Devin Latimer on Remote Teaching
I’ve been teaching first-year Intro Chemistry and second-year Chemistry of Environmental Issues from a distance for over 20 years.
Before courses were offered online, we transmitted lectures by satellite and telephone-line as well as produced VHS tapes and DVD’s of lectures and physically shipped them up north. We have since moved on to video-on-demand and zoom lectures.
Here are a couple of remote teaching approaches that I’ve found to increase student success, retention and feedback:
Keep It Short: The student concentration span in the lecture hall is short enough - watching a video lecture, it’s even shorter. So, lately, I go into the studio for a 75-minute lecture slot and record, say, five or six 10-minute mini-lectures. Working these into a lesson plan with online assignments and other short videos (animations, guest lectures or TED Talks) allows the student to take in the material in digestible chunks and allows the instructor to drill the concept home before moving on.
Online Presentations: In my Environmental Issues class, which has had both classroom and online sections running in tandem, the students have been doing online presentations for almost a decade now. Sixty students/year research, prepare and deliver a presentation just like they would in any live situation, but they record themselves delivering the presentation on a phone or other video recording device. They then upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and post the link along with a description and bibliography as part of an online discussion forum in Nexus. They watch each other’s videos and challenge/debate each other in the discussion forum on the various environmental issues. Since this is quite often the students’ first university presentations, they appreciate the chance to deliver their presentations by themselves (usually in their basement using their computer plugged into a TV as a presentation tool) and can practice the presentation a number of times before deciding which one to upload. Feedback has indicated that, despite initial nervousness about a presentation and debate, this exercise is often the most rewarding in the course. I have a number of other strategies for this assignment I can share.
Devin has recently launched a new free online textbook "Chemistry and the Environment." For more information, please see the News Centre story.