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2007 is calling and asking @mattyglesias to return its “online lectures are a thing of beauty” bit. https://www.vox.com/21409692/online-colleges-lectures-digital-learning-covid-19
2007 was the year the New York Times profiled then-video lecture star Walter Lewin, MIT physics teacher. Lewin was later accused of harassment, and that star faded, but this was in the heyday of “shiny cool teaching anyone can view.”
And it’s true — there are loads of wonderful videos you can learn from online, and Yglesias is correct that making them is harder than (most) live teaching! But this column gets the larger picture wrong.
Yglesias argues in essence that the pandemic will force colleges to value the creation of enduring high-quality video lectures that can be reused. As someone who heads a 4000-student academic unit, where most students are in (by design) online programs, I think that’s off.
It misunderstands the nature of online teaching in a few different ways. On the highly-produced end — by which I mean the areas of higher education where there’s significant investment in online teaching — the value is less in “lectures” than in designing student experiences.
That can include formal presentations, but I have *never* read a student comment complaining about the quality of video lectures.
Not once.
Not once.
Caveat: I can’t read all of the student comments in my academic unit on end-of-semester surveys. But students typically are concerned about getting help far more than slick things to watch.
Second caveat: we’re now about a decade into both ASU’s and my own college’s development of online classes. So we do have a certain level of experience on creating formal video presentations, and maybe we just don’t create lousy video lectures anymore.
The larger picture is that at places with a certain amount of experience and investment in online programs, investment in video production happens — it’s part of the infrastructure — but OMG it’s such a minor part of student experience.
But at institutions where Yglesias is arguing that emergency remote instruction is forcing people to gain experience at video lecturing?
I suspect that faculty — my colleagues — at those institutions will discover that warmth and relationships will swamp video glitches.
I suspect that faculty — my colleagues — at those institutions will discover that warmth and relationships will swamp video glitches.
After all, as @vdennen and many others urged faculty in spring, think about people first in an emergency remote instruction mode.
Yglesias is sort-of suggesting that faculty are learning to worry about their cats traipsing through videos, and that’s a good thing.
Yglesias is sort-of suggesting that faculty are learning to worry about their cats traipsing through videos, and that’s a good thing.
What I’m pretty sure is happening is that faculty at community colleges and regional state universities are learning that students are just fine with impromptu cat visits on a video.
What we are seeing is a few hundred thousand faculty learning the exact opposite of what Yglesias hopes: low-production but genuinely warm video (live or recorded) has pretty high value.
As I was guessing (hoping?) six months ago, we’d learn a great deal from operating formal schooling in these circumstances. But it wouldn’t necessarily lead in a straight direction. So: tightly-edited video lectures that we invest a great deal of time in? Sometimes.
But (even in formal presentations) we’ve also learned how little students need slick productions.
And in my college — a college of education with a critical mass of faculty having experience in designing/developing online programs with GREAT support?
And in my college — a college of education with a critical mass of faculty having experience in designing/developing online programs with GREAT support?
The conversations this summer revolved around student needs, and how to deal with that in huge uncertainty. What counts for student engagement when some are in-person, some are connecting through Zoom, and some have to be asynchronous?
It’s been about 120% around those larger issues of principles and thinking through what we want to happen with students, and (as far as I can tell) not one second on how many “takes” a good video lecture requires or how long we could use them
