 So, welcome everybody. So, as we explained already, this session is the first of the CPD webinars. We're really excited to be with you today. It's lovely to hear where you're all from and introducing yourself. If you haven't done that already, please look up into the chat and introduce yourself. Let us know where you're coming from, your job. That would be great just so we can get to know all of you a little bit better. But my name is Coral. I'm a learning technology consultant and often with my friends and colleague, Tab, today as well. Hi, yeah, delighted to be here with Coral to present this session and look forward to hearing some of your ideas. It's gonna be quite an interactive session. We do encourage you to connect with us via Twitter and or LinkedIn. So feel free to add us. I wanna just throw out an interactive question, right from the very beginning. And this is maybe a question for the people at ALT, but also potentially for people in the community. So, all right, nice, Sean, not far away. So I want to ask about if there's a suitable hashtag that we could use to tweet about things from this session. It might be good if anyone has a suggestion about a good hashtag. We could just hashtag ALT C. And I wonder if there's one about community that we could use as well as that's the kind of focus of the session. Yeah, if anyone wants to suggest one for a community, then please do put a suggestion in and we can use that as well. Yeah, but we can definitely hashtag ALT C for this and there's also ALT Learn as well. Christine has put in the chat there. So that's great. Yeah, and I'll put my bit of handle in there as well. Oh, thanks, Carl, you've done it. Great. Perfect. Okay. Great. Great, so yeah, please do at any point if you have any questions or anything, please do post them in the chat. We're going to be, as I've said, this is going to be quite an interactive session, so we are going to be having lots of discussion and making use of the chat anyway. So you'll have time for questions, but we will stay around at the end as I'll see if there's any last minute questions. So I think we'll just get stuck in. Perfect. Okay, so the first thing to say is that we are going to be using a Padlet wall as part of this session, as part of the interactivity. Tav, can I actually pop the link to the Padlet into the chat if that's all right? But you can also use your phone and actually it may be useful if you're working on a computer or where you only have one screen. Rather than opening up in your browser so you're having to switch between the two, you may find it more easier to use your phone. And you can use the QR code that's on your screen at the moment and you can just access it there directly using your phone or you can go onto your phone using the URL and whatever's most comfortable for you would be great. So yeah, if you could pop onto that Padlet board, we're gonna be using that a few times through the session. And as part of our first task, just to kind of warm everyone up, just so we can get a feel for a bit about your personalities. Can I ask everyone to go in and just post a GIF into the second column of the Padlet board? That would be great. Yeah, and is it, do you wanna show your screen or shall I do it, Carl? No, you do it. Okay, so I will just share my screen and show you how you can post a GIF to the Padlet board just for anyone who isn't familiar. If you want to, so GIF is basically sort of a little animation and also funny animation. And if I just share my screen, you will be able to hopefully see that. Can you tell me when you can see my screen? Yes. Yeah, great. Okay, so when you come onto the Padlet wall, so first of all, you're gonna go to the link that was in the chat. And then if you go to one of the columns, so in this case, we're gonna go to the post a GIF column and we're gonna go to the bottom, there's a plus symbol. And when you click, I can see someone's already got started. If you click the plus symbol, it creates a new little post it note. And then if you go to the little search thing on the magnifying glass and you click on GIFs, you can just type in a search term. So if you want to just type in, for example, team or party or community, let's go with party. So if we type in party, we get a few different options for funny GIFs that we can post here. See all of my updates from the Padlet wall. And you can just click on one of those and it will post it in here. And then you just click anywhere on this wooden background and that will actually save it to the Padlet wall. So if I click anywhere here, now it's posted. So we can see we've got an array of funny GIFs appearing already. And that gives us a sense already of the flavor of the community that we've got here today. And it just creates a little bit of a sense of fun as well. So I'm just gonna stop showing my screen, but you can see you can scroll down to see any new posts. So if you scroll down in this column, there's a little scroll thing here as well. You can see anything posted underneath there. Okay, great, brilliant stuff. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Great, okay. So I'll just go back in to sharing our presentation again and we'll move right along. Okay, so just to kind of start us off thinking about why a sense of belonging and building community matters. And I think we all know that when you're in a position where you don't feel like you belong to a community you're working with, whether that's in work, whether that's socially, whether that's in whatever environment, I want you to think about a time where you've not felt like you belong to part of a community and how that affected how you interacted with that community and how you were engaged with that community. Because I think as we all know it can be really, really difficult to speak out when you don't feel like you belong to community. It can be really difficult to put your opinion across to even engage and have fun with the community when you don't feel like you're part of it. So that's why building a sense of belonging in an online space is particularly important because we have a physical distance. So some might say it's even harder to be able to create that connection. So it's really, really important that we have this shared sense of belonging because it can really help with student engagement and learner satisfaction, but also with mental health and wellbeing, particularly in our current climate. So it's just something to think about that this is really, really important for us to make sure that we are putting into our courses. And there are lots of different frameworks, lots of different research you can do. We've added some additional resources into the Padlet Board if you want to do further research. But one that I found really, really interesting or just a great example of why this social aspect, this community aspect is so important is the Community of Inquiry Framework by Garrison. And the idea of this framework is there are three, have to be three things present in order to create a great educational experience. And the first one is teaching presence. So there has to be some form of teaching, not necessarily someone leading you through the course, but you need to have a sense of direction of the course. You need to have a sense of what you're supposed to be doing when you get in there. Cognitive presence, you need to be able to engage with the content, but social presence is just as equally important in these three areas. So it's as equally important that you're able to engage with other people. It supports, it sets the climate and the culture of that group in that class, but also supports people with their learning and moving forward. So that's a really kind of interesting framework to think about. And from that framework, one thing, actually, I'll just go back just a second, from the explanation of social presence, there was a few key things I picked out and those were the ability of participants to, one, identify with a community of some kind, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, develop interpersonal relationships, but also protect their own individual personalities. And it's those four key things that we like to think about and work on to help us and to give us a base, a basis for really putting together this community. So those four areas then that we want to focus on in today's session are safe space. So obviously in order to belong to somewhere, you need a space to belong to. So creating a safe space for people to belong to, encouraging a sense of self, so understanding who you are in relation to your own personal identity, but also who you are in relation to the group and the community that you're working with. Language and culture, extremely important. The language we use, how we communicate with students, how we design learning. So when we're actually designing learning and putting things into place, the language that we use and the activities we ask people to take part in, help to build that culture. And the last one is developing community habits. So again, it's about thinking whether you are, I know that there's some people who are educators some people technologists, it's all different job types in here. And whatever your role is, when working with learners, you can influence all of these things and you have a part in all of these things. So it's really, really important to think about these areas. So we're going to go into each of these in a little more depth, but first we want to do a little bit of an activity. I'll pass over to Tab for this part. Yeah, sure. So what we're going to do is we're going to ask you to spend a couple of minutes to write down as many ideas and responses on paper to the following question. So we want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen. Okay, so if you don't have one right here, I'll just give you a moment, get yourself a piece of paper and a pen. And when you've got your paper and a pen, we're going to do a sort of free writing activity. So can I just get a sense? Can you just give me a hands up? There's a raise hand button next to the camera icon in the bottom in the middle of your, should be the bottom and middle of your screen. If you click, can you just raise your hand if you've done a free writing activity before? Okay, so we've got a few coming through. Okay. So I'm guessing, yeah, there's like about a third of people you have. Yeah, you can put your hands down now. Thank you. So there's about a third of people you have. So free writing is basically a way of getting as many ideas down as quickly as possible. Okay? And one of the key things about this is you don't edit. You don't stop yourself. You don't edit. You just put down as many ideas as possible. There is no filter for quality. Okay? So any idea, no matter how low quality goes on the page. All right? So we're going to ask you to write down your ideas, first of all, on a piece of paper. And the question is, what technologies have you used or could you use to help develop build communities online? And how would you foster community using these technologies? So we want you to put as many ideas down as you can about that. And then in a moment, you're going to go over to the Padlet wall and record a short audio description of how you would use those. Okay? But I'll tell you what, let's just do the writing part first. Okay? So we will give you two minutes and I just want you to take a piece of paper, write down as many ideas you can thinking about what technologies you've used or could you use to build communities online? So I make it 1247 at the moment. So at about 1249, we will come back and I'll show you how to post those things to the Padlet wall. It's going to say with the other question, because your hand was up, but I can see you've put it down now, so. Great. Yeah. If you haven't started already, get your pen moving and just get down as many ideas as you can. We'll give you until 1250, because it's just gone to 1248. So if you haven't already, begin now. Okay, so if we can ask you to stop writing, don't worry about editing or don't worry about the quality of it. We're not going to ask you to share this with anyone. What we are going to ask you to do is to select one of your ideas, at least one, and we want you to go to the Padlet wall and we want you to post a little audio clip, just talking us through what the technology is and how you would use it. And there is an example on the Padlet wall already. I'm just going to post the link to the Padlet wall in the chat one more time, so that everyone has got that. And I will, I've just posted it in the chat, Rw. So you should have it there. Can you see it now? I will now share my screen as well. Great. I will now share my screen as well, so you can see that. Let me know when you can see my screen. Yep. Great. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to come over to task one and I have put a video here that shows you exactly how to do it. It's just a two minute video that shows you how to do it. But what you're going to do is you're going to scroll down, you're going to come to the bottom and click the little plus symbol down here as we did before. And then if you scroll down a little bit, you can go to the three dots here and you're going to go to voice. And you just select the microphone, click allow, and then you can click the record button. And what you're going to do is you're going to tell us what the technology is and how you would use it. So I might say, for example, one thing I think is very useful is creating a collaborative document where you can also create a collaborative reading list with your students. So here you could give them the links to the document and then you could actually, as a whole group, with all of your students, you could actually curate your own reading list and they could contribute their own contributions to it and have maybe little summaries of each academic article underneath to help people to find reading resources that will be useful to them. And that way it's kind of a more democratic way of doing it. So I'm going to click pause once I've finished and then I can click playback and save in the top right-hand corner and then I just give it a title. So I might call it using a collaborative document to create a collaborative reading list. Okay, then I click save. Once I've clicked save, that will appear on the Padlet wall. It just takes a moment. Yeah, and if I scroll down, you see my recording has appeared here. And I just click anywhere on the wooden bit to save it. So now there it is and I can play it back by clicking the play symbol there. So if we can ask everybody to just choose one of their ideas that they generated and just make a little recording, little audio recording under this task one column, just the way I did to the plus symbol, then the three dots here and then the audio voice and then you go from there. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing my screen and give you a few moments to record that. And if you have trouble with the audio, obviously feel free to type it as text. That's also fine. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen, give you a moment to do that recording. Okay, so I can see some ideas coming through. That's great. Okay, I'm aware that people might be still recording, but if you could try and finish up your recording and then come back, I think we're going to keep moving because there are some other things we want to talk about and we have another task in a little bit as well. So thank you very much for all of those things on the Padding Rule. Just give you a moment to finish off and then we will continue. You get a quick hands up when you're ready to move on. Okay, I can see there's still a couple of people without their hands up, but I think we will move on if that's okay because we do have other things to cover. So if you can bring your hands back down again, that'd be great, thank you very much. Great, thank you so much. Okay, so there's some lovely ideas already shared on the Padding Rule, some really good stuff that's come through. So that will be there available to you after this session as well to go through and kind of look at more detail and listen to. But, Coral, shall we move on a little bit? Yes, let's. Okay, yeah, so thank you everybody for your participation in that. That was really, really interesting. There's also lots of really fantastic ideas coming through in the chat as well. So if you don't have the chat open, there's lots of kind of really interesting things happening in there as well. But we'll move on and we'll start working way through those four areas that we spoke about earlier. So just to very quickly recap, the four areas where safe space, sense of self, language and culture and developing community habits. So for this part of the session, I'm just gonna go through each of these areas, but please do continue that conversation in the chat. Let me know if any of these ideas or discussions kind of resonate with you or if you want to add anything to the conversation, I'm absolutely encouraged you to do that. So starting with safe spaces. So as I said earlier, a sense of belonging really requires a space to belong to. And when we develop learning, whether we are learning technologists, an instructional designer, a teacher, educator, a support person, whoever you are working with students, it's really, really important that we provide a place for them to basically become a community and collaborate. And I think one of the key things is to provide multiple different places. And it's something that we talk about a lot is and I'm sure you've come across as well providing choice and providing a variety of different ways for people to communicate is really, really key because we all communicate in different ways and we're all comfortable communicating in different ways. So it's also about thinking, how can we provide a sense of place for individuals as well as a community as a whole? So a lot of tools we've mentioned already and some fantastic ones in the Padlet Wall as well that you can go on and have a look at but some other tools that frequently we use are things like obviously Padlet we're using now. Tab mentioned using OneNote or a collaborative document of some kind to get students to work together and have a space that they can work on things together, ask questions, comment, things like Meano that's kind of interactive planning whiteboard space. Flipgrid is a fantastic tool. If you haven't used it before, you can use like little videos on shared space that people can respond to. Things like your discussion forums, anything you already have at your disposal in your VLE do not overlook those because I think discussion forums are often things that we kind of sometimes forget about but actually they're so, so powerful, such a powerful tool for us and they can provide a really great safe space. And I think one key thing is to think about creating a space or encouraging students to create a space for social interaction only. So I think someone mentioned in the chat earlier, can't remember who and without scrolling back but somebody mentioned that they provided a space for their students that was just a social space or encourage the students to set up their own social space because that's a really important aspect and the fact that they can take control of that space themselves. So it's not somewhere that you would go in and ask them to do things. It's a space that they have control over and they have autonomy over and that is again, really, really key for having a safe space that they feel like they can discuss things and ask questions. One thing that's really, really powerful is creating an anonymous space as well. So you've noticed on the Padlet board your responses are actually anonymous. So your names don't come up on Padlet for us. So we're not able to see your names. It's an anonymous way for you to interact. And I think having the balance of both and there's something really powerful about providing that anonymous space is really, really key because students can get really worried that, we all feel it. Sometimes we feel like they were the only one ever that's gonna ask the question or that we're the only ones that are unsure but actually, it's a common thread for all students. So having that anonymous space and putting the students into smaller groups and someone has just mentioned it, Ruth, Sean, sorry, has mentioned it in the chat that sometimes putting the students into those breakout rooms, they actually communicate more because they feel safer in that smaller space. So again, this is all about just thinking what kind of spaces can I build into the learning and purposefully build them into the learning experience asking people to actively go in. How can I build in those safe spaces? What can I use and what activities and learning can I make go hand in hand with those particular spaces? Yeah, I was gonna add their coral. I think one thing that's really useful is the concept of crowdsourcing. So I think people are probably familiar with this idea of crowdsourcing. But if you look at, for example, any of the biggest digital platforms with the kind of biggest community around them, nearly all of them are based on the concept of crowdsourcing. So for example, YouTube is basically a place for people to share their video. The content is all generated by the users and the same with something like Twitter or something like Facebook. So I think by showing students how to create those spaces and setting them up, in a way, it's that kind of thing. If you build it, they will come. If you give them a space and you set it up in the right way and you encourage that interaction from the very start, that is kind of the key and the community can kind of build itself. And I think having that whole community as a class but also maybe having those learning teams or study groups allows people to contribute in the kind of bigger community but also in those micro communities where they might feel more comfortable or in breakout rooms in the live sessions, as Sean mentioned. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Vicky actually just asked an interesting question. Thinking how do we make sure that when students have autonomy over the space that the spaces are inclusive? So I think that's quite interesting. Actually, we're gonna touch on community standards and community habits in just a second but I wonder if you have a thought on that one as well. Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I love the idea of giving the autonomy to the students but I think it does need to be done in a somewhat structured way. So ideally, for example, if you get them to set up the group, encourage them to invite you to that group as well and also encourage them if they want to to set up a separate group where they can have private conversation. But if you're added into the main one that they use, then you can kind of monitor a little bit. The other thing is I think actually assigning roles to students within that teamwork, within that group work. And I usually assign at least one student to be in charge of inclusivity within that group. So ensuring that everyone has the chance to communicate and ensuring that people aren't being kind of marginalised or discriminated against and actually have one or two members of the group who are responsible for ensuring that everyone is involved and everyone, there's a kind of equality of opportunity and experience within that group. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think one thing that I've found really powerful is actually having the discussion with students beforehand and asking them to set the standard for that community. So saying, this is maybe giving them some ideas or a list of things. This is how I would like you to communicate. And these are the things that I think are important. But as a group, what do we think are the most important things? How would you like to see people communicate? How would you like to be dealt with as part of that community? And I think you can then bring out all of these discussions and make it really open and honest. And that I think really helps. Again, as you said, bring the autonomy to the students and it's up to them to create these standards and maintain them as well. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, so I'll move on to the next section. So please, just keep that discussion coming. And so the next section is sense of self. Okay, so sense of self. Sense of self is a really interesting one. And I think it's something that's become almost more prevalent over the last year where we've all been at home because I think what you would have had initially was lots of different students from all over the world come into one shared space physically on campus. And sometimes you don't get as much of a sense of who that person is and where they're from in their experiences because they're engaged in a different type of community. Whereas when we're all at home, you really get more of a feel for people's own experiences and their self. And I think bringing that into your classrooms and building that into, if you're building learning materials and actually building the idea of personal identity into the learning materials is really, really powerful and goes a long way to helping build a sense of self. So just some ideas and things to think about as we've already talked about giving students autonomy and really personalizing learning. And that doesn't mean that you need to design individual learning activities for every student. It just means trying to provide students with some choice. So that could be, for example, in an assignment, there might be multiple topics. So just really simple things like that where students can use their own understanding, their own experience and their own interests as part of something in the learning materials. Giving students role in class, something that Tab touched on just a second ago. But planning learning, which encourages students to actually reflect on their own values, environment and experiences is really, really valuable and interesting. And there's a great resource on the Padlet board actually that has a few examples of the types of activities you could use, but it's really just about when you're designing activities thinking, how can I celebrate students' individuality and experience within these materials? And just another couple of ideas, things we've talked about again in the chat, allowing students to use things like avatars or images to represent themselves. And it's something like online journaling and reflection. And again, just encouraging people to really reflect on all of these bigger, wider questions as part of your course can really help connect them with it and connect them with that community too. So yeah, I can see lots of interesting things happening in the chat. Is there anything to pick up on here before you move on to the next one from the chat tab? Well, there is a question about webcams and WebMorning live sessions. I think that is kind of always a tricky issue. Personally, I think that, so there is actually a meta analysis, a study which maybe it's not a meta analysis actually, but it's kind of a study that looked at a large number of very experienced online educators and whether or not they are students to use webcams and what impact that had. What the study found was that nearly all of the most experienced online educators didn't ask students to have their webcams on and found other ways to measure engagement. And they gave various reasons for not having the webcams on. Things like, for example, the increased demand on bandwidth. So if you have a weak internet connection, having the video on makes it very difficult. Also, it can be slightly more distracting because students are then worrying about their appearance and also it can add to the level of fatigue because students are thinking about that whilst also trying to follow the learning and participate in the activities. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'll put a link to that on the Padlet wall and also in the chat in a moment. But there aren't actually that many studies on it. It's hard to say empirically, but my experience and I've been teaching online for about 15 years, I would say that I personally don't, I wouldn't require anyone to put their webcam on. And actually I often think it's not particularly desirable because I think it forces you to be a better teacher if you don't have the webcams on because you have to think of more better ways to gather evidence of learning. Yeah, Joanna, did you have a question or anything you wanted to add? I wish you've got your hands up. No, okay, no problem. Yeah, perfect, yeah. Okay, so I'll move on just to the next one before we go on to another activity. No thanks again, no problem. Just wanted to check. Okay, so now I'm moving on to language and culture, the next part of this four-part area. So the language we use makes a huge difference to the students. So that's not only as a teacher and how you talk to your students and how you present yourself to students, but also as learning designers, people who are writing the content, the way in which you use language, the way in which you write the activities, the things that you ask students to do really makes a difference for how they feel and if they feel part of a community. So just really simple things, like using language that is relevant to the students or using like you and we, rather than I've seen a lot of material where people have said like the student will do this. And it's like, it needs to be personal and feel human to that student. And it needs to feel like it's part of, that it's written for them. I think that's the key thing. Often we find, particularly in universities, students get a lot of emails and things, generic emails from the university. And I think we often don't realize the effect that can have on particularly distance learners when they're getting emails that sometimes aren't even relevant to them because all they're thinking is, well, this actually wasn't meant for me. And there's often nothing we can do about those because they're from higher levels and we can't change them. But what we can do is be really purposeful about the language that we use and what we say to students and how we push ourselves across. So making sure that we are building in things like ice breakers and inductions can really help with culture and building in those activities really early on. So something as simple as the first task we asked you to do where you put the GIF in the Padlet Board. Something as simple as that as an early introductory activity can be really, really powerful in helping to build a sense of community and also set a tone for the type of culture you want in your classroom. And making communication and collaboration don't be afraid to have it part of assessment as well, even if it's just a very small proportion, getting students to work together and designing sort of multiple layers. And again, this comes back to choice. Lots of different ways for people to engage and participate. So learners can have, be able to choose a level of interaction. So we've got people talking in the chat. We've got people, we're adding to the Padlet Board. You can connect with us on Twitter. We're providing with multiple different ways of connecting and discussing. And I think that's really, really key. And one thing not to forget as well as the language you use, imagery that you use in your course is so, so important. And the imagery you're using, making sure that the examples you're providing are diverse and sort of well placed, but they also are, they celebrate differences. They are, create a culture of inclusion. And I think that's really key is when we're looking at our materials, when we're thinking about what we're teaching, what case studies are you're using if you're using something like that? What imagery are you using? What examples are you pulling out? And it's really important that we think about making sure that we're making those as inclusive as possible, but also as diverse as possible. Because there's nothing worse than if you come onto a course and you don't see yourself in any of the materials. You don't see an example of you in that particular role or that job or that course. So I think that's really, really important. And yeah, inviting kind of examples from students' own experience we've talked about as well. So going on to the last section before we do another bit of an activity, developing community habits. So I think this is something we've really touched on all the way through this session already, but things like setting those standards as a shared community we've talked about. So actually saying, what do we want these standards to be? How would we expect people to interact? But really thinking about having more personal and intimate interactions and really building in the interactions. And the technology almost isn't quite so important, but it's using that technology to really enhance those interactions. Setting activities which really encourage students to contribute and discuss in all different kind of ways. And I think again, just touching on varying that communication and the different techniques in the different ways so that students one don't get kind of bored using the same thing all the time, but that there's lots of different ways. So if someone's not so keen on using audio, we asked you to record a short audio earlier, but we did give you the option if you're not able to do that or you don't want to do that, you can also write in the text. So there's multiple layers and multiple levels for how to build this type of thing in. And just to very lastly touch on before we move on, teacher presence. So I think one thing we're probably all aware of is that when we're trying to build a community online, often teacher presence and when I say teacher presence, I don't mean that you have to be present 24 seven or that your teacher, your learning activities have to have lots and lots of teacher presence. I just mean that you build in opportunities for it to appear as if you are there and the students can see you and learn more about you. So things like using introductory videos, recording a short video each week to say, welcome, this is what we're gonna be doing for this week, building in regular communication through announcements, for example. And in a lot of virtual learning environments, you can pre-schedule your announcements. So you can pre-schedule all of these things in and going in and interacting and monitoring in all of these communication areas, so in the forums and really providing feedback in multiple different formats. There's a really great study that's had, maybe you could put into the chat as well on the use of voice and the importance of hearing people and hearing voices. It's a really interesting study. And I think hearing your tone and your audio is actually really, really powerful. And whether you are someone who's designing learning or a teacher, you can build that in to the learning you're creating. So just having Sunday record a very short voiceover to talk through something can be equally as powerful and feel connected. And I think that it makes a really, it makes a really big difference to the materials. Yeah, perfect. Okay, so let's have another task quickly before we finish up, because I think I've got a bit more to share. So Tab, if you want to talk us through the next task. Yeah, sure, sorry, I was just trying to get that study, but I'll post it there in a minute. So yeah, so we don't have very long, but maybe what we'll do is if we put you into breakout rooms and you just, you'll just have a couple of minutes to choose either option A or option B and try to put some ideas under that on the Padlet wall. You can just type it as text. But when you go into the breakout room, if you just have one person share their screen and that person can make notes with a group and the other people can contribute verbally or in the chat to that and try and add to the list of tools or strategies that have worked well, but in specific relation to either self and safe space or language culture and community habits. So if you get the Padlet wall open and we will assign some breakout rooms quickly and you'll just have a couple of minutes to contribute to that. So, let's see. Okay, so I'm going to set up those groups. Oh, we're back. Oh, we've been returned. Yeah, so you should be coming back to the main room now. You've forced back in. Yes, I'm afraid I had to... In the middle of your sentence. Bring everybody back. Yeah, apologies as well. It doesn't seem to give any warning in general, probably, when you get brought back. So apologies for that. But I know there's a very short amount of time, but I can see that a couple of things have been posted on the Padlet wall. Is there anything specifically that anyone wanted to ask or comment on in relation to whether there are those areas before we wrap up? Yeah, Tim, did you have... Yeah. I think you've got your friend back. Hi, yeah. So, I mean, one of the things I kind of got in there and I kind of steered it a little bit away from the questions that you'd asked. One thing that's concerning me at the moment is to do with the nature of being online. It's very much about the building and network and how the networks are built and how... I don't know how we deal with this. It's the issue to do with first in, if you get first dibs, you kind of automatically have a priority over everyone else and that it's very good for people who feel confident, who have the technology, who have the network capability just to get straight in and do things. I've got three screens here and I'm struggling to keep up with the pace of this webinar and I find that, personally, I find that and I know speaking to students as well that they struggle with that. And it really does do with feeling, when you're feeling safe and comfortable in a space, you're not getting those visual cues you'd get in face to face. It does happen face to face. You see the styles of students, the quicker students tend to take over but there is space there for the teacher to look around the room and see, oh, you haven't asked the question so far, you've got to engage. So that doesn't seem to happen online and I think, so I'm going to shut up because I'm maybe rambling a little bit here. No, I really want to know what other people do to get over that. Yeah, I do think one key thing is about how we set the etiquette for online and what we expect people to do and just being really clear about that. And as I said, the sort of assigning roles and because I think if you're not so confident or you're not so confident with the technology, then it helps to have someone who can take leadership of that and steer things a little bit for the rest of the group. Do you want to say anything about that, Carol? Yeah, I was going to say I completely agree. I think particularly around when it's a live session like this, for example, and we put you into break out rooms and didn't quite have enough time there, but I think setting roles is really, really key. You can obviously rotate those around. So if you have someone, you have multiple students who are pretty good with technology, but I think also it can be a real problem as you said for people to engage and if you don't know people's internet issues and things. So having a different way to communicate. So we often talk about just having a collaborative document open. And I know it's a really, it seems like a really simple thing to have, but just having something like a one note open that the team, so you as a group can communicate in, but having a space for each student. So then you can visually see live in time the people who are writing and the people who aren't engaging in that. Cause I think as you said, it is difficult when you can't see people's face. Sometimes you're not quite sure, have they understood the instructions? You know, do they know what they're supposed to be doing? So again, asking those questions, using things like polling to check that people do understand having the instructions again, visually on your screen, verbally you're seeing them, but also posting them into the breakout rooms or wherever you're having them. Yeah, I think assigning roles, but also having a space so you can visually see the work that people are doing on an individual level can be useful for that. But I'm sure there may be some other things in the chat people have said, cause I think, you know, this is a fantastic network for sharing ideas. I see Sean has mentioned having student digital champions. I think that's a great idea. So particular students who are tech savvy, asking them to kind of help students. Yeah. I mean, I think also that there's roles to play for actually, you know, incorporating study skills into this before. Yeah. I know a lot of teachers have been kind of thrust into this situation, but actually this is quite different. So completely different to what students have been used to in the past. And actually knowing how to manage yourself and actually having the space where you can work. You know, those kind of time management issues, space management issues, all of that sort of thing really, really help. And, you know, that's what we're trying to do at Plumpton, we're kind of trying to introduce, well, we're introducing into our CPD, you know, guides for students and helping lecturers to kind of develop those skills in their students. I think that's really helpful. Definitely. Go on, Carl. I think just scaffolding that learning as well. I mean, some mentioned before, and I think this is a great idea is if you're asking students to engage and obviously they're having to use technology, start small. So, you know, ask them to engage in the chat function, using the chat, can everyone find it once everyone's comfortable with that? Maybe another week you ask them to then, you know, we asked you to record a short audio, for example, that could be quite advanced for a lot of students. So it's about kind of scaffolding that as well and building it in over time. I think is really useful. And exactly as you said, building and study skills, I think digital literacy skills, particularly, I think is almost, has to, you know, it's key, absolutely key to us working online. Yeah, and I think, you know, one thing I try to do, like for example, with the Loom video on the Padlet wall, is like if you're asking people to do things that require a certain skill, make a little kind of video showing them how to do it, or don't kind of expect them to kind of figure it out for themselves. And I think asking the students what they think the most effective way to manage the community and what they think the most effective way to manage the online learning is very powerful as well. And especially giving them a mixture of non-anonymous and anonymous spaces in which to do that. Because if they have an anonymous space, it means they really can say if they feel like they're not included, they can say that and they can say what would be a better way of running it. And I think only by harnessing that collective intelligence and collective knowledge of study and, you know, online interaction and communities, can we really, you know, build something that is accessible for everybody and, you know, kind of, I guess, democratic in the way that it's made up, or at least you get a theory in its values. So I think that's something we should strive for and try and make it a co-created community rather than the responsibility of being all on the teacher because that's hard, right? I mean, can I just say, I'm sorry, I don't want to see it as I'm taking over a bit. Those lecturers that I've spoken to about this, those who actually engage their students in face-to-face showing them how to use the resources in the classroom. And we're able to talk them through any issues they had, have done better, have actually had better engagement later on, have had a better community. And those who seem to be doing worse from those I've spoken to, well, are those who are running, this is in FE, doing maths and English classes and just being dropped into them with students I'd never met. And they seem to be having the most problems. So I think face-to-face is important when you can get it and that's of course is a problem at the moment. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, I think if it's possible to build in live sessions like this, a live session, I think that is really valuable. But as I've said there, you can, if you aren't able to do that for whatever reason, there's, I guess there's lots of reasons that that might not happen, recording bits of audio, recording videos. So students are still connected and seeing your face. It's not the same, but it goes in some way to helping to explain things. But yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I know someone mentioned in the chat about having a pre-learning week, a sort of induction week. And one thing that may be useful is to speak to your institutions that you work with because we've worked with a couple of institutions who have introduced that. And it's almost, it's like the induction week, but rather than it just being a kind of student support lead thing, their teacher, the academics get involved in that week and it's not learning as in it's nothing to do with the course particularly, but it's just about building that community and also working through those technical bugs and technical issues. So if that's something you can do, I think that is really useful. But it may be that someone on your team or a learning technologist, if you're working with one, they may be able to put together some sort of pack or something that could be sent to students before they start. Obviously all of this is in an ideal world, isn't it? But there may be something that can be sent pre the students arriving that again just starts to help with some of those study skills and tech issues. But I would almost just be aware in that first teaching week, first few weeks, where possible to keep it lighter and then build on that. If that's possible. Although I know it isn't always. Great. Okay. So I know we're now running a bit over, so we will be coming to the end of the session. Happy to stay for a few minutes longer if anyone's got any other questions or comments. Happy to hear from you. And of course the Padlet board will be available all the time. So you can go back to that, you can get ideas from that and continue the discussions there as well. I'd like to offer just some food for thought before you share. Sure. So much, there's great conversations going on about asking the community to go back to the students. How do you think they should be run? What do you think we should be doing? I encourage all of that. But I think it's worth taking a moment to step back and think actually sometimes the teacher isn't always an IT expert and actually the teacher can be feeling quite overwhelmed by the situation. So it's okay as an educator I think just to rather ask an open question, I offer selections. So which platform would you like us to use? Team Zoom or Flip Guard, whatever. You notice it so that you'll maintain some structure as the educator so you don't get everyone saying I really want to do this and you go, but I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's absolutely key. You can make it open but also have that level of structure. So I think even if you're giving students a choice of two things and actually I wouldn't necessarily worry about giving them a choice of which technology to use because I think first and foremost you as a teacher have to be comfortable with the technology. So if you are most comfortable with teams, I would use teams. That is just about trying to give choice in other ways around activities or ways of engagement and things. But I completely understand. I think we can get a bit overwhelmed and we don't want to just throw hundreds of technologies at the problem because that's not gonna help either. Yeah, that's a really good point. Tab, have you got anything to add to that? Are you still there? Yeah, sorry, I just was gonna say that I think make the most of support that is available to you. Your institution should have some kind of support for technology. It shouldn't be expected that teaching staff should have to figure all this out by themselves. So you should have some kind of either a technology enhanced learning team or an IT team that could support you in how you use the technology or some kind of digital champion. If you don't, then you should speak to the management in your organization and suggest that that's something that is needed. And something, you know, Coral and myself are both learning technology consultants. And this is something that we do is work with different institutions to help improve these different areas. And as we've discovered today, there aren't always simple answers to these problems. They do need experience and expertise to help guide you through some of these difficult areas. So if that's something that you'd be interested in, obviously you can get in touch with us and we can work with your institution or we can just suggest ways that you can use the resources already in your institution, you know, to make your life easier as a teacher because ultimately teaching is hard work. And, you know, when you have to do it online, there's all those extra considerations. So the more we can help each other, the better really. One final thing is we've got a feedback form for the session. Would you like me to share that in the chat, Coral? I'm going to just post it here. So we've got a form which you can buy this with some feedback that would be really helpful. And just to say again, thank you very much for your participation and for all the great ideas. There's a lot of feed for thought and please, you know, save the link to the Padlet wall because there's lots of useful ideas on there. And yeah, we hope that, you know, you can manage to build really effective communities with your students and colleagues, you know, in this online space. Yes, thank you so much, everybody, for your participation.