetings we sometimes stand up or stretch our legs for a few minutes but in online meetings we generally sit still for long periods, gazing at faces or slideshows. We also tend to sit very close to the computer camera and this adds to the strain. Maybe if we sometimes switched to audio-only we could all move around while we discuss and thus take a break from the gallery gaze.
But with Zoom, all people get the front-on views of all other people nonstop. This is similar to being in a crowded subway car while being forced to stare at the person you are standing very close to, instead of looking down or at your phone. On top of this, it is as if everyone in the subway car rotated their bodies such that their faces were oriented toward your eyes. And then, instead of being scattered around your peripheral vision, somehow all those people somehow were crowded into your fovea where stimuli are particularly arousing (Reeves et al., 1999). For many Zoom users, this happens for hours consecutively.
We also need to realise that we all need some recovery time before entering the next meeting. Although you can feel super-efficient by stacking online meetings one after the other, you will be much more efficient if you schedule at least 10 minutes between those meetings to simulate the time you would spend walking from one physical meeting to the next. Get up, go outside for a few minutes and mentally tune in to the next task.
So what's the alternative to the talking heads format? Maybe we need to stop gazing at each other and do things together. A post by David White, Spatial collaboration: how to escape the webcam, introduces the concept of spatial collaboration, where we focus not on our faces on the screen but on interacting in a shared space such as a whiteboard, collaborative documents like Google Drive or a storyboard like Padlet, Mural or Miro. We can all write or draw on these spaces and the focus is more on the activity and collaboration than our faces. One simple but effective method is how to create a discussion with the help of a simple drawing of a table and names around it.
My suggestion was to draw a very simple diagram of a table (just a square) and place each of the participants’ names around it for each group. We then shared this simple ‘map’ into the non-space of the platform and asked the groups to go clockwise around the table. This was an easy way to establish the order the discussion should go in, but I also noticed that there was suddenly a greater sense of togetherness and place. You could imagine who you were sat next to or opposite, and while this didn’t change the functionality of the technology it did change the psychology of it. It didn’t take much to help people imagine themselves into a shared location.
This spatial collaboration does not have to be noisy to be effective. You can have very rewarding silent collaboration (see my earlier post on this), at least for a few minutes, thus providing variation and reducing fatigue.
Of course it's great to see each other, but maybe not as much as we do now.
I have been invited to speak at many online conferences and webinars over the past year and although I always try to adapt my content to the audience, I often feel I'm just playing variations on a theme. I can imagine how it feels for the major speakers in the field and how many invitations they get each week to speak on much the same theme each time. In the past this meant extensive travel to international conferences, but today you can tour the world from the comfort of your own home.
One of the experts in demand just now is Tony Bates and he has announced an innovative approach to keynoting. He has an impressive track record in digital learning and despite "retiring" a few years ago he has maintained an impressive level of production with a very valuable blog, reports, lectures and one of the best books on online education, Teaching in a Digital Age(available as an open access book, practising what he preaches). Being in such demand it becomes hard to say no even if such appearances sometimes demand very uncomfortable working hours. You have to draw the line somewhere, but how to do that without disappointing?
So his innovative solution, described in a post, Five free keynotes on online learning for streaming into virtual conferences, is to record five different keynote speeches and offer them to any conference organisers under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA). They can be accessed from Commonwealth of Learning’s online institutional repository for learning resources and publications, OAsis, and can even be downloaded. This means conferences can include a major speaker as keynote without any live links, though he can make himself available for a personal Q&A session afterwards, either synchronously or if the time is inconvenient, asynchronously.
Could this become more common in the future? Of course there are advantages of appearing live but since the purpose of a keynote is for inspiration it is feasible to use recorded lectures and focus the live sessions on discussion and interaction. An on-site conference has high profile keynote speakers as a major incentive to attend with the attraction of possibly meeting that person in a mingle session later on. In an online conference that advantage is largely lost so maybe we'll see more virtual keynotes that act as catalysts for more active discussion instead.
In almost all synchronous meetings, either on-site or online, there are people who are in some way excluded. Whatever time you choose it will not suit everyone and even if the meeting is recorded the absentees can only be spectators with little or no opportunity to affect the outcome. Often there is no time to let everyone speak or the discussion is dominated by a vocal minority. In online meetings there are always participants with poor internet connections or older devices that don't support the latest versions of the software being used. A further dimension to the exclusivity of synchronous meetings is how well they offer support to participants with special needs. How well can people with hearing or sight impairments follow your webinars or conference sessions and how can we improve the experience?
An article from Drake Music, Accessibility in Video Conferencing and Remote Meetings, gives some good suggestions for making online meetings more accessible. For those with hearing difficulties, automatic subtitling is obviously the best option, but at the moment this is not available in all platforms. Zoom for example, offer the option of adding a third-party app for automatic subtitling or enabling a manual service if you have a colleague who can type very quickly. I suspect this feature will soon become default but the accuracy of speech to text apps will vary greatly depending on language. As ever they work best in English and other major languages. An interesting idea when showing slides is to share the slide preview page instead of the full screen slide. The reason for this is that your slide notes will be very useful for those who have trouble following your speech.
Another option is employing a sign language interpreter. New features in Zoom include the option to spotlight several people in the video view and so you can spotlight both the speaker and the interpreter. Taking this concept a little further how about being able to offer simultaneous interpretation into other languages? This would mean having separate voice channels and allowing participants to listen to an interpreter rather than the speaker. I don't think any platform offers this facility but it would really increase the accessibility and reach of international webinars if they could be available in different languages, as well as in sign language.
For those with sight impairment good audio is essential and that means strictly muting everyone other than the speaker to eliminate background noise. Speakers should also make sure they use a good headset or desktop microphone for best audio quality. Speaking clearly and slightly more slowly gives everyone time to follow you and any visual material must be described. In addition it is a good idea to identify yourself when you want to speak. In this context the webinar becomes more like a traditional telephone conference where the role of the chair is vital. Small breakout groups can be more spontaneous and group notes can be uploaded as audio files to a common work space.
Another approach to greater accessibility is to reduce the importance of the synchronous meeting and learning to meet and collaborate asynchronously. Here the input can be recorded in advance with good subtitling and text manuscript and discussion can be curated in a community that allows text, audio or video comments and a format that is in line with relevant accessibility requirements. Bandwidth requirements are much lower for asynchronous platforms and participants can even submit text responses from a mobile. We may be surprised at the greater response levels compared to a traditional video conference. Maybe we need to ask ourselves when we really need a synchronous meeting and how much we can achieve in other ways.
I will admit that I have not been very aware of these issues until recently and I have a lot to learn. I am keen to learn more.
Videoconferencing has now become an everyday feature in virtually all forms of education and the there has been a rapid development of new platforms and collaborative features over the last few months. Zoom has been in the forefront this year but there are now alternative solutions that offer wider opportunities for educators, some built on Zoom and others with alternative solutions. Like many platforms and tools used in education, Zoom was originally designed for business rather than education. When I first started using it, I found it frustratingly focused on presentations and one-way communication with the chat function added as an afterthought. However, Zoom have been very active this year in adding features requested by its extremely large customer base in education, but many educators still feel that it still isn't fully adapted to an educational setting. Luckily, Zoom offers other companies the opportunity to build new apps that plug into Zoom and that has allowed niche players the chance to build interesting adaptations.
So now there are a few interesting Zoom-based platforms that are more adapted to class teaching or educational conferences as described in an article in Inside Higher Ed, Innovators Seek Zoom University 2.0. Building on Zoom, Class for Zoom, offers a more flexible environment for class teaching featuring more flexible arrangement of the class video streams, easy one-to-one sessions, built-in tests, quizzes and assignments, examinations, attendance and performance monitoring and so on. The platform is still in a beta version and is not yet commercially available but it is a sign of a new wave of more specialised spaces for digital meetings. The features of Class for Zoom can be seen in the following short promotional video.
Another Zoom-based solution that I see great potential in is QiqoChat. This is designed for online conferences and combines Zoom with Google Drive and other tools to support asynchronous conferences featuring working groups that collaborate on drawing up reports, documents and proposals. You can offer plenary sessions where all participants can listen to and discuss input and then divide into groups, each with a different task, who then discuss and collaborate over a period of days or weeks using collaborative documents interspersed with group video meetings. Platforms like this offer new horizons for online conferences, escaping the confines of the physical conference and becoming more asynchronous and inclusive.
An interesting alternative to Zoom is InSpace, offering a new visualisation of online meetings and class interaction. The usual features for screen-sharing and interaction are all there but the interaction is much simpler and more intuitive. Here the participants can move their photo avatars around the screen to talk to each other and you have to stand beside someone to be able to talk to them. The article in Inside Higher Ed interviews one of InSpace's founders, Narine Hall:
One of Hall's biggest frustrations with Zoom was that as an instructor, she couldn’t easily move between breakout discussion groups. With InSpace, Hall can create multiple breakout rooms, which appear as squares on the screen. Move your avatar inside the box, and you can hear the conversation that takes place inside it. Move outside the box, and you can no longer hear the group.
This features enables conference mingling and group discussions in a more intuitive way than in Zoom and the other standard platforms.
On a similar theme there is also Shindig, a platform that has been around for a couple of years now, that enables participants to form spontaneous groups and interact with other participants as you would in a physical setting.
One vital feature of all these platforms is how they deal with accessibility issues such as built-in automatic subtitling. In Europe we now have demands that videos used in educational should have subtitles to help especially those with hearing difficulties. I was recently involved in a meeting in Google Meet and was very impressed by its built-in speech to text function that was almost fault-free for me (at least in English). Hopefully all platforms will soon be able to offer this.
Online meetings are here to stay and the race is on to find the ultimate platform. Each of the platforms I have mentioned here has very useful features and we can hope that there will soon be one that joins all the dots. I haven't even mentioned the use of virtual worlds and virtual reality (see earlier posts on that theme). However, as with all educational technology there will be terms and conditions that apply and educators will have to be careful to check where all the data is stored and what the company plans to do with it.
What do you look at during all those video meetings? Many of us spend a lot of time watching ourselves and becoming very aware of what we look like on the screen. That's a major difference between physical and digital meetings; we become much more self-aware and concerned with our appearance and gestures. We are also unaware of who is watching us Since we can all choose gallery view or speaker view you never know who is watching you, even if you are not actively involved. Many people forget that they are visible and will behave in a less than focused manner. Some check out physically but are still digitally present: an empty chair, camera pointing at the ceiling etc. I imagine most of us have done this at least once. The point is that if your camera is on you should probably assume that someone is looking at you.
Then there are the participants who choose not to switch on their cameras. There are many reasons for this, such as poor connectivity and privacy concerns, but unless you can create a very strong sense of community and trust in a group you cannot expect everyone to want to be visible at all times. However, even if we accept this and understand why some people are wary of being constantly on show, this affects who we interact with in the session and how we value the participants. This is a fascinating topic that is described in a post by Autumn Caines, The Zoom gaze.
She writes about the power dynamics of being visible and not being visible in video meetings. Visible participants can attract attention more easily (waving, physical hand up) and are more obviously engaged; even if they may be doing something else they are looking at their screen and camera. Invisible participants have difficulty attracting attention and have to rely on the chat to make a contribution. This is a problem for those with low bandwidth.
It is wonderful to give students the option of turning their cameras on or not but are there underlying power dynamics (unconscious, implicit, and unintended) of being seen that still create inequities in these environments? Are teachers unconsciously tuned in to faces, expressions, body language in such a way that privileges students who are privileged to have fast bandwidth, nice cameras, and good microphones? My gut tells me yes.
I have written before about the inequalities of hybrid webinars where the teacher has a studio audience as well as online participants. Here the on-site participants have direct contact with the teacher whilst the online group has to make significant efforts to be heard or seen at all. It seems that the division between visible and invisible participants in a completely online setting has a similar imbalance.
It is not just the lack of visibility that can lead to inequalities. Names are also important. A participant with camera on but a cryptic name will be accepted more than the combination of no camera and an anonymous name. After all the fuss about Zoombombing earlier this year people are naturally suspicious of participants with generic or nonsensical names and no video. Anonymity may be vital for vulnerable people but the risk of being taken as a potential spammer and being ejected from the meeting are high.
How can we try to address these inequalities? There is no clear answer to this but one aspect of online meetings that we need to develop is using different media and spaces so that everyone can find a channel for their voice. This means having parallel spaces for collaborative writing (collaborative documents, whiteboard, forum, chat etc) and including group work. It also means extending the discussion asynchronously so that there is a space for those who like to reflect first before they contribute. Maybe we should use the synchronous meeting time for input and inspiration and then allow participants to discuss and collaborate on their own terms, in their own online group discussion or as asynchronous discussions. Then gather everyone together again to examine the results. Focus on a task rather than visible online presence.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how we could recycle webinar recordings and use them for other purposes (Recycling webinars). Not long after that post was published I got an e-mail from a colleague at Karolinska Institute, one of Sweden's leading medical universities, with a film they had made to help teachers think about webinar methodology. The film reuses a webinar I had helped to produce as part of their EdX MOOC, Introduction to urology, in the autumn of 2015. The cooperation was part of a Nordic project on making more effective webinars (see the project site Effective webinars for lots of articles, toolkit and ideas) and the idea of running a webinar as part of a MOOC was one of our most challenging activities.
Karolinska Institute have now used excerpts from the webinar to demonstrate how you can make your webinars more interactive, using different layouts, polls, chat and presenters-only area as well as tips on methodology. The original recording is probably of little interest today but parts of it will now live on in the form of a new product. An excellent example to recycling educational material
When Ronald Reagan ran for president way back in the eighties there were many sceptics who couldn't accept that a movie actor could lead a nation. Whatever you think of his politics there's no doubt that even if his political background was weak his ability to deliver a message effectively and appeal to the voters was undeniable. As an actor he could play the part in a convincing way and even today he is still seen by many as one of the most popular presidents in history. Much greater politicians with far more ability and knowledge failed to communicate with the voters and struggled to convey a credible message.
So if an actor can be president why not let them lecture on university courses? That is exactly what Purdue University are testing in their professional development courses just now according to an article in Campus Technology, When Actors Replace Instructors as On-Camera Talent; replacing faculty experts with professional actors to deliver more polished video lectures. Many teachers are uncomfortable recording the increasingly polished mini lectures that are so popular, especially in mainstream MOOCs, and the reasoning is that an actor can deliver a script in a more polished and convincing manner. They are comfortable on camera and know how to address an audience. Furthermore they don't introduce themselves at all so that they will not been seen as the subject experts, they simply deliver the message that has been prepared and checked by the real experts. But how did the students react?
The feedback was conclusive: Students still preferred the actor. "We didn't say who was who," Maris remarked. "But they could tell right away. They were telling us, 'Go with the actors. We love our instructor, but we love what she does in the course content. Go with the actors because we love to watch them.' We got the feedback we were hoping for without directly soliciting it."
I can imagine that this idea will provoke outraged reactions from faculty around the world and the discussion thread accompanying the article is filling up fast. However if you clear away the smoke and dust of the shocked reactions maybe it's not so crazy after all. Fronting a video explaining some basic concepts is not the true role of the teacher. Some do that sort of thing well but many do not. Teaching is not simply presenting information, it's more about supporting, mentoring, inspiring and challenging students as well as designing and running courses that lead to learning. Actors aren't going to replace teachers but they may offer a solution to tasks that teachers may not wish or need to do. I don't see this as the beginning of a major trend but I don't find the story particularly alarming.
Online education is often accused of being impersonal self-study with predominantly text-based communication that lacks the intimacy of meeting teachers and fellow students face-to-face. The discussion forums of many courses are indeed rather impersonal with many students and teachers opting not to show photos of themselves. The teacher may provide recorded lectures but generally there is very little personal contact in such environments; face-to-face contact is missing and students seldom hear the teacher addressing them directly. As a result it is extremely difficult to foster a sense of community and when interaction is limited and relatively impersonal it is no surprise that many learners simply give up or slowly fade from view. As low bandwidth has become less of an issue in recent years online learning should have been first to reap the benefits of synchronous and asynchronous audio and video communication to provide a more media-rich learning environment and enable more personal contact between students and teachers.
It is surprising therefore that we are only now beginning to exploit the use of audio and video in education. This is highlighted in an article by Steve Kolowich in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Could Video Feedback Replace the Red Pen?It describes how teachers are providing feedback on student assessments by posting short videos instead of commenting in text. The advantages of video feedback are many but above all it makes the teacher-student contact suddenly more personal, offering contact and empathy in a way that text can never convey. The article quotes student reactions to video feedback as overwhelmingly positive, claiming that the communication was real, honest and authentic in comparison with text feedback. The teacher addresses the student directly giving a few minutes of specific feedback and this can make the difference between the student opting out or staying the course. In addition teachers found it quicker and easier to make a video commentary with a mobile and any hesitations or repetition was seen by students as adding to the personal touch of the message.
Instructor feedback seems like a natural fit for video, especially because short videos have become easy for anyone to make and distribute. The Monash instructors, for example, recorded theirs with webcams and iPhones. And yet they found few documented cases of similar experiments in the research literature. Most studies have focused on videos directed at an entire class, they said, rather than ones tailored to individual students.
We should not simply focus on video either. Audio has many advantages and also offers a more personal contact than text. Recording an audio message is simple on any device and audio files can be easily embedded into a Word document or a PowerPoint slide enabling the teacher to give specific feedback on the student's work. Although it's good to see the teacher's face now and again it's often better to hear the voice while looking at the work being commented on. For students with bandwidth limitations audio feedback is not demanding and provides that direct contact between teacher and student that text fails to provide. The British organisation JISC's guide, Using Audio Feedback for Assessment, provides good advice on using audio feedback with students. They have also produced a specific guide to adding audio comments to a Word document.
Some research into the effects of student feedback on their development has brought up themes of staff effort gone to waste and students not digesting feedback, therefore hindering their development (Hartley and Skelton, 2002). As a result numerous case studies have investigated the potential for successful audio feedback to be an improvement on written feedback in the perception of students and assessors.
Audio and video can also transform the discussion forum offering students a choice in how they contribute. It also increases accessibility for students with impaired sight or dyslexia many of whom will feel much more comfortable making an audio comment than writing text. I know several teachers who use the tool VoiceThread to create discussion threads with a combination of video, audio and text communication and this gives a real voice and face to all participants who, on a more traditional online course, would never see of hear each other at all. Basically a variety of media makes a richer learning environment for all. Imaginative use of media for asynchronous communication can help to narrow the distance in online education. Soon the concept of face-to-face will not necessarily mean being in the same room. It can even be applied to asynchronous communication.
Every new device or tool it seems is going to revolutionize education. Smartboards, iPads, Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education, Prezi, Minecraft, Khan Academy, flipped classroom - the list goes on. Somehow that revolution doesn't happen despite the appealing arguments of the enthusiasts. In the past such revolutionary technologies came along every second decade or so but today they turn up several times a year. The hype is wearing a bit thin. Here's a new video by Pierce Cook who argues convincingly against the exaggerated claims made about new technologies in education since the days of radio.
The message here is not that we should dismiss all innovations as gimmicks but we need to look at all methods in terms of how they enhance learning. Cook stresses that learning takes place in the head and is not dependent on any devices or tools. If you have the internal motivation, a supportive community around you and a teacher who can inspire, explain and guide then you can learn, even with extremely limited learning resources. Technology enables social learning in groups that cannot meet face-to-face and can extend and enhance face-to-face meetings but it's the "soft" factors (community, motivation, support, empowerment) that are the crucial elements.
The fact that the promised revolution hasn't happened does not mean that technology has no role to play. It simply means that new technology is not a quick fix and will not result in sweeping revolutionary change. I wrote a while back that the changes in education today are glacial rather than the tsunami of many press reports at the height of the MOOC boom. Education is changing at a relatively slow pace though in places there are significant leaps. Change is rippling through education rather than sweeping forward in a torrent. Sometimes it may seem like one step forward and two steps back but under the glacier the landscape is being reformed. When the glacier moves away we will not recognize the newly revealed environment. Those who have followed the changes and have reacted will adapt to the new conditions whereas those who thought they were on solid ground will struggle to cope.
