Michael Christie

Summer 2021 Resilience – Week 4

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique teaching challenges of this time. Throughout the summer, we will be sending emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

Last week we discussed reshaping your Fall semester. This week, we share resources that can help you utilize Kaltura for your video storage and sharing needs.

Who Moved My Zoom?

Penn State is urging you to do a “Summer Clean Up” of Zoom storage. This announcement reflects a shift in the University’s video storage and delivery policy away from Zoom and towards Kaltura. Recording in Zoom is still recommended.

Accompanying the request to delete unused recordings from Zoom will be other changes coming this Fall which could change workflows related to sharing video content with students.

To ease the transition from Zoom to Kaltura for video storage and delivery we’ve provided an overview of Kaltura and its integration with Canvas below. We will also be conducting a “Who Moved My Zoom?” Smeal Faculty Academy session in the near future to discuss some of the Fall changes and updated best practices in more detail.

What Is Kaltura?

Kaltura is Penn State’s tool for storing, publishing and streaming media. It’s cloud based and works in conjunction with Zoom and Canvas to help incorporate digital content into coursework easily and seamlessly. The Penn State Web site that hosts Kaltura is named Mediaspace – so you may read articles that mention it.

Why Zoom Video Storage is Transitioning to Kaltura

• Zoom storage is expensive. Penn State needs to reduce our costs.
• Zoom videos are already automatically transferred to Kaltura for storage/delivery.
• Providing captions to videos is easier in Kaltura.
• You can structure your Kaltura videos into Playlists for easy access.
• You can easily integrate your videos and Playlists into Canvas.
• You can view robust viewer analytics on Kaltura videos.

How Zoom and Kaltura Work Together

• Video content recorded in Zoom is automatically stored in Kaltura as well.
• While Kaltura does have a tool to record video, it is not an optimal recording solution. We recommend recording videos using Zoom then using Kaltura to publish, store, and deliver video content through its seamless integration with Canvas.

How to Access Kaltura

• You can go to the Kaltura Web Site.
• You can access it directly at the Mediaspace Web Site.
• You can also view your Kaltura videos from Canvas by clicking the “My Media” option on your Canvas Main Navigation.

How to Locate and Organize Your Kaltura Videos

1. Locate Kaltura Videos
   Once you have logged into Kaltura or opened My Media in Canvas, you can search by keywords in Kaltura’s search functionality, or use search Filters to narrow your results.
2. Organize Kaltura Videos
   Videos can be organized into Playlists (video collections in a list viewable by anyone) and Channels (video collections shared with specific users).
3. Access Kaltura Analytics
   Instructors can view robust Kaltura analytics for both stand-alone videos embedded into course content as well as Course Media Galleries. These analytics can provide useful insights using metrics such as Plays, Minutes Viewed, and Completion Rate, to name a few. This data can be used to improve future content offerings, identify content that is under-utilized by students, and provide a means to hold students accountable for watching required content.
4. Share Your Kaltura Videos in Canvas
   Rich integrations between the Canvas and Kaltura platforms streamline delivering video content to students. These integrations eliminate the need to log into multiple systems to find and deliver videos, reduce the chance of errors caused by copying long links or embed code, and provide the assurance that security, access, and analytics are at optimum levels.Videos can be organized within Canvas using the Course Media Gallery option. Each Canvas course contains a “hidden” Course Media Gallery. It must be activated by the instructor or other course editor within Canvas to be used. Using the Course Media Gallery ensures that analytics will capture individual student activity and that video permissions are set to allow students in your course to view video content.You can also embed individual videos into Canvas pages, announcements, quizzes, etc.

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Summer 2021 Readiness – Week 3

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique teaching challenges of this time. Throughout the summer, we will be sending emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

Last week we discussed the Lessons Learned from the pandemic. This week, we share resources that can help you look to the Fall and how you will reshape your courses to meet the demands of students, and the need to keep them engaged. During your teaching in the last year and a half, you may have started using technologies you never used before.

Collaborative Technologies

You may have used collaborative technologies like discussion boards, slides, notes, polls, whiteboards, collaborative documents, Zoom chat features, and videos as a way of engaging students in constructing their understanding of your content. You may be thinking about your Fall courses and wondering how you can take the best of what you did and mix it with your teaching methods used before the pandemic. Students often want to use their technologies in the classroom, anyway, so why not leverage their tech and put it to work?! Consider having students bring their devices and connect to some of these collaborative technologies while engaged in your face-to-face teaching.

Informal Course Communications

Using Zoom chat and discussion boards or other technologies that capture students’ responses has become a new way for students to connect with you and each other. You may have found in some classes that you were challenged to get students to “unmute” and be engaged. We find that at times students are as unlikely to unmute and share ideas in virtual classrooms as in-person students are to raise their hand in a live lecture. However, the chat stream may have been very busy essentially forming something we call the “backchannel.” This channel permitted you to engage in less formal ways. Students may have felt it was less risky to answer a question in the chat interactions. You can continue to capitalize on this channel in the coming year if it aligns with your course and student needs. When used purposefully and with inclusive and respectful communication, backchannels can offer an important communication mode for students to interact with course content, the instructor, and each other.

Breakout Rooms

During the pandemic, if you wanted to facilitate small groups, you may have turned to using breakout rooms for collaboration between students. You may have used breakout rooms to ask students information about their prior knowledge, to have them work on problems or cases, or to wrap up and identify points of interest or confusion. You can continue to use these tools in your face-to-face learning to garner the benefits of the additional tools that came along with them, like whiteboards, screen sharing, and internet searching. In socially distanced, mixed audiences and fully face-to-face classrooms, a student can put on headphones and get to work together on meaningful activities. You might be surprised to find them doing this even outside the classroom if you leave your digital space open to students.

Come to this week’s Smeal Academy webinar to learn more about ways to reshape your courses this fall.

Resources

Glantz, E., Gamrat, C., Lenze, L., & Bardzell, J. (2021, March 16). Improved Student Engagement in Higher Education’s Next Normal. EDUCAUSE Review.

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Summer 2021 – Designing for Students in Multiple Delivery Modes

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique teaching challenges of this time. Throughout the summer, we will be sending emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

This week, we share resources that can help you consider strategies for teaching courses to a mixed mode of students who will be joining your course both in person and online. A number of our students will not be able to return to campus this Fall due to the Pandemic and have indicated their need to participate remotely through the “Raise Your Hand” initiative in Starfish.

The future is flexible!

Flexibility in delivery modes is probably here to stay. According to the 2021 Chloe 6 Report, 83% of public universities expect to see an increase in undergraduate, online enrollment as a part of the long-term impact of the pandemic (NOTE: Study sample size = 361 schools: 26% Public 2 year; 35% Public 4 year; 35% Private 4 year; 21% For Profit). As we think about how this will affect teaching and learning, consider that we are entering a new normal where students are entering our classes with the experience and likely an expectation or need for some flexibility in participation modes and digital access to resources. The new normal is shaped by our experiences over the last 15 months, so remember that all learners (and instructors) will benefit when we continue some of the best practices we’ve adopted during this time.

Build Community

If we are not intentional about building community in our classes (regardless of delivery mode), students are more likely to:

• Earn lower grades,
• Withdraw from your course or dropout from school altogether, and/or
• Have increased feelings of social isolation (Ali & Smith, 2015).

Though some courses have a “no technology” policy, when you have students who will be participating in your course both in person and from a distance, technology can help connect students both in the classroom and online and level the playing field. Here are a couple of strategies you might consider:

• Use a tool like Top Hat for polling for synchronous and asynchronous participants with the same poll.
• Group students with a mix of in-person and remote participants so they can get to know each other,
• Use social icebreakers,
• Consider merging sections in Canvas to connect students using Canvas tools, and
• Extend conversations beyond the classroom by using tools like Canvas, Top Hat, or Packback discussions. This can help foster reflection, synthesis, and community-building.

Structure Your Course for Success

Have you ever had to go for a test at the hospital, been taken through various hallways and rooms and then tried to follow the signs to the exit, hoping you’d find your way out (and felt relieved when you found your way out)? Sometimes, there aren’t enough signs, and you can become anxious that you might be going the wrong way. Sometimes, you need to ask for help because you feel lost. Just as we don’t like feeling lost in a physical space, it’s important to ensure that students can navigate our course spaces with ease as well.

Imagine what it’s like for a student to enter your Canvas space for the first time. Do they know where to begin and is there an adequate road map that’s easy for them to follow so they know where things are and how the course is organized? There is nothing more frustrating than for students to feel like they are on a scavenger hunt when trying to navigate their way through their courses. Here are three things you can do that will help all of your students find their way in your courses:

• Put your syllabus in the syllabus tab. Though this may seem obvious, not everyone does this.
• Organize your content into modules and use Canvas pages to provide the instructions necessary to understand your expectations/requirements, locate and complete all activities and assignments successfully. Please refer to our Smeal Academy Canvas Space if you’d like some ideas about how to structure your course(s). Do not hesitate to contact eLDIG if you would like to talk about your course needs.
• Use Canvas Announcements to reinforce key tasks and information. Students receive notification of announcements on their dashboards, in the Canvas inbox, in your course Announcements tab and/or “Home” page, and via email (if they have set up forwarding notifications). Canvas announcements can’t be lost or easily overlooked as easily as an email.

Resources

• Ali, A., & Smith, D. (2015). Comparing social isolation effects on students attrition in online versus face-to-face courses in computer literacy. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 12, 11-20.
• Columbia CTL (2021). Community building in online and hybrid (hyFlex) courses.
• Garrett, R., Simunich, B., Legon, R., & Fredericksen, E. E. (2021). CHLOE 6: Online Learning Leaders Adapt for a Post-Pandemic World, The Changing Landscape of Online Education, 2021.

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Summer 2021 Lessons Learned from the Pandemic

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique teaching challenges of this time. Throughout the summer, we will be sending emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

This week, we share resources that can help you reflect on the lessons we have learned from teaching through a pandemic.

As pandemic-related rules and restrictions continue to ease in our communities and campuses, we find ourselves needing to make decisions about how to move forward and prepare for the next semester in our classrooms. While we may anticipate the return of some beloved rituals and routines from our “pre-pandemic” practice, it is important to also reflect on all that we have learned over the past year, and how some of those practices may continue to be implemented to invigorate and enliven our return to on-campus teaching! The following are a few examples, as well as links to resources that may support your reflection.

Keep communicating!

Never has the importance of effective communication been more apparent than over the past year. Students will always appreciate clear communication plans and defined expectations around course participation delivered via Canvas. That will never change.

Not only that, but we have all shared in healthy collaboration around teaching and learning across the college, the University, and beyond. That sharing has made us all better educators. Let’s keep the conversations going!

Bring technology back into the classroom with you!

Yes, you can (and should) bring technology back into the classroom with you! Maybe now you manage Zoom breakout rooms like a pro or set up Google Jam boards with the best of them. Leverage that technology expertise to allow for greater flexibility in your classroom! The more ways in which students and instructors can participate in the classroom, contribute to discussions, and share their ideas, the more learning improves.

Focus on what matters most

Many of us found this year that we had to be very intentional about what to include in our classes due to time constraints. Continue to focus on what matters most. That is good guidance for teaching — and life!

Speaking of what matters most…

Our patience and compassion muscles have been majorly tested and strengthened through our pandemic experiences. We may be going back into the classroom and workplace, but we now have much more appreciation for the challenges we all face. Let’s continue to hold that in mind.

Resources

If you would like to read more reflections from educators preparing to return to the classroom, you may want to check out one of these articles. Also, join us in July for a Smeal Academy Session focused on what our teaching faculty plan to continue into the next semester.

Darby, F. (2021, May 5). 7 Dos & Don’ts for Post-Pandemic Teaching with Technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Glantz, E., Gamrat, C., Lenze, L., & Bardzell, J. (2021, March 16). Improved Student Engagement in Higher Education’s Next Normal. EDUCAUSE Review.

Gooblar, D. (2021, March 24). Our Slimmed-Down Pandemic Pedagogy. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Resources for Remote Teaching – Spring 2021 Newsletter 2

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique challenges in teaching during this time. Throughout the semester, we will be sending emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

This week, we share our list of top 5 best practices for mixed audiences. It can be challenging to have some students in the classroom and some students remote. But there are some suggestions that can help.

1. Communicate clearly. Use Canvas tools to clearly and concisely communicate your expectations for student participation. Make sure that students know what you expect them to do.
2. Make class time active! Consider posting lecture videos online and making your synchronous class time an active learning experience by incorporating strategies such as small group discussions, case-based learning, or brainstorming. This will be an opportunity to have students apply their learning from your lectures and readings during class time
3. Technology is your friend. Tools like Top Hat, G Suite, and Office 365 can be your friend when creating interactive opportunities in your classes.
4. Class time can be group time. Consider dedicating some of your synchronous class time for groups of students to work on projects face-to-face and/or in Zoom break-out rooms. Students can collaborate using digital tools such as Microsoft Teams or Google that provide workspace, communication, and file sharing.
5. Check learning! Develop a participation survey/quiz for students to complete after each synchronous session. Ask students to either expand on content discussed or ask questions they would like covered in future sessions.

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