The Covid-19 health crisis has made remote teaching a reality for all, but not without difficulty. At our University, our students have been learning remotely for almost a year and the successive lockdowns have taken their toll. At the start, we battled with technical difficulties, poor Internet connections and insufficient IT equipment while we struggled to isolate ourselves from others.
The Covid-19 health crisis has made remote teaching a reality for all, but not without difficulty. At our University, our students have been learning remotely for almost a year and the successive lockdowns have taken their toll. At the start, we battled with technical difficulties, poor Internet connections and insufficient IT equipment while we struggled to isolate ourselves from others.
We were then quickly faced with even more serious challenges: students confined to tiny bedrooms with intermittent wifi, some dealing with economic and social difficulties, sometimes worsened by psychological strain.
As lecturers, we have all had to get adapted and tweak our teaching methods to compensate for the constraints of remote learning. At Université Paris-Saclay, we have tried several new tools and methods, testing them with our students and sharing them among ourselves. Here are five tips that have improved (in part at least) our daily lives as lockdown lecturers.
Using platforms differently
During the first lockdowns, we often had to keep things simple. Our lectures were mainly us commenting PowerPoint presentations via our microphones. However, we soon realised that this format had its limits, regardless of the platform used (Zoom, Collaborate, Teams, Meet, etc.) and that students were becoming weary.
This was when we discovered OBS, a software originally used by YouTubers to give their videos more animation. OBS allows speakers to switch easily between different shots, sometimes showing their face full-screen, a notebook they are writing on, their face next to a slide or a video.
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