How do I transform my lecture material for online teaching?
While Zoom rapidly became the top tool for synchronous sessions and live teaching in 2020, many teachers have also looked to incorporate online, pre-recorded video in their subjects. A lot of advice has been gathered, tools tested and problems solved – but overwhelmingly, one of the top questions we’ve been asked is...
How do I successfully transform my lecture material into an online format?
Understanding the lecture
Firstly, we usually invite people to stop and reflect on the lecture as a format. While there may be as many lecturing styles as there are lecturers, if you bring to mind your favourite lecturer, they probably use a wide range of approaches to keep their lectures lively. This may involve a dynamic mix of presentation, demonstration, critical viewing, anecdote, discussion, collaboration and problem-solving activities – and even the odd joke and anecdote.
When trying to convert material from a live lecture to a pre-recorded video, the results are often underwhelming, and the student is presented with a playlist of overly long narrated slideshows, with none of the variety of a good lecture.
Unbundling your lecture
One way we help teachers to overcome this is to encourage them to break down the lecture into chapters, map these chapters to a variety of easy to produce video styles, then intersperse these chapters with alternative activities to create a module.
If you have access to a prior lecture capture recording, you can get a head start by accessing an automatic transcription. This should help you identify the logical breaks, and can give you a head-start when it comes to scripting. You can find out more about automatic transcription in Lecture Capture here: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/news/articles/automatic-speech-recognition
Remapping your lecture: an example
Let’s take a hypothetical example of a 90min lecture on the history of art. The typical lecture involves about 10min of subject updates and housekeeping, then 40min dedicated to the introduction of key ideas historical context for the week. After a short 10min break, the lecture moves onto the detailed analysis of 4 famous works of art, accompanied by high resolution images. Finally, the lecturer likes to conduct a 20min Q&A with students. How would we translate this to an online format?
- Recording an introduction
- Creating a reading activity
- Recording a discussion video
- Creating a discussion activity
- Recording a narrated video
- Creating a quiz activity
- Tying it all together
During the process of rethinking our lecture, we have taken a 90min classroom performance, unbundled the concepts and contents of the lecture, created three pre-recorded videos using three simple to produce formats, and interspersed three activities using tools in the LMS.
When moving this content online as prerecorded video, we first take out all housekeeping and present it as LMS text so that it can be easily updated. Next, we plan a topic introduction video – presented directly to the web camera – and embed that in our module to set the context for the week. You can access some advice on how to self-record a great introductory video here: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/video-and-media/producing-your-own-video/self-recording-like-a-pro
After that, we might insert an active reading activity. Readings can be made available to students through Readings Online. Students should know what they need to read, when they need to read it by, and why. This can be well contained in a reading guide, and you can make the activity more active by including activities that involve Perusall, Canvas discussions or quizzes etc. Here’s some more information if you’re interested in trying Perusall: https://lms.unimelb.edu.au/learning-technologies/perusall
Next, we might want to map part of our lecture content to a discussion or interview video. A recorded interview can be great way to expand on a topic, and to interrogate newly introduced concepts from a range of angles. If you’re having trouble finding a suitable interviewee, you could even arrange for someone to interview you. Learning Environments have put together a technical guide showing you how to record and embed an interview using Zoom: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/additional-resources-to-support-moving-online/how-do-i-deliver-my-lecture-online/self-recording-lectures-on-your-own-device/how-to-record-a-video-interview-using-zoom
After a pre-recorded discussion video, you might want to insert a discussion activity for students, and explicitly link it to the content that has been covered in your intro video, reading activity and video discussion. You can find advice on creating meaningful discussions in your subject here: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/digital-assessment/assess-meaningful-participation-in-online-discussions
For the second half of our lecture, the image-led nature of the content suggests a series of short, narrated videos – one for each artwork – would suit. There are multiple tools available for recording narrated image or slide shows, but the simplest might be to use the Lecture Capture tool Echo Personal Capture. Instructions on how to record a narrated slideshow using Echo can be found here: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/additional-resources-to-support-moving-online/video-audio-recording-editing-uploading/record-edit-narrated-slideshow-presentation-using-universal-capture
It’s often good to tie together the individual learning activities within a module with a quiz activity, and Learning Environments has collated advice on different digital assessment tools for use during semester: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/advice-and-support-for-staff-moving-to-online-teaching-learning-and-assessment/assessment-options-for-semester-1-2020
Our final advice is to (re) discover the narrative from your lecture. A well-designed online module should flow from activity to activity, and good design can really help keep momentum and cohesion for your students. Some great advice on organizing and adding structure to your Canvas content: https://le.unimelb.edu.au/news/articles/canvas-modules-what-are-they-and-how-do-i-use-them
