— I'm Timothy Greig. I live in Wellington, New Zealand, and work
for AIM Proximity. I'm interested in game design, information architecture, librarianship, and transmedia storytelling. Updates? — Try the RSS.

I’ve just finished up a round of lectures for INFO525, our ‘Intro to Technology‘ course in the Information Studies Programme. Our programme has a significant distance component – which for this paper means that each lecture is given three times:

• on campus for students studying here at Kelburn (Monday afternoon),
• online via audio conferencing for students all over New Zealand (Monday evening),
• and via telephone to a group of students who meet at Auckland City Library (Thursday evening).

It’s the second time I’ve taught for this paper, but teaching in the course this time around really got me thinking about how really different the three lectures are to teach – each with their own advantages and challenges.

On Campus, Wellington:
I have more ‘interruption-style’ interactions with students because students can read my body language and see I’m open to conversation with them. This is great because all our students have their own experiences to share, and the majority of them work in the profession already; there’s lots of good practical examples to be gained. Of course, this can also mean we get through less planned lecture content, and sometimes we end up having rather off-topic discussions. In other areas, like playing videos, running my slides, and just ‘being’ in the room – I feel I have much more control. I can, for example, cut a video clip short, or mute it and talk over it. I can use a presenter gadget to control my slides, meaning I can walk around the room, or sit wherever I like. I feel like more of my ‘personality’ comes through in these lectures than in any of the other formats.

Online, Nationwide:
I remember as an online student feeling quite scared to talk on the mic. I think this comes from not being able to see everyone else, and because it’s hard to work out when and how it is appropriate to interject – especially with a lecturer like me who talks a mile a minute! As a teacher, you can feel like you’re talking into a big ‘black hole’ if a long time goes by without any interactiong with the students. At the same time, we usually have quite an interesting ‘side-channel’ running the whole time. Students make comments in the chat channel, and these are mainly directed at each other. Really good comments come up, but they can sometimes be distracting to the class, and often it’s hard to get the commenter to elaborate on what they said. Sometimes I sense a barrier between the chat space and the ‘voice space’ – as though the chat channel is a space for students to talk, and the microphone is just for lecturers. For someone to take an interesting comment out of the chat channel and say something about it using their mic, it feels like I have to ‘pull them out’ of this conversation.

By Telephone, Auckland:
This is the toughest class to visualise for me. In the online class we’ve a shared understanding of the virtual ‘space’ of the online conferencing application – and there’s a list of us down the left hand side of the screen – we’re all in the class together. With the Auckland class, I must imagine the students sitting in their room, clustered around the polycom unit – my disembodied voice speaking to them. I think the students find it easier because they can see and communicate easily with each other. At the same time this can be a bit disruptive if they start talking amongst themselves and I can’t work out who is saying what. Having someone else to run slides and videos is both really useful, and slightly nerve wracking – is everyone on the right slide? How are they seeing the video?  The Auckland class definitely has a different feel: by the time I reach the Auckland class I find I’m more relaxed, and everyone gets to benefit from the fact that I’ve done the talk twice before this – I know which points I really want to emphasise, and which I can move quickly past. Talking on the phone, with just a print out of my slides and notes in front of me, contributes to the relaxed vibe. The class feels more like a meeting than a lecture.

The big question I might ask myself in response to what I’m noticing here is really concerning how I can convey the same basic lecture content over the course of each 1.5 hour class, but alter the way I do this to enhance the best bits and control the problems created in each format.

At this stage, I’ll continue to have slides structuring the flow of the lecture, key themes to cover, case studies to illustrate, and me talking for a large amount of the time. These common elements will stay in my lectures, but there are probably ways I can change each class – particularly in terms of the kinds of class participation that I could encourage. It would be even better if, based on the regular format of On-campus-then-online-then-Auckland, I could make each lecture build on its predecessor.

For example:

• I might hold free-flowing discussion about developing a key definition of a concept in the first on-campus class, and have the notes from this up on a slide, or in a google document by the evening class.
• In the evening class I could ask students to vote up and down the best definitions as we talk about the ideas the on-campus class came up with (this being a low-key, sustained kind of interaction that isn’t as show-stopping and nerve wracking as requiring a student to speak on the mic).
• In the next few days before the Auckland class the definitions could be released online through Blackboard. The Auckland class could have another form of participation that wraps things up for the week, perhaps asking them to prepare and bring a summary to class to read out. (Taking advantage of their co-presence and the small size of the group, and encouraging concrete responses).

Just a slice of where my thinking is going about this at the moment.

Have you experienced anything like this, where you’ve had to convey the same basic content in a number of different ways? Did you notice differences about each environment and audience? What were the strengths and weaknesses, and how did these change your approach?