 welcome to today's session. I've got a background noise coming on here. Hi I'm Debbie Bath and I am... Hello everybody and welcome to today's session. It's all going crazy. There was me a second. Yay okay we're back. I'm Debbie Bath and I am filling in for our chair who hasn't quite managed to to make it here. So if you just bear with me a second I'm going to add some of our fellow speakers to the stream for you so we can say hello and I'm not all by myself. Here we go. There they are. Hi. Hello everybody. Okay welcome to today's session. We are being sponsored by a sponsor today so I'm just going to share my screen for you and then we'll go through that and then I'm going to hand over to Jane. Okay so here we go. Bear with me a second. She says trying to find it. There we go. Filling in quickly. Great. I'm hoping you can see some slides. Excellent. Jane can you see the slides there? Not yet. I can't see them. Okay. Good time. Try it again. Here we go. Right we should be able to see some slides now. No slides for me. Oh dear. Thank you guys. Oh this is working really really well. Okay so both me a second. Why are the slides not working? That's not really good. Okay. Go. They're up there. They're up there for me anyway so I'm going to talk away assuming that they are still up there. So this is the first one we've done this morning. So bear with me a second while we try and get through these things. That is just a quick reminder to tell you about the Alt C Discord social space which I know that you've seen already. And then we do need to say a big huge thank you to our sessions sponsors who are open LMS. So I'm putting their slide up on there now and I'm really hopeful that somebody can see this on YouTube. But we are really really grateful to our session sponsors. So if you bear with me a second we would like to just remind you that recordings will be available from the interactive program as soon as they become available and they will be made openly available after the event. We're obviously would like to remind you as well about our netica and code of contact to ensure that everyone can enjoy the conference safely. Okay. So I'm hoping that you did see some slides there and apologies if I'm just talking and they're not there. But we'll sort it out later. I'm going to hand over to Jane. Here we go. And crack on Jane. Thanks very much. Morning everyone. If I could have my slides up please, Deb. So we can start the presentation. Thank you. Lovely. Okay. So morning. I'm Jane Secker and I'm being joined by Julie Vos and we are at City University. And we also have two of our students with us to talk about teaching development during the digital pivot. And the experience is that our students who are city staff had with the shift to online learning in 2020 and onwards. Okay. So just very quick intro. You may well know us both. Julie, would you like to say hello to everyone? Hi there. I'm Julie Vos. I'm head of digital education at City University of London. I've just been appointed as a senior lecturer in educational development. So working in Jane's team. And that is fabulous news. And I'm Jane Secker, senior lecturer in educational development at City. And we teach an MA in academic practice. We also have various dropping off points where you can get a PG diploma, PG cert. But it's a postgraduate level course. And we're going to talk a bit about the digital pivot of this course. The modules are aimed at our staff primarily. We do have some externals come on them. And traditionally, we taught in face to face teaching days. So a typical 15 credit module might have three to four days where staff would come in. In March 2020, there were a couple of our modules running. A key to this was the module technology enabled academic practice. And the sort of digital pivot and the techniques that were used on that module that we had to adopt very, very rapidly were actually rolled out to the other modules on the master's program. One advantage, I guess, of the technology enabled academic practice was it was designed in some ways as a blended learning course, although it did still have face to face teaching and quite a number of workshops. So we had quite a lot of challenges on our hands. And this was my desk as it appeared on the 17th of March 2020. Julie and I were due to teach a workshop. We had a whole range of resources went into the office actually only a couple of weeks ago to find it like a scene from the Marie Celeste with everything dated 17th of March actually there laid out on my desk, because that was obviously shifted online very, very rapidly. On that date, you all know what happened on the 23rd of March. City had sort of anticipated this. So we weren't advised to go into the campus. But obviously, we had a teaching day lined up actually the week before this and had to take a very, very quick decision about what we were going to do with that module. It being about technology, it seemed crazy to bring people onto the campus. And so we put a number of things in place. We just like now, I guess, to hear a bit about what your experience was. I mean, I have to say my experience was probably in some sort of extremes of kind of chaos, panic, you know, fairly kind of rapidly having to react to this sort of evolving situation. But if there's something you know, you might want to share from your experience, I mean, it would be good if you want to pop a number into the chat as well of where you think it was. Has it been a great experience? I think for those of us who've worked in learning technology for over 20 years, as I've revealed this morning, it's kind of, you know, never have I felt so valued, but never have I felt so stressed and overworked as well. So we'd really like to hear from you. And maybe we can pick up some of the comments as we go along in the chat. So I think, yeah, I think I think my people are probably going to put themselves somewhere in the middle. Yeah, opportunities to grab Tim, definitely, definitely. But obviously, amazing, traumatic, all at the same time. Keep sharing that. So that's that's really great to hear from you. I'm just going to tell you a little bit as you as we were sort of short of time about the structure of the module when we shifted online, one of the things because we've had these traditional sort of teaching days was I felt clearly we weren't going to spend that day online and we needed to divide this into chunks. So with the module we decided we would do a morning synchronous teaching session and an afternoon one sort of at the end of the day to kind of check in with people. What we planned then was a whole range of asynchronous activities, some of which were to be carried out in the in the break. And there was an opportunity to come along to a surgery session for half an hour if you have any problems with that. We also had quite a number. So we shifted some of the activities to pre course activities or pre teaching day activities. So have a look at this video, do some reading, post an idea to the forum. Some of them we shifted afterwards as well. But a couple of things that I found really helpful to keep everyone on track was updating people with a once a week email of kind of what's going on this week, what have we done and what's coming up next week and having a really clear schedule on Moodle. And we recorded all our synchronous teaching so that we could share that because we were very conscious that people were getting all sorts of clashes and not necessarily able to to attend. The the content, I guess, of the course, as I said, it was designed in many ways. It had been around this module for more than 10 years, I think, or around 10 years with various amendments I've made, but it had been designed to have a whole range of blended learning online activities. And some of the kind of really key things that have been built into this module from the really early days when Neil Sumner put this together was about building an online community and focusing on learning design. And I think those were two topics that we saw at City really resonating with with staff. But it's quite a heavy module. It was actually it is actually I say it was because it's actually been suspended, it's actually been withdrawn and we're launching a new sort of lighter, brighter, fresher version for next year that's going to be 15 credits. But yeah, it's had a lot of assignments, teaching days, webinars and taught over the period of about six months. So quite an intensive course. Julie, you're going to tell us a bit about some of the models that particularly around learning design that we found people found useful. Yes, so as part of the module, the students were introduced to learning theories. So Laura Lard's conversational framework, Vengas, communities of practice, and they engage with these via a discussion forum post. We also introduced them to some learning design models, so ABC and Julie Sammons five step model. And then we introduced during the February iteration because of the pandemic, the present apply review approach, which was something that City adopted during the last year to support the move online. It was felt to be a bit more sort of lightweight than some of the other models and easier for people to get to groups with. So the students were asked to reflect on these models and carry out a group activity using the present apply review to plan a teaching session. So it was really quite sort of practical and very timely for them to get to do this. So next slide, please, Jane. So the next thing was the TAP project. So this was the main project and consisted of 50% of the module marks. It was a two and a half thousand word essay or project report. And the students were asked to plan and design for using an educational technology tool within their professional context, which drew upon the theories and the principles that we explored and one or more of the modules that we'd shown them or exposed them to. We also asked them to think about the issues of inclusivity, accessibility, good practice, design principles and reflecting on how what we've learned in the module influenced their project and then ask them how they would evaluate their their intervention or their use of the technology. Thanks, Julie. So now comes the exciting part when we're going to go over to two of our cohort that who took our module. I'm really delighted that we've got Xuanwei Li, who's a postdoctoral research associate in our School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering. And we have Jim Grice, who's a visiting lecturer in our School of Journalism. And I think that Xuanwei, you're going to talk first and just tell us a bit about your experience of taking the module over during the kind of the digital pivot. Hello, everyone, I'm Chen Hui. Yeah, and it's a great pleasure for me to share my experience on undertaking this technology-abled academic practice module and my project design. And I was delivering an experimental live about fluid mechanics in 2019 and 20 academic year. When the lockdown occurred in March 2020, we had to shift the class online rapidly. It's extremely challenging to adapt that laboratory course online. So in this type module, I choose the topic of the project design as online labs. And this project aims to investigate on how to deliver the online the laboratory course online, facilitated with the technology to such as module, zoom and virtual labs. And the structure of my project design is outlined by the present applied review model because the lab session is part of the module. So the present applied review model it fits that type of short teaching activity very well. And in addition, JD Simon's five-stage model is also integrated to the present applied review model to enhance interaction or learning, communication and engagement. And this technology-abled academic practice module helps me to be open-minded to a variety of technology able teaching measures and tools. And also I obtained a coherent and detailed knowledge on teaching series and their implementation to course design. And furthermore, it's a brilliant learning experience to build an online learning community and learn from each other in the community. And that's all what I want to share today. Thank you. Thanks, Shanwai. That's that's excellent. And yeah, definitely we try to model good practice with that idea of being a learning community for those of us on the module. And Jim, can we hear from you? And thanks very much for joining us to talk a bit about your project and experiences on the module. Yeah, thank you, Jane. My key particular thing that I looked at with this, which I was useful in studying the module as a part of studying it, but also then applying that to my teaching practice was that, as you can see, I teach journalism. I specifically teach broadcast journalism. And a lot of that involves practical skills. So I teach people video, filming and editing, primarily, but also audio as well. Traditionally, this is workshop sessions, which was the challenge and the interesting point here with working with the with the digital pivot. The specific things I think, as Judy mentioned earlier and the specific challenge, both probably studying the classes as well and then trying to take this into my professional practice was really about creating a successful community of practice because that had always been how the workshop sessions have worked best, flooded and face to face because you often found that people adapt to the technology better than others. Some people already have greater prior knowledge. So therefore, you would find that the successful classes were the ones where the students would start to explore themselves and also start to do a certain extent, perhaps to support and collaborate amongst themselves. And so what I particularly looked up was to try and replicate that online as much as I could. Therefore, where I went and ended up going with this very much influenced by a lot of the the teaching that we did on the course was to look at using apps, particularly because it was easier and I was actually practically able to do it. But also the other reason as well was because I found with some work, particularly with Flipgrid as a video sharing platform, it created a nice, slightly informal and very student-centred area for students that were able to compare that each other's work, collaborate and also offer feedback. And then also take it in a direction where I wasn't expecting them to take it, actually, which was that they actually very much started making this space. They saw this kind of liminal space as something that was very much their own and perhaps slightly separate from a traditional teaching relationship. They started using commenting on each other's works well outside of the class and also started using examples of work that they shared on Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a little bit modeled really on TikTok, I think. It's very easy to upload videos and so they were able to upload practical exercises that I'd set them to do. But what was interesting was there were students that were perceived to have done well. Their work started getting viewed exponentially higher than the other students within the class because the other students started using that work as a benchmark for their own work. So they started using it as examples of best practice and actually moved and developed within themselves, within the group. So that was certainly the key finding, I think, from the work that I did in this particular area. Certainly, in terms of the theory, I found perhaps the thing that worked best was Sam's five-stage model because very much around the ideas of access and motivation and then creating this sense of online socialization actually was really interesting to actually see it start to appear in front of my eyes in some way, step out of being a theory that you were looking at actually starting to see how it actually works in reality. Thank you, Jim. That's excellent. Thanks very much. Really interesting. So we're really interested in hearing from you. We know we've got limited time left. We've set up a jam board where we'd like to hear a bit about other strategies that you might have used. Julie and I just had a couple of quick reflections, I guess, to share on thinking about the role of a more structured program such as the MA in academic practice and the time that that takes up versus staff literally need to teach tomorrow and they've got to get up to speed and they're very focused then on the tech skills versus understanding some of the theories. Julie, do you want to say anything about any of our observations there? Yeah, I think we tried to provide as many opportunities for staff to engage, as I'm sure other institutions did. So we had an online teaching toolkit which talked them through the present apply review approach which included lots of case studies. We ran a lot of one-off workshops. We even recorded them and then some of them were more drop-in sessions where people could ask, having watched the recording. We ran a lot of drop-ins, especially in the early stages because we found staff just wanted someone to talk to. I think that was the key thing or key takeaway for us was staff felt very isolated suddenly being thrown online and not having their normal support network. So often staff would drop in just for a chat or just to speak to someone. And yet we did help them with ed tech stuff but also just talking more generally and providing that sort of point of contact. So yeah, we tried to provide as much as we could to staff in different formats. So yeah, it's over to you. Pop things into the comments. We'll have a look at the Jamboard. We've got a bit of further reading for you but I think Deb, so we can stop sharing our slides and just get everyone up on the screen if anyone wants to ask any questions. So yeah, I mean, I think it'd be good to just try and get the... Have you got the Jamboard up, Julie? I was just wondering if we could share that with people. Have you got... I can't see it if you've shared it yet, Julie. Oh, great. Okay, let me try and do that. She's just shared it. Yeah, here we go. I can see Javier was saying about the human dimension and I think absolutely being there for people and having like drop-ins seem to be a massively important thing at Citi. So there was kind of always time set aside. We did all sorts of different... I mean, I just felt like I never stopped in some ways but all sorts of different opportunities so that staff always felt like they were... There was somebody sort of there if they needed help, whether it's because they were in a panic and they were trying to do something or if they just actually wanted to sort of check in and have a bit of a chat. I certainly also found myself talking a lot more and getting to know my cohort who came on the module much, much better than the students that I taught face-to-face which I think was quite ironic but I think that was sometimes because they would want to have a chat with me and they would then also... We would sort of share concerns about generally what was kind of going on in the world because it was a really scary time. So, yeah. I think it was like... Yeah, at the beginning of every session you always sort of ask people to check in with a sort of scale of one to five, how are you feeling? Which I think you would necessarily normally do in a teaching session but because of the situation people didn't actually... Yeah, people opened up and shared a bit more than maybe they would normally. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. And trying to help put people in touch with each other so that they could support each other was something that we tried to do. Okay, we've got a question. Question from Alex. How did you manage feedback in an online environment? Do you feel students engaged more or less in an online format? Feedback, as in, do you mean sort of from their assignments, Alex? So, you know, or just general, more sort of formative feedback? I mean, certainly we didn't change massively the way that we would mark pieces of work and give feedback. One of the things the external examiners on the MA always say is that we give huge amounts of feedback. We do give that in written format. I guess one of the things I noticed because staff are working on a project and they get the opportunity to submit a formative draft is that many of them did take up the opportunity if they didn't understand any of my feedback of just arranging like a quick teams call with me. So I did a lot more one-to-ones to kind of clarify what written feedback meant because I think providing it in that format sometimes means that, you know, I think what I've written is really clear, but actually they just sort of, what do you want me to do with this project? How do I get this to be a better mark kind of thing? Which I can't tell the answer to that, but, you know, I think that is easier to convey when you talk to somebody online. So lots and lots of one-to-ones for feedback. Okay, well, I think we're out of time, aren't we? Thanks for coming. Please add more stuff to our Jamboard. Julie and I want to add some more, want to write something up after this as well. So we'd love to hear from you. We're hoping to write a blog post about this. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you ever so much to all our speakers and thank you again to our sponsor. And I hope the slide went up there okay for you. And I'm going to stop the recording now. But thank you ever so much. Okay, take care.