Read on Twitter
Finished teaching for this year today. I had big concerns about virtual teaching in the summer and was not looking forward to it. But it turned out to be really enjoyable for me and (I think) for the students as well. Some reflections in the thread below.
Breakout rooms were essential! They were energising and fun. I asked students to complete short tasks but allocated more time than necessary and made myself a tea. I encouraged chats about other things. More students had their cameras on and there were more smiles on the faces.
For many lectures, I pre-recorded about 2-5 short videos (5 to 15 min each) and asked students to discuss these in the breakout rooms during the lectures. In the best lectures I talked less than 50% of the time.
Adding an audio over a slide deck resulted in a rather boring video. Would not recommend. Also think that synchronous teaching is way better than asynchronous teaching if it gives students a chance to interact with each other.
Would very much recommend @OBSProject https://obsproject.com/ . I watched a few online videos and was ready to go within an hour of installing the software. It is great! It can directly record videos and generate a virtual webcam.
OBS also has a green screen filter. I made good use of a “Green Screen” (= a green sheet pinned to my wall) for the videos and the live sessions as well. Have not yet figured out the best background, organisation on the screen, etc.
I never edited any video material. The videos are not perfect, but my live lectures would not be perfect either. Hence, it did not take an unreasonable amount of time to shoot the videos.
Classroom experiments were great, and students liked them a lot. I totally recommend Classex for economic experiments. https://classex.de/
In terms of equipment, I bought a solid USB microphone, a tripod for the mobile phone, an app to record everything with the mobile phone https://www.dev47apps.com/ , and the green screen. Bought a ring light as well but it is not great with the glasses.
Most assignments are individually-graded essays. But I organised (or encouraged) group work and asked students to mention their groups in the assignment. This was to encourage social interaction which is a bit difficult to get otherwise these days.
Overall, putting myself into the shoes of the students helped: Would I be bored by this? Would I really watch this video? Would I feel isolated? Would I be willing to unmute myself to answer this? Would this be confusing? and so on.
