Mobile Tech and Pedagogical Innovation

Yesterday, I was afforded the opportunity, as recipient of the Fresno State Provost's Award for Innovation, to provide remarks to my colleagues. A video of my talk is available at:

https://youtu.be/lcgHoIbk5bM

Disclaimer: As is often the case, technical difficulties occurred, so I was not able to play intended videos during my talk, and the "lecture capture" from ExplainEverything (the app I'm using to present these images) did not work this time (unknown issue). So, I'm making use of my rule always to have a backup plan, and posting the video I took, using another tablet computer, of the projection screen.

The slides can be downloaded as a PDF from:
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~jross/pdfs/innovation.pdf

A handout (activity, with my contact information) can be downloaded as a PDF from:
http://tiny.cc/innovation

The structure of my presentation was to explicitly provide the half-hour worth of remarks in the same format and structure that I use in my technology-augmented classes. 

The life cycle of my classes, starting at ten minutes prior to class and moving through the end of class (top); then moving into what students do outside of class (below) and how this provides me with feedback to design the following class.

Thus, I had asked participants, before attending the event, to watch an instructional video (21 minutes) with background information on innovation:
https://youtu.be/VMKGYXxO41I

At the end of the "pre-lecture" video, as I normally do in classes, I asked a question for viewers to consider. In this case, to make a point, I specifically told viewers that I would be having a quiz during my presentation, and that it would ask them to identify the topic I was discussing at the two-minute mark in the video. The goal of this was to be able to demonstrate how the YouTube Audience Retention analytics report can be used by instructors.

Formative Assessment via YouTube Analytics

However, because my internet connection from my laptop was not functioning during my talk, I wasn't able to make that point then. So, I make it here! (Always have a backup plan…)

Audience retention graph of my innovation talk "pre-lecture" video.

Look! There is a small peak just at the two-minute mark, suggesting that the audience was specifically targeting that segment of the video to watch (and perhaps re-watch), just as students will do if they are unclear on a topic in a video and feel the need to re-watch it.

During the event yesterday, as I do in my classes, I also conducted entry and exit surveys of the attendees using Socrative. In class, the entry quiz is based on content of the pre-class readings and/or video.

Results of my Socrative entry survey on Innovation

Of 13 attendees who completed the entry survey, 9 were instructional faculty; 4 were administrators. Almost all indicated that they wanted to hear more about student collaborative work during my talk. Very few had watched the video (based my assessment on the accuracy of responses to the question about what I had been discussing at the two-minute mark in the video), which indicated to me that I should spend a little more time than I might otherwise spend during our in-person time together reviewing the contents of the video the audience was to have watched in advance.

Goal of the Innovation Talk

For each attendee to obtain some immediately applicable information, approach, or insight that would help them address an immediate need.

Main Points of the Innovation Talk

To me, the most important message I delivered was a call to stop using fixed sets of lecture slides that are instructor-generated. As I describe in the movie of my remarks, I like creating lecture slides for two reasons:

1. They provide me with an outline of my talk (reminding me what topics to touch on as I move through the slides). In other words, they're my crutch and make me feel safe.
2. I give the PDF file of the slides to my students in advance, so that they can take notes on them and know what content we'll cover in class (I have loads of positive student comments from previous course evaluations that they very much appreciate having slides in advance as a resource)

However, my recent observations with trying to implement the blended learning (flipped classroom) approach suggest that making lecture slides in advance might be counter-productive to the flipped classroom approach.

Stop Preening your Lecture Slides

First, because of the temptation to throw lots of interesting (and well-produced) photographs, diagrams, charts, and published data (which we're supposed to be doing, right? Helping students learn quantitative analysis and critical thinking, by exposing them to real data?) into slides, I might further reduce the dynamic nature that an engaging class would require. I recall, as an undergraduate, that I preferred it when an instructor drew out a process, from start to finish, rather than just presenting a static figure with all of the details, all at once. Why? Because learning about processes (including how to solve problems, how to think through problems, and how series of events occur) is really difficult to do when a process is represented by a static image! This is true for lectures and for flipped classes. So this paragraph was more like a rant about effective teaching. However, back to the point about how lecture slides are probably bad for flipped classes:

Second, and much more critically, providing students with lecture slides before class might (according to some anecdotal information I've heard) stifle the students' willingness to ask questions! They might see how many slides you've carefully prepared, and then feel like they shouldn't interrupt with questions during class. "Look at all of this material the instructor intends to cover during class," students might be thinking to themselves. This is absolutely diametrically opposed to the atmosphere we should be fostering in the classroom.

What I think is preferable, especially for creating a flipped class from a "traditional" (lecture) class, and what I'm now doing, is:

• In the pre-lecture video, create the structure (work from an outline; make sure you cover all of the important points that need to be made). Incorporate questions during the video that students should try to answer before coming to class. This way, you've pre-loaded some questions to help students answer during class, if they've had problems doing so (which you'll assess in your entry quiz, in which you ask students to provide the answers to the questions asked in the pre-class video)
• Create a stock folder of useful visuals (graphs, charts, diagrams, movies, animations), from material you've used in the past to teach the content. If a student asks a question that would benefit from your displaying one of these visuals, then bring it onto the video projector. Combining all of the visual resources into one folder for each class meeting just makes it more efficient to grab one image when it is needed.

This approach neglects the students that value having lecture slides in advance. This is why lecture capture is critical.

Last on this point, what do my "lecture slides" look like now? Approximately four slides, distributed to students as a PDF in advance of class.

1. The first slide has the class name and date, and the instructions for accessing the Socrative entry quiz.
2. The middle slides will have typed questions (and/or relevant screen shots) from the pre-lecture video and from the entry quiz. We start class by discussing how to answer those two sets of questions.
3. Following those re-statements of the questions, I have blank slides, where I add any necessary drawn responses (or existing graphics, from my folder of visuals) to student questions that follow. On days where I'm providing in-class active learning exercises, I'll also include screen shots of those exercises, to facilitate discussion and annotation of how to complete the exercises.
4. The last slide reminds students what to do to prepare for the following class: usually a new question to think about, what to read, and which video to watch.

Other key points from my Innovation remarks included:

• We need to develop structures to help faculty feel more at ease using technology in the classroom (e.g. opportunities for collaboration and discussion with like-minded colleagues about how to address common classroom problems using technology; time to practice approaches before introducing them to students)
• Failure is OK (and maybe even beneficial). This is why it is important to have a back-up plan. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to innnovate/adopt too many new approaches at once. Take small, purposeful steps that you justify in advance to your students, and leave plenty of time for helping students practice the use of new technologies in low-stakes ways.

Summary of questions and comments from during and after my talk

• How to employ mobile technology in a large-class setting? Best practices are still being developed, but include small-group work, and small-group discussions facilitated by learning assistants (e.g. TAs).

• How to prevent students from being distracted by technology? My opinion is that this is addressed on an instructor-by-instructor basis, because philosophies differ. I'm OK with students being distracted in class, as long as they aren't actively distracting other students around them. If so, then I ask students to put the technology down, or to leave the classroom. Ultimately, students are paying for the opportunity to be in class, and if they don't want to capitalize on that investment, I don't feel that it is my place (or even entirely within my capability) to correct that behavior.

It was also mentioned by an attendee that the flipped classroom approach, augmented with technology (e.g. lecture capture, pre-lecture videos, active learning with technology, formative assessments by clickers/polling) focuses on students learning basic, factual information by themselves, and then spending in-class time practicing using/applying that information. This is the direction Universities must realize is the future of higher education.

As Jose Bowen has remarked, the value of the professoriate is no longer that we are the only source of "advanced" information - it is mostly available on the internet now. Our value now is our ability to help students understand that information, applying it to solving problems, and understanding how the information relates to their lives and to society. In other words, our jobs are helping students learn how to become self-teachers. We don't (can't) do that by lecturing.

Results of my Socrative exit survey - did I succeed?

At the end of my remarks, half of the attendees agreed that they would invite me to attend one of their classes to get advice how to incorporate technology and/or to attend one of my classes to observe how I use mobile technology. Because these surveys were conducted anonymously, I don't know, but suspect, that it was the administrators in attendance who did not agree to both of these questions.

Based on my claim (in this video) that an effective pedagogical mindset is that failing in front of class is a great way to teach, I purposefully asked the attendees of this talk to watch a 21+ minute video in advance - which is way too long for most students in a "flipped classroom" approach. My post-seminar survey revealed that six attendees felt the length was "just right"; only one responded "too short," and four brave souls indicated that this video was "too long." I failed at producing a pre-talk video that was a useful length for almost all "students" (attendees), and this is a great lesson for those who are planning to flip the classroom.

Critically, I found that I did achieve the goal for my presentation. Many attendees responded afterward that they did learn something new. The majority of respondents tended to indicate that:

• they had no idea that YouTube video analytics existed
• analytics could be so useful for formative feedback to instructors
• the ease of lecture capture, especially using the Socrative app, was a new discovery for them

Even more importantly, the depth and variety of responses to the final post-remarks survey question, "What topics are you now interested in learning more about?" ranged greatly. Examples include:

• how to use a YouTube channel
• using Zoom for conducting office hours
• types of in-class activities to perform using mobile devices
• how to get away from using pre-designed, static lecture slides in class

It looks like I have my faculty professional development work (in helping others augment classes with mobile technology) cut out for me!

Digital classroom and lecture improv

My multifaceted love-hate relationship with "lecture slides"

First, as I'm deliberately trying to move away from "lecturing" (i.e. spewing forth factual information at students), this phrase doesn't fit my course.

However, I like the idea of providing students with material they'll interact with during class before they arrive. It seems to be more efficient (and green) to distribute electronic material before class, as opposed to during class in electronic or print format.

On the other hand, I want students to be in class: only because I think they'll benefit from hearing my answers to questions their peers raise (not because I have any notion that their merely being present, especially if they don't want to be present, will improve their education at all). I have long wondered whether students get a false sense of security from knowing that they have all of my "lecture slides," as well as the laundry list of textbook chapters/sections to read, and the screencast videos of all of my lectures. Like they'll magically have enough time and inclination to study it all right before exams…

In reality, in my style, a full set of "lecture slides" mostly comprised images and only some bulleted text lists anyway:

Example slides from one of my classes: mostly images, a little supporting text

So, the only way for a student to access the important (to me) details was to be in class to know what specific concepts and details I emphasized. I test mainly on in-class content, which is content I find to be most valuable for my students to understand. In the last few years, of course, given that I post screencast lectures immediately after class, students are now able to hear what I say, and see the notations I write on/around the images that normally populate my lecture slides. For example, visit my lecture capture video for the above still images of lecture slides to see what audio and annotation accompanied those slides.

so,

Should "lecture slides" only provide the visual media (photographs, data from primary literature) that support classroom activities

- or -

Should slides contain all of the details necessary for a student to learn on her/his own?

I'd love to read your ideas and comments, if you will post them below.

This semester, I'm trying something new, and it is amazingly liberating! It has re-energized me, and I think the students as well. You see: at the start of every semester in recent memory, I've explicitly told the students that the flipped classroom approach means that students need to access the course material in advance of class, and bring questions to discuss during class; that I'll also provide in-class exercises for them to practice applying their knowledge and testing their understanding.

However, in past semesters, when I start class (routinely) by asking, "Does anybody have any questions about class content?", I get no response from my 90 students. Then, I obediently launch into my 50 minutes of prepared material.

Wait! Why do I have prepared material, if the concept of blended learning is that I reserve class time to answer student questions? The comfortable answer is: I'm a professional, and it would be unprofessional of me to show up looking unprepared. The Boy Scout in me, clamoring to take charge, demands that, in case nobody asks a question, I still have fifty minutes worth of quality educational material (yes, including active learning exercises) to share.

The uncomfortable answer is that either I haven't asked students the right questions, pitched at their level of understanding, to stimulate additional conversations and questions (i.e. I've overwhelmed them from the start), or they have obediently downloaded and looked at the lecture slides, and realize that I have content that I intend to cover during our 50 minutes. As this is what they have come to expect from the classroom educational experience, could it be that my advance preparation actually inhibits students from interacting with me in class?

The uncomfortable (but probably accurate) conclusion follows:

By virtue of preparing for class, it could be that I'm stifling my ability to support students by meeting them where they're (educationally) at. Put another (equally uncomfortable) way: am I being academically lazy by preparing and carefully grooming lecture slides for my class? Am I regressing into lecture mode, instead of investing the effort in devising ways to engage the students, so as to motivate them to want to ask questions and/or to feel comfortable asking questions?

I'm overwhelmingly happy to report that I've made a subtle change to my approach this semester, and student question-asking in class seems to be on the rise! Here's what I did:

I stopped preparing lecture slides to post in advance of class. Instead, I create a folder containing the images I would normally use on a topic to cover during one class period. I make a "shell" set of slides (one to display while students are entering the classroom, usually just

• Slide 1
• class meeting title (e.g. "BIOL 102: Mutation")
• perhaps an image or joke related to the content
• a reminder to start taking the daily Socrative entry quiz
• Slide 2
• To-do list to prepare for the next class period (reading assignment, videos to watch, exercises to complete)
• reminder to take the Socrative exit quiz (if any)

I export this as a PDF file (2 pages) and upload it to our course management system for students to download before class.

Then, when class starts, I open that PDF in ExplainEverything (as I've detailed before), and use that app to navigate through the pages, adding drawn annotations as I go using my tablet computer. All of this is recorded, exported as a video, and posted to YouTube after class. Same as always.

The main difference here is that, between Slide 1 and Slide 2, I dynamically add new blank slides (and images from that one folder of images that I think I might need during each class period) as needed. When I say, "as needed," I mean either when a student asks a question that I want to include a drawn image as a response to, or when I want to cover a specific topic that I intend to discuss in class (this latter option is when I use that curated folder of images).

The critical change here: students can't tell in advance, by looking at the slides, what is planned and what is improvised! My bet is that the appearance of my improvisation is showing the class that I'm OK with answering their questions on the fly (although I am careful not to let tangential questions lead us completely off-topic). This, in turn, creates an atmosphere that lets student engagement, sharing questions and opinions, flourish.

Benefits

• I feel less pressure (which was only pressure I was self-applying, anyway) to "finish the content" I had planned for the day, because I no longer feel that students might be expecting me eventually to cover content that they had seen me include in slides that we never quite were able to get to in a single class period. Similarly, I don't feel as much like I've wasted my own time preparing material that I'm never able to get to, when I'm not constantly preening my slides.
• I feel like I'm more flexible in following the (I realize now that I've seen it) often dynamic course of conversation flow that occurs in a truly engaged discussion with students. In the back of my mind, I'm no longer trying to figure out how to guide the conversation back to what I know is the topic of "the next slide." There is no next slide! Class is more dynamic, and it is entirely liberating.

But, there are always potential

Drawbacks

The only one I've imagined so far is that students don't the complete set of images I use to take notes on during class. I do not have the data to support or refute this. Because, as many of you know, I teach DISCOVERe (tablet computer-based instruction) courses at California State University, Fresno, all of my students have mobile devices in their hands during class. I've never inquired about the distribution of how many students take notes on my slides using their devices, vs. takes separate notes (without the slides), vs. don't take notes at all and rely entirely on my lecture capture videos. Regardless, I still feel somewhat secure in knowing that all of the students still have those videos (including all of the images I add during class) that they can access for study purposes.

Conclusion

The next time you spend hours (as I have) massaging those lecture slides, consider whether spending the same time (or less) just throwing all of the image files into a folder, and drawing them out if needed, would be a better use of your time and also be more engaging for your students. Being dynamic is always invigorating for the audience as well as the presenter, especially when the audience is engaged with the presenter (think: improv comedy vs. stand-up routines).

Students will thank you for being prepared for class and for not creating a rigid daily syllabus that could be precluding you, as it did for me, from feeling free to answer questions that are critical for their growth.

Box: efficiency and more!

I have a confession. Box was the first app I ever used, on day one of my faculty professional development in tablet-based instructional approaches. That was in 2014, and the task was to record a video using the Box app. Many of my colleagues use it regularly in their classes, which is why I'm almost embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to discover a use for it: in my graduate course in molecular biology.

In its most simple form, Box (available as an app and via web interface) is a great place to collect and share files. It has a robust system for setting access permissions when inviting others to access files you place in a Box folder you create. This I already knew.

But, then I had an issue to address in class: my travel conflicted with one of our class meetings. Once again, I started exploring how the use of technology could enhance my ability to conduct course meetings remotely. The format of my molecular biology course is that students read a published research manuscript in advance of class, and then we meet to discuss, interpret, and critique the study.  How would I provide students with a rendition of this format if we have one week where we don't meet in person?

There are several possible approaches, including using Zoom (or other videoconferencing platforms), but I settled on the idea of having each student provide a digital presentation of one figure or table from the assigned manuscript. Instead of discussing in person, instead each student would produce a video in which s/he presents and interprets a figure. The grading in my class is based entirely on participation, so it would be relatively easy for me to assess participation in a digital discussion.

Thus, I assigned each student one figure to present. They are allowed either to record a movie or (as a backup approach, in case of technical hurdles) to produce a written description and interpretation of that figure. I discovered, while re-exploring Box, that the Box app combines the ability to record and upload to the class Box folder a movie directly from the tablet - and the workflow is easy. More importantly, for me, Box also incorporates a commenting feature, and a way to post text.

Beyond posting one figure presentation (movie or text) to our Box folder, each student must view (and leave a critical comment or a question) one peer's presentation of each figure in the manuscript. This ensures that each student has engaged in the analysis of the data presented in the manuscript, as we do weekly in person in class. Finally, I also required that each student respond to at least one comment/question left by a peer on their own presentation.

Because students will use the Box Comment tool to leave (and respond to) both text and movie posts, this also makes it easy for me to assess student participation.

This plan kicks off in three days, and I'll post an update after I learn whether my best-laid plans work the way I hope!

My only concern is that, because the use of Box was a rather last-minute decision on my part, I didn't have time built into my course for students to practice using Box beforehand. This underscores an important best practice for any incorporation of a new technology into a class: build (and protect) time in your class to practice workflows before you employ them in any for-stakes assessment activities.