Seven know-hows for conducting online lectures from CLASSUM’s Best Class
It’s been almost a year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and educators are preparing for their third term of remote teaching.
Are you used to online lectures by now? Or are you still trying to figure out how to improve online interactions and increase participation for the rest of the term?
Administrators from the 2020 Spring term Best Class on CLASSUM (based on teaching activity including posts, comments, and interactions) have some know-how to share! We’ve categorized their tips into seven important factors to consider for anyone new to CLASSUM.
1. Use a uniform channel
“All of our class communication is done on CLASSUM.”
Before COVID-19, most educators weren’t used to teaching in an online environment. With this unfamiliar teaching format came a number of different options. While brick and mortar classrooms allow us to gather in a single place, online classes lead to too many choices: email, LMS, social media…the list could go on. With so many communication options, students can easily miss out on important information or become lost and confused.
This is where an all-in-one platform like CLASSUM comes into play.
Without any particular know how, we easily conducted all aspects of our class through CLASSUM.
- Professor ChaI uploaded the orientation guide from CLASSUM to our class SNS as a guide on how to use it.
- Professor KimI was able to communicate with all of the students and answer their questions on CLASSUM
- Professor Kim
The orientation guide mentioned above is an idea derived from the professor of CLASSUM’s 2019 Best Class. “During the initial orientation lecture, I asked the students to ask all of their questions via CLASSUM,” he said. This simple request turned out to be crucial to his students’ success via CLASSUM. Since then, we began providing a simple orientation guide to all of our users. The guide explains how to access CLASSUM and emphasizes the idea that all class communication should be conducted through CLASSUM. It is provided as a PPT file and can be easily edited for the purposes of any course. As it turns out, the 2020 Best Class was also taught by a professor who took advantage of this resource.
2. Respond/React
“The most important thing is familiarity”
At the beginning of the semester, it’s important for students to use CLASSUM frequently and become familiar with it, so make sure to use the interaction buttons (Curious, Clap, Heart) generously and respond quickly.
Millennial and Gen Z students are used to using emojis, almost treating them as a second language. Try to interact with them as much as possible and communicate by uploading posts and comments or even just clicking the interaction buttons.
As the students become more comfortable with CLASSUM, they will begin asking and answering more questions on their own. According to CLASSUM data, during the second or third week, when the exams and assignments have started flowing in, the response rates rapidly increase as well.
After uploading a video, I try to talk to students casually in the chat room, just saying “hello” or even talking about the weather to let them know that I’m available. This seems to help them leave comments more easily.
- Professor Park
The most important thing is familiarity. I think there is a big difference between posting to a new platform and posting to one that I’m used to, even if it’s the same content. So I encourage the students to comment as much as possible to quickly get used to the new platform.
- Professor Shin
I found that one of the best ways to improve the class was for the students to give feedback to each other by responding or reacting to their classmates’ posts.
- Professor Kim
I tried to set up a time to check up on CLASSUM every day.
- Professor Park
One advantage of using CLASSUM is that the students interact with each other more by using the interaction buttons.
- Professor Byeon
3. Conduct group activities and debate sessions on CLASSUM
“Thanks to interactions and chatting, students don’t seem to have many complaints about online classes.”
When COVID-19 forced classes online, many students were unhappy with the situation and the quality of their new online courses. Some students expressed their frustrations in online communities, saying things like “I wish the lecturer would show his face just once” and “I don’t pay tuition to take these kinds of lectures.”
However, the professors and students who use CLASSUM have expressed a different sentiment, finding that CLASSUM is effective in compensating for the short-comings of online classes. Following a similar structure to that of in-person classes, they set times to hold class discussions or conduct debates through comments on CLASSUM and encourage students to vote for opinions they sympathize with through the interaction buttons.
The professors recommend dividing the class into debate groups and creating a post where each group can debate or creating a post for each topic of discussion. Another option is to create a new class for each group to debate in.
After conducting discussions and debates through CLASSUM, the professors realized that this method offers an interesting advantage. During offline classes, each student can only hear what his or her own group members have to say and the professor can only listen in on one discussion at a time. But when the discussions are held on CLASSUM, both students and professors can look at any group’s discussion. Plus, there is a record of everything that was said, so they can come back and see what was said at any point in the future.
On CLASSUM, I created a category for each group (#group1, #group2, etc.) and asked the students to upload their work with pictures. Rather than organizing and submitting everything at once, they submitted what they worked on each day when they went to work in their groups. This way, everyone could see each other’s posts and felt more comfortable uploading freely and asking more questions. This was the biggest advantage. Students could relate to each other based on what they saw in their work.
- Professor Son
After uploading the class materials, I met with the students every 30 minutes to discuss their questions. The chat room is really useful for online communication and seems to reduce the students’ complaints about online classes.
- Professor Yu
Rather than having just one classroom, we added several other classrooms for group discussion in addition to the main classroom, where the groups would present their results. This way, everyone could participate actively in small group discussion and the class content could be based on those discussions.
- Professor Kim
I conducted the class using a mix of uploaded lectures, chatting on CLASSUM, and additional activities on Zoom. The discussions on CLASSUM were very useful to improve and deepen the students’ learning.
- Professor Lee
4. Submit tasks and assignments on CLASSUM
“Using CLASSUM to submit assignments allows students to learn from and relate to each others’ submissions, helping them feel more comfortable in the class.”
When learning something new, it’s more effective to learn a little bit each day than to try to learn everything at once. The same principle applies to using CLASSUM most effectively. To increase participation, use CLASSUM frequently for small tasks to help students become familiar and comfortable with the platform.
For example, CLASSUM can be used to submit small assignments and run weekly quizzes and the unique chatting features make the dull process of submitting reports more enjoyable and ultimately increases class participation.
Collecting weekly assignments via CLASSUM helped raise student participation.
- Professor Shin
I split my lecture videos into smaller pieces and added short quizzes to increase student engagement.
- Professor Han
I use CLASSUM for trial evaluations. Before using CLASSUM, trial evaluations were a burden for students because they had to submit reports and presentation materials and spend extra time organizing their trial sets. With CLASSUM, report submission is easier and less demanding. Having access to each other’s observation logs also helped the students to learn from and relate to their classmates.
- Professor Son
5. Reward participation
“The number of questions students answer is reflected in their participation score.”
Professors say rewards such as participation points or coffee coupons helped boost class participation. Using CLASSUM’s Statistics features, you can see how often students answer each other’s questions and how actively they participate in class.
KAIST Professor Hwang Eui-jong, who is a CLASSUM user himself, shared his thoughts on the Statistics function, saying “From an educator’s point of view, it is very important to know how much the students are interacting with each other, and on CLASSUM this information is conveniently available.”
The number of questions students answer is reflected in their participation score
- Professor Hwang
I often give out coffee coupons for thoughtful questions and good responses.
- Professor Han
6. Share class materials
“We provide a diverse set of reference materials”
While books were often the only materials used in in-person classes, switching to online lectures made it much easier to use a greater variety of materials such as Youtube videos and online articles to improve students’ learning experience.
If you limit yourself to uploading only the recorded video lectures, students are less likely to engage resulting in only one-way communication. To compensate for some of the shortcomings of online classes and take advantage of a positive aspect of the new format, professors recommend using CLASSUM to share a variety of types of insightful class materials.
I provide the students with a diverse set of resources
-Professor Im
7. Create a similar experience to offline lectures
“I think it was helpful to add details that mirror aspects of face-to-face classes to the video lectures”
The professors of CLASSUM’s 2020 Best Class said that adding certain aspects to online classes that mirror offline classes helped to increase participation. For example, they tried to minimize the sense of distance created by online lectures by including things like scenes of themselves writing down notes and the sound of papers flipping to help students feel more like they were in an actual classroom.
One of the main drawbacks of face-to-face lectures is that students are affected by how far from the podium they sit; those in the front tend to learn better than those in the back. However, in an online setting, every student can have the experience of sitting close to the front. Paying attention to the small details in these lectures helps bring them to life and improve the student experience even more.
I think capturing the details of offline classes as closely as possible in the video was helpful.
- Professor Han
I used my cell phone, a tripod, and a selfie stick to take a video of my printed presentation slides and filmed myself taking notes on them. The video featured the sounds of writing with a pen and highlighter and the sound of the pages flipping to make the lecture feel more realistic.
- Professor Park
Bonus tip: think from the students’ point of view
“When preparing my class, I always make sure to consider the student’s perspective”
We have received a wide variety of advice from successful CLASSUM users, but one of the most common suggestions was to think from the students’ perspective when planning courses. It’s essential to consider how students will use the features of CLASSUM and consider the circumstances under which they will be participating when preparing the flow of the course
Planning ahead is crucial. Systemic preparation of the flow of the class including video lectures and question and answer sessions is essential. When preparing my class, I always make sure to consider the student’s perspective.
- Professor Kim
I took my time to learn all the features of CLASSUM to ensure that I was making full use of it in my online lectures.
- Professor Shin
I always make sure to clearly express the overall plan for a one-hour class to the students and make sure I am able to connect with them directly through video call whenever necessary
- Professor Kim
Thank you to the CLASSUM 2020 spring Best Class professors for sharing their tips to help others improve their online education experience.
During the first months of the pandemic last winter, we saw many educators adjusting to online classes. Guidelines from governments and institutions were constantly changing and school re-opening dates were repeatedly delayed. Ultimately, all classes were moved online and teachers had to quickly switch to virtual platforms. Educators made inquiries about CLASSUM day and night.
Seeing professors doing their best to support students after so many abrupt changes to the situation was truly inspirational. Their suggestions for improvement always impressed us and inspired us to work harder to meet their requests and improve our service.
As the COVID-19 situation continues to evolve and affect our daily lives, we at CLASSUM are proud to be part of the continuing effort to improve the post-COVID-19 educational experience. We look forward to learning even more from our users and would like to thank all of the educators and students who continue to work hard in these trying times.
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