Remote Teaching - 3 Myths

In this talk we present three pairs of extreme opinions about remote teaching: "pedagogy should drive technology" vs. "technology should drive pedagogy", "you can't build a community without everyone in the same place" vs. "you can't have synchronicity while being fair and equitable", and "asynchronous teaching means making lots of videos" vs. "there is already a video on every concept I might want to teach". For each of these pairs of statements, we will provide practical suggestions for pedagogical approaches, resources, tools, and course components for striking the balance in between. We will also provide a list of resources for teaching technical material, specifically statistics and data science, but applicable to most mathematical sciences.

Transcript

1. TALMO
   June 2020
   REMOTE TEACHING: 3 MYTHS
   MINE ÇETINKAYA-RUNDEL
   Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash
   bit.ly/remote-teach-3-myths
   minebocek
   mine-cetinkaya-rundel
   cetinkaya.mine@gmail.com
   

   View Slide

2. TECHNOLOGY
   SHOULD DRIVE
   PEDAGOGY
   PEDAGOGY
   SHOULD DRIVE
   TECHNOLOGY
   

   View Slide

3. - Consistency within a course is crucial
   - Stick vs. pivot
   - Get early feedback!
   - Consistency across courses is important
   - You have access vs. students have access
   - Advocate for your choices but don’t make them your students’ problem
   - Make required software a breeze to get started with
   - Computing environment, e.g. [RStudio Cloud]
   - Less is more
   - Be judicious with the number of tools
   - You love and use regularly ≠ best choice for course
   - Free to use ≠ free to learn
   TECHNOLOGY / PEDAGOGY
   

   View Slide

4. CAN’T HAVE
   SYNCHRONICITY
   WHILE BEING
   FAIR AND EQUITABLE
   CAN’T BUILD
   COMMUNITY
   WITHOUT EVERYONE
   IN THE SAME PLACE
   AT THE SAME TIME
   

   View Slide

5. - Consider the added value of being synchronous
   - Attending a synchronous lecture: Seeing others’ faces + hearing others’ questions + ?
   - Working on a problem as a small group: Seeing others’ faces + hearing others’ questions +
   thinking together + learning from each other + ?
   - Weigh the added value against the challenges of synchronous engagement
   - Geography
   - Internet access
   - Computer setup
   - Living circumstances
   - Missing one of the most rewarding aspects of being faculty: personal interactions with students
   - Make yourself available, e.g. daily brief office hours? virtual coffee?
   - And remember, this won’t be forever! (I hope!)
   COMMUNITY / SYNCHRONICITY
   

   View Slide

6. THERE IS ALREADY A
   VIDEO ON EVERY
   CONCEPT I MIGHT
   WANT TO TEACH
   ASYNCHRONOUS
   TEACHING MEANS
   MAKING
   LOTS OF VIDEOS
   

   View Slide

7. - It’s ok to not be an expert video maker
   - Build on what you know (animated graphics in R / animations in Keynote, PowerPoint, etc.)
   - Supplement existing videos, instead of recreating them
   - Make a plan and learn from others
   - Think beyond the camera in your laptop [video]
   ASYNCHRONY / MATERIALS
   

   View Slide

8. View Slide

9. - It’s ok to not be an expert video maker
   - Build on what you know (animated graphics in R / animations in Keynote, PowerPoint, etc.)
   - Supplement existing videos, instead of recreating them
   - Make a plan and learn from others
   - Think beyond the camera in your laptop
   - Video is only one of the many options for asynchronous engagement
   - Interactive applets, e.g. [Rossman/Chance Applet Collection], [ShinyEd]
   - Interactive tutorials, e.g. [Primers built with learnr]
   - You can build an asynchronous community
   - Peer review, e.g. [on GitHub]
   - Reading with collaborative note taking, e.g. Google Docs, [Hypothesis], [Perusall]
   - Opt-in virtual communication, e.g. [virtual donut]
   ASYNCHRONY / MATERIALS
   

   View Slide

10. AN INCOMPLETE
    LIST OF
    RESOURCES
    - General:
    - Teaching online on short notice (Greg Wilson) [Webinar]
    [Blog post]
    - A pattern language for screencasting (Chen and Rabb,
    2009) [DOI]
    - Statistics / data science / computing:
    - Tips for teaching tech online, deeply informed by the
    Carpentries (Elizabeth Wickes) [Blog post]
    - Teaching R online with RStudio Cloud (Mine Çetinkaya-
    Rundel) [Webinar] [Blog post]
    - Mapping and planning a live coding workshop (The
    Carpentries) [Blog post]
    - Jumping into digital: Lessons learned while moving live-
    coding workshops online [Webinar]
    - Sharing on Short Notice: How to Get Your Materials
    Online With R Markdown (Alison Hill and Desiree De
    Lyon) [Webinar] [Blog post]
    - Automated feedback in R and Python (Mine Çetinkaya
    Rundel and Tiffany Timbers) [Slides + Demo materials]
    

    View Slide

11. OPPORTUNITIES
    FOR
    LEARNING
    TOGETHER
    - Teaching R online with RStudio Cloud
    - Building interactive tutorials in R
    - Teaching computing with Git and GitHub
    - Leveraging GitHub for collaboration and automation in
    computing courses
    - Other: ___
    ➡ Express your interest at bit.ly/wrkshp-interest
    bit.ly/remote-teach-3-myths
    minebocek
    mine-cetinkaya-rundel
    cetinkaya.mine@gmail.com
    

    View Slide