Forget stupid: “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV”
Consider: Camera, Screen, Move, Variety, Experiment
2020! Yesterday I taught the final class of my NYU online summer course. Before the course began I had some anxiety over how online would work. I worried that students might not turn up, or speak, or engage with the course material. HOWEVER, while we had a couple of technical glitches in the first week, overall the experience proved overwhelmingly positive. I lucked out with students, who brought their A game to every class, and were a joy to meet. I shall miss them!
As mentioned, I was unnecessarily anxious so I’ve put together some pointers on what worked for me, hoping to help someone who is currently experiencing similar concerns.
Camera, Screen, Move, Variety, Experiment
Camera
For my purposes the camera on my Mac laptop proved unsatisfactory: poor resolution, narrow field of view, and fixed in position. I purchased a Logitech C922 Pro Stream Webcam 1080P Camera for HD Video Streaming. I find the camera’s biggest advantage is that it’s not attached to my laptop, meaning I don’t need to be attached to my laptop! The camera gave me both the freedom to face a larger second screen, and to MOVE.
Screen
Trying to see everyone in the class, while also keeping track of the class outline, while also occasionally sharing windows from the desktop is difficult to pull off using a tiny laptop screen. I beg-borrowed a second screen, which provided me with a lot more real estate. This allowed me to see all the students on one screen and freed up my laptop screen for other window activities. I mounted my camera on this second screen.
Move
A couple of weeks before my course started I attended an excellent webinar in which director DeMane Davis gave tips to aspiring filmmakers. In addition to providing wonderful insights, Davis conveyed an extraordinary energy that I just hadn’t seen anyone manage to do before over Zoom. I noticed this was partially achieved because Davis was framed standing in a mid-shot, and while she remained in one spot she always appeared animated. One of my worries about teaching over Zoom was that when I sit down I slump, and often rest my head in my hands. I can look bored even though I’m not. In a real classroom I’m constantly moving. So I took my direction from a great filmmaker, stood throughout classes, and felt much more relaxed and empowered.
Check out WWFC
Variety
In addition to keeping myself moving, I tried to keep the two hour class moving, mainly through variety: Cut to student presentations, to breakout rooms, to class discussion, BREAK! cut to special guest speaker, video clips, WRAP! While I varied the activities, the class mostly kept to the same format so students knew what to expect. For example, class would always begin with two student presentations and responses. I came to LOVE having special guest speakers! The students connected with people who normally wouldn’t have been available to attend an in-person class due to geography, so, one for Zoom!
Experiment
Before the course started I experimented a lot with setup to find out what worked (thank you friends!). I continued though to experiment throughout the course – if something didn’t work it never felt like a disaster. For some early classes I turned my TV into yet another screen, but I relied less on this as the course moved on. Initially I disliked using the share screen function to present slides as it felt disruptive, clunky, and slowed me down. I always distributed a slide with the class objectives ahead of each session. I also beforehand circulated discussion question slides so students had access to them in the breakout rooms. In the first few weeks I didn’t jump into breakout rooms. I got the sense that students were missing connecting with their peers so I wasn’t too bothered if discussions didn’t stay on track. Towards the end of the course I did join the breakout rooms and really enjoyed hopping from one to the next.
“Regrets, I’ve had a few:” What I’d have done differently…
I definitely wouldn’t have spent so much time worrying before the course started!
Also the day I accidentally closed down the meeting room and kicked everyone off Zoom was a bit of low point. Thanks again to students for their patience in that first week š
Seriously though, towards the end of the course I was a little regretful that I hadn’t established a way of showing students the extent of the work they’d produced as a class. Zoom classes lack the same sense of class cohesiveness established through being physically together in a classroom.
I felt I wanted students to share my overview of the work they’d achieved as a group. For example, before each class students wrote responses to the course readings and viewings. By the end of the course they could each see that they’d completed 12 responses. However 12 responses x 15 students meant I could see a total of 180 submitted responses.
To overcome this fragmentation I suppose I could have set up a discussion board for the responses BUT in the past students have told me they feel inhibited by boards and uncomfortable exploring ideas in full view of their peers.
In previous classes I have assigned students the task of together creating a course resource. For example, in another course we created a giant database containing student-designed syllabi for national cinema courses. We then voted for our favorites. I’m not sure why this time I neglected to come up with some sort of class-built resource.
I think though for this course since the students all wrote a scene analysis paper I would have asked everyone to provide a video edit of the scene they wrote about and then we could have produced a fun supercut.
I’m very happy to have taught the course, a little sad not to be seeing everyone again, and a little excited to be starting other work.
Good luck to everyone teaching this Fall. You can do this! Stay safe.