Cold Lunch & Hot Topic Follow-up: To Record or Not to Record

To Record or Not to Record? 

That appears to be the question many of us are asking ourselves.  

COVID has accelerated the presence of remote learning technology in the classroom. Much of this technology allows for videoconferencing and video recording. For many of us videoconferencing has become a normal part of the workday as we use Teams and Zoom for classes and/or meetings. This increased use and comfort of working with technology has translated into our teaching and learning, so the question is more of a should we record instead of a can we record. 

Comfort with recording, however, does not require us to implement that technology in the classroom. As you decide what to do for your class, CATL would encourage you to think first about pedagogy and content before considering technology. 

The purest and simplest answer is to be consistent with the modality of your class. The reality, though, is that our students have become accustomed to recordings being available  because we have offered recordings to support learning as part of our response to COVID. As we move away from that emergency approach to teaching, some students may still expect class recordings to be readily available regardless of the modality if they miss a class now for illness, family obligations, or work.  

Perhaps this point has merit, however, there are a few limitations we would suggest you consider before you make your final decision regarding whether to record or not record your classes.  

It may be easy to record a class meeting if you are in one of the classrooms that has all the equipment necessary to support videoconferencing or lecture streaming. Virtual classrooms that are completely run in Teams or Zoom are also easy to record. Before you hit the record button, though, you need to be mindful of your pedagogy. If your classroom is not equipped with cameras and microphones, it may seem like using our GBIT provided laptops, smart phones, or a DE cart could be a solution. But such a solution is limited by technology. We have all been in meetings this semester where the audio and video focused on one person or access to information shared in the meeting was limited. Recording with our laptops, DE carts, or personal phones creates a limited, potentially inequitable learning experience.  

If you rely on active learning, large class discussions, or significant periods of Q&A in your class, passively watching a recording of the video may not yield a comparable learning experience for your students. The CATL Team has curated a few ideas to consider offering students who must miss a class meeting which can be viewed below.  

If you elect to record a specific class meeting to accommodate a student absence, please follow best practices in video sharing, as well as guidelines for FERPA. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching provides a good starting point to consider as you design and deliver Effective Educational Videos. In a recording, you can elect to pause or remove student conversations in class, but remember that if students’ images, names, or voices are captured in the video, you should limit access to the video to that one class. The Department of Education provides guidance a FAQ on Photos and Videos that should help with determining how best to manage FERPA concerns with class recordings.  

Finally, if these conversations have led to thoughts about your class modality and whether you should change it for a future term, please consult with your Chair. They, in consultation with the Associate Deans and Associate Provost, can help you with any policy questions you might have about the UWGB modalities. 

Strategies to Deal with Student Absences and Makeup Work 

  • At the beginning of the semester, create semester-long small groups of students and encourage them to communicate with each other about sharing notes from class. You can create a Canvas Discussion group for students to interact or post photos or links to their class notes.
    • You can also encourage students to coordinate amongst their group and share what strategy for note taking is most effective and ask students to create a plan for sharing class notes when a group member has missed a class.
    • You can use Hypothesis to create a shared note-taking document that is assigned to these small groups (e.g., post your module PowerPoint slides as a group Hypothesis PDF document for possible annotating).
  • If students are working on a group project and one of their members is missing, have one student in the group be a notetaker to fill in their missing member on what the group accomplished during class. The student who missed class and group work time will know of any important decisions that were made and be aware of tasks they need to complete to make up for the missed work time.
    • You could even require students to complete a group charter at the beginning of the group project to establish group member roles, expectations, and communication methods.
  • Have students do research to find scholarly resources, videos, or web resources that supplement the topics and materials covered during the days they missed. Ask for a brief summary of the source or sources. Bonus: you may learn of a few new resources to share with the class.
  • If your class includes reading assignments, ask students to submit a reading journal to share their observations and questions regarding assigned reading content. The reading journal serves both to meet participation for in-person class and an opportunity to engage with students about the content shared and discussion questions they may have asked if in class.
  • If you track attendance or incorporate participation points in your course, consider creating a Canvas Discussion Board where students can respond to prompts as a make-up activity if they miss class.
  • If a student missed class, and you require them to complete an alternative assignment to make up for the in-class absence, use the “Assign to” feature in Canvas to assign just the absent student(s) the make-up activity.
  • Administer your exams and quizzes through Canvas. Doing so can make it easier for students to make them up if they miss an exam day. Canvas quiz features like shuffling answer options or using question banks can also help prevent cheating if you are concerned about a student taking the quiz later than the rest of the class.
  • If you use Power Point slides for lectures or in-class instruction, consider posting them to Canvas. You can share the slides before or after class. A best practice for slides is to have limited text that students fill in with notes, as note-taking is an important part of studying and learning.
    • As a bonus for sharing your slides with the class, some students might like to print off the slides in advance and use the paper copy for taking notes during the lecture, which will also be helpful for studying later.
  • Consider supplementing your face-to-face instruction by regularly sharing brief videos (and/or audio and text resources) in Canvas that review “muddiest points” from class meetings or work through additional example problems. This type of material can be videos you create yourself or videos you have discovered on a public site (YouTube, etc.). Doing this can aid students who missed class and reinforce the learning of students who were present.
    • In general, short, targeted videos tend to be more effective than full lecture recordings and as a bonus you can reuse the material from term to term.
  • Consider using in-class digital activities which can be completed synchronously or asynchronously.
    • For example, a Hypothesis annotation activity or a collective note-taking document can be used during in-class instruction but can also be completed by a student after the fact, allowing them to see their peers' contributions as well.
    • Another example is the use of a PlayPosit video with embedded questions. PlayPosit Broadcast can be used to let students interact with the video synchronously in class, or you can create a lightbulb activity to be completed before or after a course or for an asynchronous course.

What’s in a Name? Tips for Learning & Using Students’ Names in Class

Research tells us that learning and using students’ names in class has benefits for belonging and engagement, both of which are associated with positive educational outcomes. Instructors also know, however, that it can be quite a challenge to learn dozens and, in some cases, even hundreds, of student names in a semester. There is no one easy solution, but here are some different strategies you might consider, along with a healthy dose of reviewing and rehearsing. 

  • Use the classic standby table tent method. Provide card stock or thick paper and bold markers. Pass materials out and ask students to make a nameplate that they use for class each day. You can even collect them and pass them back to students each day for the first couple of weeks if having to return them helps you learn names. 
  • Call the roll and consider doing it on more than the first day. You can even explain to students that you are doing so because you genuinely want to work on learning and correctly pronouncing their names. Ask them to correct mistakes you make. Write phonetic pronunciations next to names on your roster. They may appreciate your efforts at getting to know them even if it takes a few minutes of class time.
  • Ask students to complete a course survey for you and submit it in Canvas as an assignment. Have them provide their preferred name, correct pronouns, and a typed-out phonetic pronunciation of their name as some of the items. Include other questions that help you learn a bit about them, so you can associate that with their name. You can invite them to include a photo if they feel comfortable doing so. 
  • Take pictures in class. Have students write their names in large letters on a full sheet of paper. Ask them to hold it up, and then take photos of groups of students in the classroom. Practice reviewing the images before class each day. You should offer students the choice to opt-out of this exercise because they may have legitimate cultural, safety, or other reasons for not wanting to participate. 
  • Remember that your class rosters in SIS include photos, and you can print rosters to take to class with you that include thumbnails of those images. You can also use the rosters to practice learning names. Do keep in mind, though, that the photos are typically first-year student ID pictures and may not be accurate representations of your students today.  
  • Assign students to visit your office for just a couple of minutes to introduce themselves to you. It may help you learn names, assist them in finding your office and make them more likely to seek you out when they have questions.  
  • Spend time before class speaking individually with students. Try calling them by name or ask them to provide or remind you of their name as a part of the conversation.  
  • Be aware that UW-Green Bay does have a preferred name policy, and students can request to have their preferred name on class rosters, in Canvas, and in email. If you have a student in class who requests you use an entirely different name than is currently on your roster, let them know that there is a mechanism to ask for a name change in many of our systems.   
  • Teaching online? Ask students to share an image and description of their real or fictional dream vacation destination, favorite food, or a favorite book to a discussion board to introduce themselves. Although you may not have to memorize names in asynchronous online classes in the same way you do when teaching face to face, getting to know your students from the start of the semester and encouraging interaction among them is important.
  • Pair students and ask them to interview each other and introduce each other to the rest of the class in a virtual or interactive video class. It can help you and the students learn names and increase comfort with the breakout rooms and cameras before you engage in content-focused conversations.  

 

Session Recording: “Fostering Engagement in High Enrolled Courses” (Monday, Aug. 29, 2:30 p.m.)

Session Description

We know that active learning strategies and high-impact practices make a difference. How can we leverage these practices in a high-enrolled context? Join us to discuss strategies and best practices.

Active Learning

What Is Active Learning?

Research has long supported the effectiveness of active learning strategies. What is active learning? It is an umbrella term used to describe classroom techniques in which students must participate in a tangible way in their own learning, as opposed to passively attending to a lecture or other presented material. Sometimes it involves groups of students working together (e.g., think, pair, share); in other cases they work individually to engage with the material (e.g., minute papers).

Overwhelming Evidence Supports Active Learning in the Classroom

You may be very familiar with the idea of active learning, but perhaps you are less well-acquainted with the research that supports its use. As recently noted by Davidson and Katopodis (2022) in Inside Higher Ed, according to “an often-referenced meta-study of more than 225 separate studies, active learning is more effective for every kind of student, in every discipline, than the traditional lecture model or the question-and-answer guided discussion method” (para. 1). Want to review some of the evidence yourself? Freeman et al. (2014) published the meta-analysis just referenced. More recently, Dewsbury and colleagues (2022) reported that active and inclusive learning techniques improved grades and reduced equity gaps in introductory biology courses, supporting previous findings by Theobold, Hill, Tran, and Freeman (2020) with STEM majors. Finally, Deslauriers et al. (2019) offered this interesting study that tackled resistance to active learning. They discovered that students in their research objectively learned more with active strategies but perceived that they learned less. Thus, instructors may wish to explain why they use these teaching approaches and what evidence tells us about the benefits for students.

Practical Implementation of Active Learning across Classes and Disciplines

As with any teaching approach, gradual implementation at a pace comfortable to the instructor and students is often wise. There are dozens and dozens of active learning strategies you can try, so there are opportunities to use these across disciplines and whether your classes are large or small, introductory level or advanced. Using active learning also does not mean abandoning lecture – in fact, it can be interspersed between shorter stretches of lecture that fit better with our typical attention span (e.g., about 10 minutes). What follows are links to practical resources to get you started.