At home, alone, together - University of Melbourne

Dr Joshua Pocius Lecturer in Gender Studies

School of Social and Political Sciences The University of Melbourne

At home, alone, together:Lecture live-streaming to enhance first-year student engagement

Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education Teaching and Learning Summit 2020 ‘A new blended approach? Optimising the best of online and face-to-face learning’ 24-25 November 2020

Biography• BA (Sociology, Film Studies) Monash

University 2012

• BA (Hons.) (Screen & Cultural Studies) University of Melbourne 2013

• PhD (Screen & Cultural Studies) University of Melbourne 2017

• Teaching (UniMelb) 2014-2020 GEND10001, GEND20008, GEND30003, GEND40002, GEND40005, ASIA20003, CULS10001, CULS30002, CULS30004, CULS30005, CULS40001, CULS40011

• Awarded the School of Culture and Communication Excellence in Teaching (Undergraduate) Award in 2018

@JoshuaPocius joshua.pocius@unimelb.edu.au

The Context🎓GEND10001 Sex, Gender & Culture: An Introduction is the

first-year, introductory, compulsory subject for the Gender Studies major 🎓The Gender Studies programme is interdisciplinary

and sits across each of the constituent Schools of the Faculty of Arts 🎓GEND10001 typically enjoys high enrolments (350+

students) with well-attended lectures, including many guest lectures, and facilitates cohort collegiality 🎓Under lockdown, all 12 lectures to be given by the

primary lecturer, and all to be delivered remotely and available to watch online across various timezones

The ConundrumThere are benefits and drawbacks to both live, in-person lecture delivery and remote/online lecture delivery:

Benefits:

Drawbacks:

Live, in-person lectures

Remote/online recorded lectures

Student interactionSense of “being in place and time”

Lecture-as-event

Convenience of accessAbility to pre-recordAbility to edit and finesse contentSeamless inclusion of additional AV content/material

Hard to develop cohort collegialityExacerbates underlying perceptions of teaching staff as distant and disinterestedInsufficiencies in tools and technologies

Lecture recordings often a poor substituteRestricted to the social

organisation of the physical space

Q: How to optimise the experience in a blended learning approach to draw on the benefits of both forms of lecture delivery?

The Experiment👨🏫 Lectures for GEND10001 were largely pre-recorded and

edited with the lecturer digitally superimposed into the lecture slides

👨🏫 At the regular weekly lecture time, the lecture recording was broadcast live via Zoom

👨🏫 At various intervals during the lecture, the lecture recording is paused, and students are broken into break-out rooms to discuss a question or prompt, with open discussion to follow

👨🏫 These interactive moments are recorded and then included in the final lecture recording which is uploaded for those students unable to attend the live broadcast

👨🏫 During the lecture live-stream, the Zoom chat function is used for additional teacher-student interaction

Student interaction

Sense of “being in place and time”Lecture-as-event

Convenience of accessAbility to pre-record

Ability to edit and finesse contentSeamless inclusion of additional AV content/material

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation

Immediacy Immersion ImitationAnatomy of a Lecture:

Final thoughts and considerations:👨🏫 Tools and technologies to enhance immediacy

have improved throughout 2020, but are still not ideal (yet)

👨🏫 It is possible to produce weekly, engaging, high-quality, professionally edited and produced teaching and learning content - but this takes time and specialist skill (lecturer must be producer, editor, director, film crew, etc)

👨🏫 Insecure academic work and casualisation remain a major barrier to effective, efficient teaching practices

Student interaction

Sense of “being in place and time”Lecture-as-event

Convenience of accessAbility to pre-record

Ability to edit and finesse contentSeamless inclusion of additional AV content/material

Immediacy

Immersion

Imitation