Authors: Lucy Appert • Afrodesia McCannon • Bob Squillace
Because Liberal Studies offers the same required core courses across five different sites around the world, each in a major urban center, we put a special emphasis on connecting courses at widely distant locations through video-conferenced sessions and online platforms. While bringing students together across classes sounds exciting, it actually takes very careful management to make it work. The goals are a deepened student appreciation for difference, for the geographical realities that give rise to it, and for the ambiguous gifts of cosmopolitan attitudes that presume to transcend it – but merely pairing students in the US with students overseas does not achieve those goals. Our experiences over the last six years can be encapsulated in a set of guidelines that apply to any situation where a course taught by an instructor in one location is connected with a course taught by an instructor in a different location.
The Syllabus and Pre-Semester Preparation
Like team-taught courses, pairing classes across sites calls for some additional preparation time in advance of the semester – but the payoff is reliably worth the effort.
- If the classes at the two sites will meet together by synchronous web- or video-conference, determine the dates for joint sessions at least six weeks in advance of the semester, making sure to inform all relevant administrators and technical support personnel of the dates. Be aware of time change discrepancies between sites – check not only the normal difference between time zones, but any stealth changes, like the period each fall and spring when Europe changes time about a week before the US does.
- Mark video/web-conferenced classes on the syllabus and discuss the benefits with students at the first class – the pairing will be a little more work for them, too, so they should know why they’re doing it. If possible, alert students to the special nature of the class before they register for it.
- How often to schedule video/web-conferenced classes? We have found that 4-5 video/web-conferenced classes is the minimum for making the two classes feel connected, but that many more than that pays diminishing returns, as the novelty of connecting with students at another site wanes. After all, students in an online video-conference session are just sitting in a classroom; too many joint sessions makes the course feel more rather than less like a standard, uni-locational class.
- Video/web-conferenced classes should be spread out at roughly equal intervals across the term – avoid clustering in the early, middle, or later parts of the semester.
- Choose classes that concern material where the perspectives of the two locations or course-types will mutually inform each other, such as a paired writing session on observing tourist behavior in each location. Texts that can be approached from two disciplinary perspectives, like Gilgamesh, provide a good reason to bridge different kinds of courses, like a History and a Literature survey.
Online Environment
- It is important to have a shared online environment to support the video/web-conferenced classes and joint assignments, as students who only see each other in a video/web-conferenced session have little stake in the course pairing. Note, however, that students must have a good reason to be in touch with each other online. The online environment you choose should reflect that reason – e.g.:
- if students need to exchange files with each other, you might use Google Drive or any standard learning management system (so long as you can toggle permissions to allow students to upload resources).
- to aggregate multi-media materials in one space, you might use Google Sites or any similar simple website-creation tool.
- if students need to revise each other’s work, you might use Google Docs.
- if students need to share visual documents and verbal descriptions with students at the other site, you might use WordPress or a similar blogging platform.
- if you want students to comment on material in common in a more conversational platform that allows them to make voice or video comments, you might try VoiceThread or a similar platform.
- if you want students to share information on maps, Google maps is an option (there are many more sophisticated mapping tools as well, though they may take some training to use; however, if your course involves gathering data at different sites, GIS mapping tools are a great way to visualize that data)
- Avoid, however, asking students to work in too many different platforms; determine the goals most important to your course and stick with the platform most appropriate to it, so that students use it multiple times.
- Students will normally enjoy sharing short profiles with students at the other site; this can be done in WordPress or similar platforms like Ning. It may or may not be practical in your LMS.
- Consult with instructional technologists well in advance of the semester on the best platform(s) to support your assignments and video/web-conferenced classes – especially the first time, don’t be a hero and try to go it alone!
Assignments
- Meaningful joint assignments are the most important element in the success of a paired course – indeed, pairings are most successful when students in each site depend on work produced by students at the other site to complete their own assignment. Of course, that work should be site-specific, so that it can only be created at the relevant site. (Joint assignments can even work outside the parameters of a shared course – subject of a future post!)
- Joint assignments should do one or more of the following:
- involve students sharing site-specific experiences or information with each other, either in class discussion, formal presentations, informal writing assignments, or formal writing assignments. Example: students in Florence presenting on Caravaggio; students in New York presenting on Vermeer. The presentation might take the form of a screencast, with students then discussing the presentation during the joint session.
- involve students at each site producing and sharing knowledge necessary for students at the other site to complete an assignment. Example: students in each site providing descriptions and images of a local art gallery that are reference material for students at the other site doing an assignment on the global art scene.
- involve students in serving as a distant audience to each other – e. g., students in NY and London writing their city to each other. Such an assignment raises issues of responsibility to audience, and more closely resembles the normally remote act of reading than when students in the same class, say, workshop each others’ essays.
- in a joint session, involve students at each site sharing a different disciplinary perspective on the same material or sharing their expertise/research on mutually illuminating material.
- for writing courses, you might take advantage of the fact students are meeting online by an emphasis on writing for online contexts – a common blog, say, could provide the occasion for a joint session discussing the conventions of blogging and what makes a successful post and a successful blog.
- Joint readings are a good way to anchor a paired class discussion, but be sure the readings are short and shared in advance; you can’t count on the same editions of works being available at both sites.
- Collaboration around content is easier to manage than collaboration between individuals; students find it difficult to maintain connection with each other across time zones. It is important to expunge the pen-pal model utterly from your mind; students do not normally see any great benefit or excitement merely in communicating with someone far away; they need a sense of shared purpose and context.
- Avoid assignments that link students across sites in a way that could as easily happen with students at their own site. You need to use the pairing to focus students on difference; e. g., the way students in Europe experience the material past in a different way than students in New York or Shanghai.
The Video-Conferenced Classroom
- Instructors should position themselves as mediators of what is essentially a discussion between the two groups of students. They may need to frame the discussion and nudge it in productive directions, but they should not lecture. Screencasts or videos of contextual information (whether found online, created by faculty, or created by students) can be shared ahead of time – flipping the classroom is of even greater benefit in paired courses than in single-site classes.
- Students should bring different site-based or discipline-based perspectives to the video/web-conferenced class sessions; you should imagine the class as a meeting between two distinct bodies, not as a single extended group.
- Students should be given well-defined roles in video/web-conferenced discussions – more so than for ordinary face-to-face classes. E.g., students at one site might be charged with raising questions on a presentation shared with them in advance by students at another site. A formal agenda may facilitate the discussion. You can always throw away the script, but it’s best to start by having one; students are initially less, not more, inclined to get into a free-wheeling discussion with students at another location whom they rarely see. It’s a trust issue.
- Formal presentations may not be the best joint-session format for first-year students, who are still embryonic in their ability to create and deliver a formal presentation. Be sure to take into account the level of the students in the paired class in imagining how to manage the joint sessions.
- Have a back-up plan in the rare event of an equipment failure that scotches the plan to hold a joint session – online technology is still not at the stage where an unexpected java update or new policy on flash can derail a class. (More likely are occasional delays, especially at the beginning of a class – but have a plan for filling those potential short gaps).
- Although students may be familiar with other forms of video communication, it can take them awhile to get used to this more formal use of video. Giving them some basic protocols can help the paired courses run smoothly:
- Let students know that their coats and bags should be taken off and left outside of the camera’s view. It’s a good idea if possible to have an area for their belongings so the camera’s image is of students and not of their stuff.
- The microphones can be sensitive, so discourage other distractions like eating and lots of rumpling of papers. The idea is to have a visual and audio impression of the students that is as focused on learning and discussion as possible.
- Students are generally used to talking to the instructor or talking to other students in their own class; they can sometimes use some gentle reminders – particularly in the beginning – to talk to the camera, so that they are communicating with their video peers as well.
For more information on supporting VCL-enhanced courses and other tech-enhanced classes at NYU, please see the Instructional Technology Support resource site and the Instructional Technology Support Teaching and Learning site.