Digital vs Analogue: Top digi tools with analogue equivalents

Mentimeter cards against humanity

Everyone loves mentimeter right? You can get interaction from all 300 of your students by asking them to vote on a concept checking question. It’s great, you make sure they are awake, you see if they are listening and you can guide you class around the general understanding of the room. What is not to like?

Well… there has been a snowstorm and there is no electricity, the internet is dead and the Grinch came along and stole christm everyone’s phones. Now what? How will I ever know if all my students are awake? Fear not we have the answer. I piece of paper with 4 colours on it. Red for answer a), blue for answer b) and so on. Simple. I mean you won’t be able to see on account of the snowstorm, lack of electricity and the resulting darkness but you get the gist.

Post-It on a Padlet

Dr Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry were revolutionary men without whom the world would be a very different place. No workplace would function effectively without those little yellow notes stuck to a computer screen to remind you to but milk on the way home. These men are heroes! What is more, without them and their revolutionary sticky notes how would a person cope when lightning strikes the server room leaving you with no internet to present your truly amazing in-class brainstorming session through Padlet? Enter John J Loud and his ball point pen and you have your lesson back on track!

Both the Padlet and the Post-It are ways of running an active learning class, check out Padlet in HE 101 for more ideas and features and post-it note pedagogy for some hints and tricks. In some cases, if you want students to share digital content like videos or journal articles, Padlet and its functions are necessary however if all you want is students to write concise comments and share them – why not the humble post-it? Plus they look cool on your Instagram feed (whatever that it).

When Trello was young it was a chalk board!

Many of the technologies we use today grew out of a need to streamline processes and make them more mobile and more accessible to a scattered population. Generally speaking, these tools were developed for business not education as that is where the best cost/benefit ratio lies but that does not stop them being useful to education. There is a great case study on IMPLEMnT about using Trello (a project management tool for those unfamiliar) to manage PBL teaching and it is brilliant, especially for longer term projects but there is also a certain administrative burden with it. So if you are new to PBL and want a simple solution to manage the task distribution while you concentrate on other things put yourself into an episode of Mad Men, pour self a vodka martini and write out those roles on the whiteboard.

Answers on a post card please

We have all been there, having spent ages creating a google form (other survey tools are available) to collect information from your cohort about their opinions on medical ethics and where certain practices sit and on a moral scale of Mary Poppins to Philip Green.

Then the unthinkable happens and the heatwave that has been gripping the country for the last 2 months finally takes its toll and the sprinkler systems come on knocking out all the electricity and all you are left with is 300 students... There is nothing for it other than to get them to put the proverbial answers on a post card and collect your information that way.

On a slightly less flippant note there is a moral here and that is twofold.

1. Don’t rely entirely on the internet, no-one ever looked silly for having a plan B.
2. 95% of the digital education tools we use now have an analogue equivalent and if you are stepping in to active learning and don’t want the added hassle of learning a new technology as well, don’t. Make it work the old-fashioned way and once you have that sorted then you can tech it up!

5 ways to flip out

When flipping things like lids, pancakes, classrooms and the occasional desk it should be remembered that some things are more appropriate to flip than others. Basic info, anything that students could look up on Wikipedia is arguably better outside the classroom where students can engage with it in their own time leaving the more valuable time, in a room with an expert, to be devoted to higher order thinking skills. It is also worth noting that there is no formula for flipping a classroom, you should do whatever works for you and the ideas I have written here can be mixed up and used in any way that you feel is relevant.

1.     Low tech (flip a lid)

Before your face-to-face session ask your students to read part of a paper (keep it short or they won’t do it) and give them a couple of questions to answer – make sure you warn them you will be checking answers (see previous parentheses). Begin the session by asking your questions. Multiple choice questions can be answered by showing the relevant number of fingers and keeping hands close allows a level of anonymity. Alternatively get the students to bring the answers on a bit of paper and ask them to discuss with each other.

You can then assess how many got it right and react accordingly. If they all got it… move on to something more advanced. If they didn’t give them an explanation. Then instead of lecturing to them give them a task, one that requires them to use the information they were given in the paper.                 Class flipped, students engaged, no tech needed.

2.     Tech it up a tad (flip a table)

That is great, your lesson has been flipped and your students are engaged. Unfortunately you are in trouble with estates because of the 300 tiny pieces of paper on the floor and there were a few students who didn’t really get involved because they were shy or they hadn’t done the reading. Using mentimeter.com you can do the same again but without the paper. In addition it also allows you to see how many have answered, the students see their peers answers (if you want them to) and anonymity is preserved. Plus they get to play with their beloved smartphones. But why bother when I could do it with paper? Because with no extra effort you can ask the same question again in the middle or at the end of your lecture and see if they have changed their minds. Then you can get the data… who doesn’t love data!

Plus it is all reusable.

3.     Cooking on gas (flip a pancake)

Fine, but all they are really doing is engaging with their reading list, shouldn’t they be doing that anyway? Well probably yes, but you didn’t concept check before so it’s a start! But what if you could give them something a bit different? There is a whole internet full of information out there and it doesn’t even have to be very good as long as you teach students to be critical. TED talks are generally very good but often too long. YouTube can be shorter but of questionable providence. Newspapers, well who knows… but all of this information can be used for effective flipping if it is presented alongside the right questions and can be a great way to inform a session. I know, I know, you have used Mentimeter and it was fun but they are getting tired of it. Yes it is indeed time to up your game. Create an online quiz to concept check your information and you can track how many have done it, what answers they have got right and wrong and then you can frame your session accordingly. That is a good plan but I am not using Blackboard!!! OK, OK, I know you hate it and even if it is the most reliable way to collect information there are others. Google Forms, Qualtrics, and a host of other free web based offerings. Most of which I will admit are prettier and easier to use than our beloved Blackboard.

4.     Olympic flipping (double tuck)

We are on a roll now, classrooms are being flipped left, right and centre but I hear a cry of frustration because you just can’t find the information that you want on the internet. That is ok, we can make our own and it is really quite simple.

• Make a talking head video.
• Record a voice over for your slides.
• Record yourself annotating a diagram on a visualizer.
• Do a screen cast of yourself using some specific software.
• Take camera into your lab and film an experiment.

Most of this can be done quite simply on Panopto using college equipment but as always there are other options, some free, some not. Plus once you have made you video it is there to be used for as long as it is relevant (things that go out of date very quickly are probably not worth the bother).

5.     Flying away (loop the loop)

Let’s go fully interactive! Number 5 is probably only for those of you with a learning technologist available or a very large budget but there is nothing wrong with being a little aspirational. There is software out there that can roll all of the above into 1 neat little interactive online package which will give students a guided learning experience before they even reach a classroom. This isn’t as daft as it sounds. If you have been doing this for a while and you have information and resources that work for you and your students enjoy using there is a case for developing something more professional, particularly if it can be used for other purposes, internal or external, or across multiple courses. Cost benefit sometimes works out in your favour and fortune favours the bold so I you have an idea… ask!

The return...

I haven't posted for a while...well... three years but you know, work gets in the way. However I have done a bit of writing for Imperial College and a few other places (ALT, HEA blog). Most of those have been open but most recently I have been writing for Beacon which is a community site for those working in postgraduate medicine but behind an Imperial log-in. These posts were written to engage with academics so I have decided I should share some of them externally. I think some of those academics that are suffering curriculum review will identify with the excruciating nature of my blog. A name from a long time ago when I was new to teaching, learning and reflective practice but the sentiment remains - if it is worth doing it will probably be hard.

At a meeting today one of the presenters likened learning to going on a quest - not just an adventure that you come back from with photographs - but a journey, where the road is the destination not a defined end point and which changes you as you reflect and react to the ideas, people and concepts that you are exposed to along the way.

The learning designer should be enabling the quest for others as well as travelling their own and the really interesting stuff will happen when the two meet. The next step on my quest will be SFHEA and I am looking forward to the adventures I will have on the way!