Online intensives
There are lots of techniques and tools you can use to facilitate online intensive teaching and learning sessions that you would usually do on campus. Here are some examples used and recommended by SCU colleagues from Session 1, 2020 to facilitate different types of intensives. Top tips are provided further below.
Laboratory
Health and Human Sciences
Field trip
Environmental Science and Engineering
Placement
Health and Human Sciences - Nursing online Preparation for Placement (PEP) briefings
Business and Tourism – Internship placements (work integrated learning)
Residential
Residential schools are longer intensives normally held over a few days. Consider pre-recording some of the activities for students to complete before the intensive session.
Law and Justice Studies - Summer school residential
Arts and Social Sciences – Master of Social Work (Professional Qualifying) online residential
Top tips
Be comfortable with any technology tool you intend to use
The number one tip shared from staff across SCU is to be comfortable with any technology tool you intend to use and might recommend for students. Familiarity is important for teaching staff and students to enable them to use any tool effectively. To reduce student anxiety and promote connection, it is a good idea to provide all the support information about a new technology at the beginning, so everyone feels comfortable and confident. Online teaching success is enhanced when staff conduct team meetings beforehand to practise how to use the tools, create breakout rooms and other aspects. This is an opportunity to talk through strategies, and how to manage and facilitate teaching delivery and the roles required.
Several resources are highlighted below as key educational principles to keep in mind when designing and delivering intensives. Although specific tools are mentioned, the techniques can always be tweaked to suit the situation.
Connect with students
Providing social presence includes strategies for creating an online community to encourage student participation, and enhance and maintain social presence.
- Check-in frequently with students before, during and post an intensive session to promote a sense of engagement and connection.
- Separate Blackboard Collaborate rooms can be created for campus-related consultation times to provide students with the flexibility to login, to gain assistance and to connect with others.
Getting students involved
Encourage student participation in Collaborate Ultra by using polling, asking students to share contributions (links and videos) in the chat space, use the whiteboard to work through problems together, and include group work by using breakout groups.
- Offer a variety of experiences during intensive sessions to keep students engaged.
- Rather than holding one large continuous two-hour session as they can be hard for everyone to sustain, hold smaller sessions with regular breaks.
- Use breakout rooms to facilitate smaller group involvement.
- Staff have stated that having at least one student in a class who is willing to turn on their microphone and share makes a huge difference to the online class energy.
- To encourage student participation across the class, ask a question where all students post their answer at the same time when prompted.
- Use polls as a group participatory activity.
- Multiple choice questions both engage students and provide discussion points for teachers to work with.
Teaching online
Online teaching includes key strategies such as creating a teaching presence, avoiding cognitive overload by chunking learning content, and fostering interaction and communication among students and teachers (social presence).
- Include and encourage pre-readings and activities for students to complete in their own time in preparation for intensives.
- Convert all PowerPoints to PDF format before uploading online to help avoid potential bandwidth restrictions and problems.
Facilitation tools and techniques for large events
Facilitation of large events provides ideas on how to prepare students before they enter the online space, and how to facilitate online discussions.
- Include extra support from colleagues during intensives to help facilitate the session.
- Organise a host to facilitate the session with moderator/s from the discipline to respond to chat space conversations.
- Consider including guest speakers from time to time to add a different perspective to the session.
Technology tools and recording tips
Within a Blackboard site, any number of Collaborate Ultra sessions can be created and set up at different times or concurrently. Each session can cater for up to 500 participants. The lecturer or moderator can record the session. When using breakout rooms, keep one student group in the main room to ensure an active recording for students watching the video later. Refer to Teaching in the Blackboard environment and join the live support sessions such as the Friday Free-for-all held in MySCU.
Zoom meeting rooms and Zoom webinar rooms have different functions to manage these different types of events. In both spaces, make sure the host schedules the meeting to record the session, or provides a co-host with permission.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all colleagues who contributed practical tips and strategies used in this resource.