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Learning Action: Sharing Lessons for Pivoting Information Systems Teaching Online: A Community of Practice

  • 1.  Learning Action: Sharing Lessons for Pivoting Information Systems Teaching Online: A Community of Practice

    Posted 07-30-2020 01:06:00 PM

    Dear Colleagues

    This post explains how a new community of practice (CoP) among the Information Management (IM) group at Loughborough University, UK helped to share the online teaching experiences of colleagues. The key learning points for teaching information systems (IS) online that emerged from the CoP are also discussed and two takeaways for IS colleagues wishing to create their own CoP.

    1. Background Context

    Like many on this forum, in March 2020, we faced a sudden nationwide lockdown and closure of our campus. Although our IM group had the experience of supporting our in-classroom face-to-face teaching with electronic resources on a virtual learning environment (VLE), pivoting to wholly online delivery of teaching was entirely new for us. Consequently, we were faced with the challenge of rapidly converting our existing teaching material to a format suitable for online delivery. This change resulted in many IM colleagues learning new online teaching techniques, with little or no training, or prior experience.

    1. Weekly Check-in Meetings

    As the UK lockdown began, we established a weekly video meeting for colleagues to check-in and ensure that social ties and mutual support could be available. These weekly check-ins were deliberately kept to 40 mins and informal in style. The primary aim of these meetings was to ensure colleagues did not feel isolated and could share their frustrations, challenges, and tips. However, a regular topic of conversation emerged concerning how we could overcome challenges associated with moving our teaching online. Topics ranged from sharing experiences with different technologies; supporting online group work for IS; developing IS assessments that students could complete remotely; and getting students engaged with online delivery. While there wasn't always a readily available solution, the sharing of experiences was cathartic and helped to maintain resilience within the group. We recently had our 18th check-in meeting and plan to continue these meetings as we approach the start of the next academic year.

    1. Community of Practice for Online Teaching Workshops

    Our attention is now turning to plan for the next academic year. At Loughborough, it is highly likely that some physical face-to-face teaching will be delivered. However, there is still the need to provide some learning online, especially for those students unable to return to campus. Although the first quarter of 2020 was an intensive and demanding time for IM colleagues, we gained considerable experience in online teaching methods. To share our experiences and distil key lessons, we organised two internal online workshops in June and July 2020.

    The focus of the first workshop was colleagues' experiences of delivering to different cohorts, including MBA, postgraduate and undergraduate students.  The second workshop focused on how teaching sessions were structured. The format of the workshops involved 2-3 colleagues briefly discussing their online teaching experiences and their personal tips and suggestions on what worked and what did not. After the short presentations, an open discussion was facilitated. Each workshop session lasted an hour. We found it was helpful to have a clear topic focus at the start of each workshop. Hence, colleagues were clear on how the session could be useful to them, although the subsequent discussion was free-flowing.

    1. Key Lessons From Our IM Community of Practice for Teaching IS Online

    The remainder of this post discusses the main lessons that emerged from our discussions of rapidly converting our IS teaching to online delivery, and some suggested 'take-aways' for COVID-19 Forum readers wishing to create their own CoP.

    4.1 Setting up the home environment for online teaching

    Many IM academics have moved to complete remote working at home. Therefore, when preparing for delivering online teaching, it is essential to think about how the home environment can be adjusted to create a professional screen appearance.

    Good lighting – try to avoid looking like a kidnapper's hostage!
    Good lighting is vital for successful online delivery, and there is useful advice online that provides straightforward guidance on how to improve lighting (e.g. How to Look Good on a Webcam). These adjustments need not be expensive. One IM colleague explained they were using a desk lamp with a daylight bulb pointed at the floor to ensure that they were well lit on screen.

    Microphone and sound
    A consideration of the best combination of microphone and sound was also essential to ensure that the academic's speech was captured clearly. Some colleagues invested in new webcams and lapel microphones to improve their laptop capabilities.  Some IM colleagues also found the use of headphones useful to focus on the session without distraction. In contrast, others found headphones onerous to wear during teaching sessions.

    What's behind you?
    Consideration also needs to be given to the academic's on-screen background, either by rearranging bookshelves and moving some objects out of shot or using a virtual background. Other areas to reflect on include: wearing professional attire; assessing the risk of external noises that may disrupt the session; and other household members adding concurrent demand on a home Internet connection. Addressing all these elements helped to create a professional on-screen appearance.

    4.2 Establishing Rules Of Engagement

    At the start of a teaching session, it was considered essential to explain how the session would be delivered and set expectations for students. For example, at the beginning of the teaching session, students could be asked to mute their microphones and post questions in the online chat.

    Managing online chat with no support

    A colleague observed that many more established online educators would have a teaching assistant working alongside them to monitor the online chat while the academic was delivering the lecture. However, in the absence of additional support, it was recommended that the IM academic explained to students that they would review questions posted in the online chat after every session.

    During that review, the 'hand up' functionality, available in many video conferencing applications, could be used for students who wished to add a comment or ask a related question. This approach seemed to work well, especially for students that were not comfortable contributing in large groups or whose first language was not English.

    4.3 Designing For Sociability 

    Creating a shared student experience

    A further theme from the workshop discussion was providing time before the session for students to see each other and engage in small talk to create a sense of community and shared experience. This shared experience was achieved by asking all students to turn on their cameras before the start of the session for five to ten minutes of open discussion and chat.

    Consider your online presence throughout the session

    Several colleagues observed that the students were keen for the IM academic leading the session to keep their camera on throughout the teaching session. This visual presence was necessary even when students were completing tasks on their own.

    For example, one IM colleague teaching Python programming would give a 15-minute overview of the programming exercise that the students were to complete. Following the summary, the students were given time to complete the exercise, and the academic would periodically check the online chat and respond to any queries.

    The academic kept their camera on, even when not actively contributing to the session. This constant visual presence seemed to help retain energy for completing the task among the students and provide a visual reminder that the academic was available to answer questions.

    4.4 Duration of Teaching Activities

    Online student discussion - cooking on a high heat

    A further observation from an IM colleague was that it took less time to deliver teaching content, compared to an in-classroom face-to-face session. This change was attributed to students being far more efficient in their interactions during online discussions in a chat room compared to in-class discussions. Group activities tended to take 50 per cent less time. This reduction meant the academic had to be ready to return to content delivery more quickly than in a physical face-to-face session. The experience was compared to permanently cooking on high heat. 

    Lectures should be short

    There was a consensus that lectures should be divided into short chunks, ideally being between 7 and 15 minutes with no lectures or recorded material longer than 20 minutes. One IM colleague had decided to split each topic into a series of short lessons. After every two or three lessons, the colleague would pause to review the online chat for questions. Alternatively, they would ask the students to complete a quick quiz to check their understanding and to maintain engagement.

    Students enjoyed this style of online delivery, and in some cases, it seemed to be more effective than previous physical in-person teaching formats. For example, when teaching programming, the IM academic was able to share their screen to provide a live walkthrough demonstration that the students could follow on their computers. Students would be asked to share their screens when engaging with academic to address coding problems. This screen sharing approach allowed students to feel less exposed when asking for help compared to a physical group environment. The students seemed to prefer the ability to ask for help in a more subtle way, such as posting a question in the online chat. This way of asking questions may allow the student to feel less self-conscious compared to putting up their hand in front of their peers in a computer lab.

    4.5 A Model IS Course Would Look Very Different

    It was also generally agreed that if IM colleagues had been tasked to make a change to online delivery of teaching without the pressure of COVID-19, then the course would look quite different. There would be a strong focus on developing new online pedagogy that combined videos released at various points during the week with a regular group activity. For example, a course taught over ten weeks could have a format of three 20 minute videos released for each week, combined with a range of peer activities, live debates, and group activities, and only two or three large physical face-to-face set-piece lectures with questions.

    1. Take-Aways

    When we entered lockdown several months ago, we did not set out to establish a community of practice. Still, we have found the regular check-in meetings and workshops to be extremely valuable to help support each other through these difficult times. Our recommended takeaways from this post are:

    • Consider regular short check-ins for your IS group to support each other's teaching.
    • Short workshops, as and when required, for sharing experiences, tips and advice for delivering IS teaching online.

    Even once we can return to standard on-campus working patterns, I intend to continue with our regular check-in sessions and workshops and maintain our IM community of practice. We will continue using video meetings because they require so much less effort to attend. The international nature of our faculty and work commitments means that colleagues are often not available for physical face-to-face meetings.  I hope that our new community of practice can be an example of one of the many positive developments that have emerged as a result of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    I am very grateful to Patrick Stacey, Peter Kawalek and Andy Bayley for sharing their online teaching experiences that form the basis for this post and all my colleagues in the IM group at Loughborough University for their resilience, insights, support and professionalism to get our students and us through these challenging times.

    Stay safe, everyone.



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    Crispin Coombs
    Reader in Information Systems and Head of Information Management Group
    Loughborough University
    United Kingdom
    c.r.coombs@lboro.ac.uk
    https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sbe/staff/crispin-coombs/
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