6 Tips for Teaching Online & In Person Simultaneously: IHE article

[theblackbox]

https://insidehighered.com/advice/2020/08/26/strategies-teaching-online-and-person-simultaneously-opinion

These are helpful. How many of us are attempting the Hyflex 'half in-class, half online' model? Is it by choice or coercion from above?

[tiva]

Those are interesting. Today was my first hy-flex day, with half the class in person and half Zooming along. Pressure from above dictated this choice. Here are some tidbits from me and my colleagues:

"Great to hear I wasn't the only one with confused students and zoom complexities. ... the headset idea was a complete fail due to feedback and delays on the audio that created multiple echos. My voice wasn't in sync with the live stream. I had a TA carry a laptop around like a mic, but socially distanced, so students on zoom could hear the face to face students introducing themselves. X is not set up well for audio. Some students in the back did have headsets on, but they might have been listening to music 😉

...

I opted for the mask rather than the face shield, which was painful to wear and didn't work well with my headset. I did find I had to talk slower because I had trouble catching my breath and projecting to a large lecture hall with the mask."


Y wrote:
"Glad to hear that it went well.  One idea for better integrating the in-class and the zoom students might be to have all the students in class wearing headsets.  We were told during our training for a large classroom by the CTL folks that they expect all the students in the class to be on zoom whether in person or remote. That way all students can hear the questions. My understanding is that the students are not aware of that and I have not said anything to my class.  With your small class that might work ok as long and they all mute microphones when not talking.

Honestly, after reading your report I am a bit terrified about how my 108 students are going to handle it tomorrow. I bet there might be at least one technical difficulty ;)"



Z wrote: "
Hi folks,
How are your F2F/Zoom classes going so far? I'd love to hear updates, because I feel like I'm really flying blind.

I've done 1 day, and here's the scoop so far (13 students are supposed to come on Th for 75 minutes and 12 on Friday, but that's not what happened)

a. It went well with the F2F students who came today. Only 6 showed up (out of 13 who were supposed to be there F2F--the other 7 F2F students instead Zoomed in). So they could talk to each other just fine, but the Zoom students couldnt' hear them (I repeated the key points). I had the F2F students  jot ideas down when I asked a question, then I went around the room for answers. I also used PollEV instead of clickers and people responded really well to it (in a browser--the PollEV powerpoint integration was too buggy in our particular classroom)

b. For the Zoom students (18 who zoomed in), things were a bit spottier. I couldn't see them all, and the student in the classroom who agreed to monitor the chat often couldn't find the chat window--which nobody used. Chrome in full screen mode blocked the chat when I screen-shared videos. When Zoom students spoke up, I could hear them, but they couldn't hear the masked classroom students. I'm guessing plenty of the Zoom students zoned out and checked social media, just like I do in our endless Zoom faculty meetings. Both Zoom and in-person students seemed to  have fun with PollEV. (2 students were utterly confused and tried to zoom in hours after class ended.)

c. Showing Youtube videos in Zoom via Chrome worked well. Except it blocked the chat.

d. Recording the Zoom session is taking hours upon hours to upload in Zoom to the cloud, and I'm guessing the recording will be  unviewable because of poor wifi and reflections on the face shield.

d. Everyone was exhausted 65 minutes into a 75 minute class, so I skipped the nifty Zoom breakout sessions complete with a Google Slides for collaboration. Instead I let them out 10 minutes early and told them to go for a walk and get a breath of fresh air.

e. I used a face shield when up at the podium teaching. The reflection was spectacular--I can't imagine the Zoom students saw much of me besides a shiny mask. I couldn't breath after 15 minutes and needed to take frequent "gasp at the window" breaks. The students joked that I probably had covid. LOL.

f. Not a single student thought we would continue F2F after 2 more weeks. But they're staying in town because they can't get refunds on their apartment payments (most live off campus), and they are completely sick of their parents' basements.

I'm not sure how to better incorporate Zoom students and F2F students at the same time. Any ideas?"