When creating an online course, it can be tempting to transfer

traditional lectures straight into pre-recorded videos. While

recorded video lectures, like the one I'm in right now, will continue
to play an important role in online education, there are more
options than video alone. Multi-modal learning objects such as
video, audio files or infographics when done well, can enhance a
learner's experience, assist you as an educator in activating a range
of learning modalities, and allow for rich and dynamic learning to
take place. We will explore this further throughout this course. A
well-placed multi-modal learning object sits within a learning
sequence when you're scaffolding an online course. Multi-modal
learning objects should be intuitive, simple, effective content that is
easy to navigate and considers cognitive load. Supportive, through
the design of online learning communities that foster deep learning
and peer engagement. Collaborative, involve the learner through
interactivity and flexibility that promotes active learning. Engaging,
create connection or emotion through the use of multi-modal text
types such as video, audio, and infographic. In this lesson, we will
introduce you to four principles to help inform the design,
development, and implementation of your own multi-modal
learning objects. The four principles are: purpose, space, time, and
role. Now let's explore these principles in more detail. Principle
number 1, purpose. Obvious consideration is, what is the purpose
of the learning object? As an educator ask yourself, what is it that I
want to create and why? There may be times when the purpose of
the learning object is quite clear. For example, the purpose of this
video is to help you meet the learning objective, develop and
understand best practice design principles, and help prepare you
for the graded assessment later in the week. However, on some
occasions, the purpose of the learning object you are making may
not be entirely clear when you start out and may evolve over time.
Let's consider a three-step process that will help you to realize the
purpose of your multi-modal learning object. Step 1, what learner
action do you want priming? Do you want your learners to
investigate, practice, produce, collaborate, discuss or acquire
knowledge? Step 2, what connection are you offering learners and
how can you promote learner engagement with the multi-modal
learning object you're going to create? We can engage and connect
with our learners through four powerful knowledge emotions:
surprise, interest, curiosity, and awe. I'll go through these in some
detail now. You could use the knowledge of emotion of surprise by
saying something out of the ordinary to get people's attention. For
example, if pigs could fly, who would need to take on the
responsibility of training them to land safely. You could use the
interest knowledge emotion by passing on an interesting or novel
statistic that your learners may not have heard of before. For
example, the odds of an average person dying from contact with
hornets or wasps or bees is one in 63,325. You could use the
knowledge emotion of curiosity by saying something that could
spark debate or encourage a learner to seek out the information for
themselves. For example, did you know that bananas hops? Don't
believe me? I encourage you to do your own research. Finally, the
fourth knowledge emotion is awe. Feeling awe often involves a
sense of feeling small, like when you look up at the night sky. This
knowledge emotion is challenging for an educator to replicate but if
you can do it, research shows that learners are likely to remember
the experience. Step 3, how will the learning object that I plan to
create prime my learners for active learning? What do I mean by
active learning? Active learning is a method of learning in which
learners are actively or experientially involved in the learning
process. In short, as an educator, you are actively asking your
learners to do something. By going through these three-step
processes before designing your multimedia object, it will help
clarify the purpose of the learning object. Our next principle is
space. Learners of all ages are now invited to be partners in
creating their learning environment. This consideration can also be
extended to online learning. When creating a multimodal textile,
take time to consider the space in which it will sit or come to life.
To create a space for all the learners to thrive, you should ask, do
learners have some flexibility in where and how they learn? For
example, is it possible to use audio such as podcasts so that
learning can be achieved anywhere, anytime? Are learners enabled
to connect with you and each other? For example, is it possible for
you to encourage discussion of an infographic that you display on
screen during a live Zoom class? Does your online learning
environments support both collaborative and individual study? For
example, will it be possible for learners to communicate through an
online discussion forum in your course, or are they are only
required to study alone, and is that space alone is to share work
and provide feedback? For example, is it possible for you to create
a space where learners can view their peers work and provide
asynchronous feedback? It's important to consider space when
designing and developing a multi-modal learning object. Let's now
discuss principle Number 3, time. Today's world is fast paste. We're
often distracted and have competing priorities. When we have the
privilege of learners attention, how do we use their time efficiently
and effectively? As educators, we have some influence over when
and where we think the learning could or should happen for our
learners, how it might happen, and why it should happen. In
education, we use the terms synchronous interaction and
asynchronous interaction to describe the nature of online learning
interactions. Asynchronous learning is when learning happens
anytime, anywhere. Learners engage with learning activities in their
own time. Asynchronous programs are flexible, accessible, learner-
centered, and personalized. For example, a self-paced course like
this Coursera course, you are engaging with now, is an example of
an entirely asynchronous learning experience. Synchronous
learning is a more traditional approach where learning is received
at the same time by the learners in a cohort. Synchronous
programs can be collaborative and interactive. For example, an
online Zoom workshop where participants can ask questions and
chat to each other. An important note for all online educators, it is
critical that you consider the Internet bandwidth of your learners
because some online learning activities require more bandwidth
than others. You can use the bandwidth immediacy matrix to help
decide what is most appropriate for your learners. As an example, if
we look at the top right-hand corner, we can see video
conferencing. Video conferencing is immediate or synchronous and
it requires a high amount of bandwidth. On the other hand, if we
look at discussion boards, they are asynchronous or have low
immediacy, and they require little bandwidth. When designing your
multimedia learning objects, it's important to consider and use
people's time wisely, whether it is time spent to study
asynchronously or synchronously or a mixture of both. It's always
best practice to clearly inform your learners of approximately how
long it will take for them to complete a learning activity, including
any newly developed multimedia learning objects you may include
in your online course. Finally, and most importantly, what is an
online educators role in online learning and teaching? This is
principle Number 4. Educators bring immense value to learning
experiences, from expert commentary through synthesis and
critique, to provocative discussions through contextualizing and
framing. They can read the mood of learners and can adapt to keep
learners engaged or to extend their learning. Let's reconsider your
role as an online educator by considering the following. Take this
opportunity to re-frame your preexisting notions of what an
educator is or should be. Reconsider what this could look like in the
context of an online learning environment. This challenge is also an
opportunity. Don't go straight to thinking about the limitations of
teaching online, instead, start to think about the possibilities. Build
relationships with your learners, and prioritize responding to any
points of confusion. Just like in a traditional classroom , in online
learning, you should use your time to prioritize building
relationships with learners and supporting them through their
practice. Lastly, cultivate the mindset of a facilitator who is inclusive
in their practice. See yourself as a facilitator instead of an expert.
Give your learners some autonomy and control over their learning.
Support them to learn by providing them tools and opportunities to
practice, invite them to be a partner in your delivery, to create their
own multimodal learning types. Now let's recap, the full K
principals are time, space, role, and purpose. As we mentioned at
the start of this lesson, these principles help inform the design,
development, and implementation of your own multimodal
learning objects. In this week's challenge exercise, you will be
creating learning sequences and identifying opportunities to create
[inaudible] learning objects within them. Be brave, take your time,
and enjoy the process.

Video 2

[MUSIC] Now that you have a draft learning sequence and have
identified at least one learning object you would like to create. Let's
explore the rapid design process in this lesson will cover rapid
design as a problem solving approach. Why it works in learning
design and how to use it for your multimedia learning objects. The
origins of design thinking, rapid design and rapid prototyping are
attributed to software engineering in the 1950s and 60s and 3D
printing in the 1970s and 80s. In higher education rapid design is
typically used at a program level as a team based approach for
curriculum renewal. So what does a rapid design process actually
look like? Think of an iterative design process where there are
cycles of pause, reflection, feedback and refinement. It's not a 2D
linear line or a perfectly 3D cone, it's a messy combination of the
two. An organic spiral rapid design can help us with time, efficiency
and originality. Parkinson's law states work expands to fill the time
available for its completion. And this simply means that we will use
whatever time allocation given to us to complete a task, be it five
minutes, five hours, five days, five weeks and so on. Rapid design
uses time chunks to focus attention even if you can only find 15
minutes a day you can do rapid design. Psychologist Adam Grant
reminds us in his book originals that for the majority of us, non
creative wizards, our first ideas are often the most conventional,
the closest to the default that already exists. It's only after we've
ruled out the obvious that we have the greatest freedom. We can
use rapid design to produce a greater volume of work through rapid
prototyping and can iterate a learning object that's fit for purpose.
No matter the modality of your learning object video, audio
infographic, hyper media. There are six common planning
elements, ideation, research tool, choice, production of content
editing and hosting and sharing. To start rapidly designing your
multimedia learning object, use a skeleton plan approach employed
by artists and designers. As Binoche describes, artist's sketch a
skeleton plan of their painting or drawing before they create darker
lines. This helps them have a guideline when it comes to creating a
more fully realized piece of art? Your learning objects, skeleton plan
could take the form of a dot point outline, a script, a short
paragraph in the form of an elevator pitch or a two column story
table. Ola describes the two column story table. Your story is
captured in a table separated into significant vents using rose with
images directly adjacent to the narrative we will here as we see the
image. It is a great way to prep for and visualize your story? You'll
find the links with this video and the links and examples in this
week's readings and challenge exercise. So which skeleton planned
method have you used in the past? Can you experiment with a new
technique for your rapid design. So now that you have your
learning sequence and you're learning objects in mind. I'd like you
to use the two column story approach to produce your first
skeleton design this week. This is simply a two column table with
the story on the left and your intended media on the right. If you
have 15 minutes a day, stick to it for this week and see what
skeleton you come up with this is rapid design. Remember, so feel
free to use post its pens or a digital whiteboard. Whatever you
need to get the ideas out of your head either allows you the
flexibility of modifying as you iterate. This skeleton design is the
second step in your due to achieve rapid design process. So again,
please remember it will change over time.
[MUSIC] Today, I've got the pleasure of being joined by Sonia
Siddiqui and Guy Ramesh from the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie
University. Guy and Sonia are both senior learning designers and
are here today to talk to us about processes, Guy and Sonia, thank
you so much for taking time out of your day and your workload to
join us, welcome. >> Thank you. >> Hi Ali, thank you.
>> Thank you, rather than me talking about your extensive
careers in learning design and education, I thought it might be cool
to do something a little bit different today. So elevator pitch time,
let's start with you, Sonia. I'm going to put you on the spot first. Can
you please tell us about your career in an elevator pitch? >>
Well, I came to learning design in a sort of a backwards matter. I am
one of those students that never left university. So after my degree,
I worked at the university in a student advocacy role and then I
moved into a PhD. So I was working in research and doing my PhD
at the same time and then took a fellowship at the Business school
in Munich SA and after that I took on this learning designer role at
the Faculty of Arts. I've been here for about 2.5 years now. So it
was basically moving from the, I guess being in front of the camera
to actually delivering things at the back end and creating the
content that students get to interact with. >> That's a really
interesting way of putting it. You've moved from being in front of
the camera, two behind the scenes and more of a production role.
And we're going to talk about that later. I'm really interested to see
how maybe your perspective and your approach has changed from
that whole content creation course creation point of view Guy over
to you. Let's how's your elevator pitch going? >> Okay, well I
came from a side stream of IT. I was actually a primary school
teacher of I T. And then I moved into just doing IT Support at
Macquarie University Soybean at Macquarie for about 10 years. But
moved into learning design early on when Macquarie started out as
the leaders in online learning and I was sort of their from ground up
with that. And so I've learned learning design on the go I suppose
and help these convenience to their subject matter experts. So I
think they needed help to teach. And so a teacher's perspective on
that would make it useful when you're talking to students. >>
Yeah of course. So yours has been I guess for both of you in terms
of the online learning for everyone. Pretty much it's almost been an
on the fly approach especially recently. But your experience at
Macquarie would have meant that there had been probably a lot of
research into the creation of online content and online courses.
And of course a large part of the discussion today, and online
courses in general are multimedia objects which of course now are
all inter leaved and involved in course design. So both of you have
designed multiple courses, Sonia, let's start with you, can you tell us
about potentially an exceptional multimedia object and maybe
explain what it is and what it did for you. And how that may have
made an impression on your own course design or even, you know,
multimedia object design. >> Well, I think I would answer this
question in terms of a concept rather than a particular object for
me just being in an online space, having some sort of collaborative
environment or collaborative tool, whatever that tool maybe has
been I guess the big game changer and how I would approach my
learning design. So however that comes about and it could be as
simple as a google doc, right. So basically you're getting your
participants to meet in a space outside of zoom and work on
something together. And that can be as simple as I said, a google
document or were using things like mural, which is a sort of an
online whiteboard where you're able to move tiles around. It
depends on what you want to achieve and who your students are
and what your plans are in the course. But I think just being able to
create a collaborative space, that is the concept rather than the
object that has made the biggest impression on the way I design
things. >> I totally agree with here are, it's more the
methodology of online learning that's really sort of blown up in the
recent years. But because I was looking at this question before and
I was thinking, well what is one thing? I'm a very visual person and I
suppose coming from the primary background for me, a visual thing
is very important. And I remember content better. So obviously
you've got to know your audience. But for a visual person like me, I
think like something like an infographics that happened recently
are really like some of the ones that have come out really nice and
they it's a picture tells 1000 words and infographics, it like puts the
put in an information in a graphical format and it makes the
information easy to digest. And just with a glance and I think it's
quite powerful object and it's good for the recall, basic fact activity
that you might want to start within a online space. Yeah, that's a
really interesting point, especially about infographics there
obviously being used frequently in contemporary course design.
But when it comes to content and obviously, there can be so much
content in any one course, we've got modules depends on how you
want to say units, modules, weeks. There's a large focus on creating
this content, but there's also another option, there isn't that there
is the option to curate content which is already there. How do you
do this? And how can you curate content in an impactful manner? I
think for for me, the decision between curate and create, I'm
adamant w with in the workshops, that guy and I run together that
everyone decides on a template first. I am a big, big proponent of
using a template. So I think it starts with that to deciding what your
course is going to look like. The skeleton of it, the backbone of it,
the scaffolding, and then you decide how best to fill in those blanks.
And without that it's kind of it's chaotic and it's messy. So I think
having a template and an outline of what you're going to do, and
then you decide on how best to you find content that suits or look
at existing content that that's already there. And I think because a
lot of the work that we're doing at universities and I know that
teachers are doing in high school in an elementary school at the
moment. They're doing just in time, design, they're having to to
cobble together courses that were predominantly delivered in a
analogue format and face to face format and they're having to do it
very quickly. So I think the focus in that instance should be to keep
it simple and keep it structured and consistent and easy and logical
to follow in an online format. So that means using a template and
making it similar structure from week to week. You do that first and
fill in the content that you already have rather than trying to curate
at the same time as trying to deliver a course. So just in time,
delivery and curation is very very hard. So I think yeah I would
advise people to use what they have first and if you have time then
look at existing, sorry, stuff that exists outside of your own. Course
to sort of supplement and augment that. I don't know, Gai, what do
you think? >> Yeah, go with the same line. For me curating
and creating sort of go hand in hand. When you start curating
things, you realize where the gaps are and then you create things
so they build into each other. So I don't see them as opposites, I see
them as complementary to each other. And curating, there's so
much information out in the internet, you could easily put together
of course just by googling things. But that is not learning, and a
good learning design is when you are curating things that are sort
of relevant. They are organized and they're presented in a way that
assists the learner to learn more. That's the crux of learning design.
So I think it's to help them join the dots and therefore you create,
you curate and then you create some more. And you put it together
in a logical format for them to learn, which expands their
knowledge and all of that. So curating is very important while
creating helps that curating. So you're creating a curated learning
design. Yeah, there's some excellent points in there. Let's touch on
that template just very quickly. Do you have a generic template? I
think Sonia touched on this first. Sonia, is there a generic or even
Gai, you probably both have an idea in terms of you know how to
structure this very first step. But is the template yours? Do you give
a template to teachers and go look, here's what I wannna see? Or
do you teach them or coach them on how they might devise their
own template? >> So well Gai and I actually run workshops
on learning design. And one of the first things that we tell people is
you create your templates. And the template has to be
personalized to the purpose of the course. So at Macquarie, we
also run workshops using a specific rapid prototyping way to
develop units and courses called DDI. Design, Develop, Implement,
and it's based on design thinking. And before we do anything,
before we do any aspect of design, we think about the course in
terms of its blueprint. So what are the major components that
make up what we want to do in a course? Who are your students?
What are your skills and capacities? And that can be with tech or
with your discipline-specific knowledge. Where's the learning taking
place? What are the students expecting? What are the learning
outcomes? And those things need to be sort of nutted out first and
confirmed before you do anything else. And that will inform your
template, that will inform the structure of your course. But in terms
of the template that we use at arts, we've actually spearheaded a
template that has been adapted and rolled out for the entire
university now. So ours has been in a sort of a beta phase for the
last two years. And it's being applied to almost all our units, or
coming up to almost all our units. And yeah, so it's just basically a
consistent approach that we find works in our units and in our
learning management system, which is Moodle. And we find that it
provides a consistent look and feel for students as they're going
from unit to unit. So you want it to be as seamless as possible and
to reduce the cognitive load of someone having to work out, where
do I find my assessments, where do I find due dates? At arts,
they're going to be all in the same place. So that's why I'm a big fan
of templates. And I would encourage someone to create their own
based on the particular flavor and objective of the course that
they're teaching. >> Okay, so a template-based approach
basically lays the scaffolding or the groundwork for course design,
and that's excellent advice. Let's talk about course design when it
comes to different types of learners or students' different
experiences in the learning environment. People say that online
learning can be a passive experience for some learners. Do you
need to force them to engage in active learning and how do you
measure the engagement of students in course design? >>
Yeah, sure, I know the word passive gets thrown around and people
have a negative connotation to it. When it comes to online
learning, it is completely different to being on campus or in front of
a teacher. And in a way, I feel like passive learning helps the
students to marinate in the content. So they are still learning is just
on their own sort of head space. And what I think the teacher or
the online designer's role is to engage them with elements while
they are in that passive mode. To pull them out and to say okay,
you've taught about that topic, but here's a quiz or here is a video
or a podcast or anything that would get you to think further. And
then have another object with it, so that what happens is when you
designing something like this, the passive and the active go
together. And engagement has to happen naturally with that
progress. You don't make the difference between a passive learner
and an active learner. You put it all together. And having forums,
especially where you provoke questions with the students, that
helps them engage with the peers. Having peer review, having
things that they have to read another person's piece of work and
comment on it. Those kind of little prompts in an online space help
them to engage with it. And obviously, most multimedia objects
can be very engaging. You don't want to overload it. There's a lot of
units that I do see, or courses I see with an overload of videos and
other things. Which I think gives the cognitive overload that Sonia
was saying before and we need to be balancing the two together.
Things like H5P, which does the subtle questioning in the middle of
a video, that really helps. And Sonia mentioned before, the online
forums are a good way to engage students and pull them out to
engage after their passive state. >> I couldn't agree more
with Gai, I think that was very spot on. And I think there is an over
emphasis on, we need to get students to engage more in the online
space, they need to participate more actively. And I think that it's
not easy to translate what happens in a face to face environment in
an online environment. And expecting that from the instructor and
the students is a big ask. And just to sort of elaborate on what Gai
was saying, I think that if you want to have that active engagement,
it needs to be targeted and it needs to be very effective. And we
need to think about where that needs to happen in a unit. So
having a one hour Zoom lectorial might not be the best approach,
because you're asking people to sit there and stare at the screen.
And what are they really going to do and learn, and how are they
going to feel at the end of that process, right? It might not be the
most pleasant experience. Think about provocation. So I'm a big,
big fan of questions that prompt discussion after small snippets of
information that you give them. So students love to talk about how
they think and feel about a particular thing. So it's kind of like
sneaky learning, it's subtle learning. So you're giving them
something, and say, what do you think about that? Talk about that
in a group and then come back and we'll discuss it in a larger
classroom environment. Rather than getting getting them to sort of
have half an hour of Zoom back and forth. Small little bits of what
do you think and how do you think it relates back to the material
that we're discussing? And in an online space, I find that one of the
important things to ensure that you've got engagement at various
points is structure. It needs to be much more structured than your
face to face learning. Because you're sitting there by yourself as a
student, and you don't have facial cues, you don't have body
language to say, we're going to move on to the The next thing now
to have that q online that says okay after 10 minutes, we're going
to start doing this and having an agenda for what you're going to
achieve that day in this one hour tight space of teaching time. Gives
them direction and I mean I have a year eight student right now, I
mean she's my daughter and I'm seeing how her teachers struggle
with that because they're trying to keep everyone, 35 students in
front of them engaged for an hour and a half. It just it ain't working.
I think just having them to smaller tasks and and spacing that out is
the best way to go, okay. >> I agree in that template really
plays into that sort of learning, making the student both active and
passive in that that we would need to structure it in such a way that
it helps them to connect the dots, make sure that they are on track
and they feel connected to. And I think you need to engage the
students emotionally as well. There are things that you could do or
in the online space, like have a personal blog space or a personal
reflection space, which really helps them to reflect on what they've
just learned at that point. Just after doing maybe a 10 minute video
watching a discussion forum and then, how did you feel about that
activity or some sort of question like that and that's their own
personal thing and they know that, it's just so they're giving
feedback to the teacher, but it's still private. It's between the
teacher and the student that helps engage them as well. Yeah, and
just and just on that. So I mean I hate to keep bringing up the
template, but when you have a template, you include things like a
welcome message and that becomes a consistent approach that
you use. And you also can include things like a photograph or a
welcome video that you just record on zoom. And these sound like
small things, but they actually feel very personal to the student
because it's not just a name that are an email address that they're
communicating with a person's face. So you're saying I'm your
teacher and I'm going to be taking you through this journey with
me. So having that in the template reminds that you have to have
these personal touches that connect you with your students.
>> Can I jump in there and say that the teacher needs to
show their vulnerability and they need to make it personal. So if the
teachers using zoom or they're using iPhone whatever they if
they're making a mistake with the I T. To put that out there, not
need to edit it, they don't need to have a flashy video or anything.
And also just sharing their daily, even uploading a video saying,
yeah, I went down to the shop and I saw this and this was relevant
to the course. This way, putting that kind of one minute to minute
information to say that one first thing that they're there as the
presence is there in the unit and that the students not a drift in the
unit. And the teachers always constantly behind you, just sort of
having that presence helps the student understand, that they're in
a class online where, it also helps just make the teacher a human
for students. >> Well, there's a whole concept of vulnerability
in a space where no one really got their head around it yet. It just
adds this degree of humanity and the personality and character to
the lessons. So that's probably a really important point. Make sure
you're not losing your own personality as part of these courses.
Well, there's so much good information in there. And even back to
this whole suggestion of passive active and really questioning these
labels that we're putting on learners and there's negative
connotations maybe towards some of these labels like the passive
learner, maybe it's okay to be a passive learner. Well, it is okay
you're saying it is fine to be a passive learner. We've just got to find
different ways of engaging these different learning types, I guess.
>> Exactly. It really depends on who your audience is and
how they learn and that comes back to thinking about the
blueprint. So what is the blueprint for your course, because if
you're instructing mature age students who are working full time
and they're coming in after hours to engage with the course versus
primary school students. You need to structure things very
differently and think about that before you even designed the
course. >> So step one is understand your learners
understand their background. Obviously you both have extensive
experience is learning designers and throughout the pandemic it
was tough for teachers to try and move everything into an online
setting. I guess my question would be, do you have any tips for
teachers? Of course we understand that it's been hard for them,
but is there anything you can offer to teachers out there in terms of
how they might be able to approach online learning. So I think my
big tip would be first of all be kind to yourself be very patient and
don't try and do too much, but most of all since all this content is
being put online in such a quick pace, label everything clearly and
use headings. So whatever learning management system you're
using put them into heading so that students can find them easily.
And I mean I'm the parent of the year old child. I have been a
teacher, a facilitator and I'm also letting designer. So I can see and
appreciate the difficulty in all those roles, but I think that being able
to find information quickly is so important for a student participant.
And yeah, just having it, they're clearly labelled and being able to
pull it out very quickly as you are in the online space in real time is
one of the biggest tips that I would advise teachers right now in this
current climate. >> Can you give us an example of that? So an
example, a really concrete example is my daughter has all these
assessments and they've got the dates that are from previous years
and they might have a different weighting percentage and that's
included in the title of the document. So that's confusing for the
child and the parents to be able to pull that up quickly and global. I
think this is the assessment you're doing now. It's actually not, it's
for most previous semester or previous year. So I'm sure there's a
wide spectrum of how bad the situation can get. But yeah, just
correctly labeling and putting it all in one area. So of assessments,
put it all under the label assessments. If you do nothing else, just
put just put a heading in their assessments, daily schedule
homework and this is where you submit the more information the
better. And the more flagged it is I think the better as well guy,
what do you think? >> Yeah, well going off from what you
said. I think currency maintaining that in online learning spaces
very, very imperative because students are in class, you can correct
yourself right away. You can say the assessment is 20% wait a sec.
It's actually 25. You can't do that online. So you need to make sure
that all the content you are presenting to your learner is current
and you need to go through the unit like a student and read
everything that there's a logical operation happening here. And if a
person who doesn't know anything about online, will they be able
to follow it? And you've got to go back to that basic even though
you might have a post grad class or it could be an IT course, there
could be very well with the TT stuff but learning doesn't happen
with just the idea, it's learning and therefore you need to structure
it in such a way that anybody could follow it. And maintaining that
currency is like the number one thing I would say. But the other tip
I think is knowing your audience, knowing what motivates them
and why are they there, these are key elements to designing your
online program. So without that you really have no rudder I
suppose to you bought to navigate you through the online space.
That's the other important thing you need to have and I think Sonia
touched on that earlier about the blueprint. >> Yeah, so I
think a really a potentially useful way to picture this is that don't
use your learning management space as a repository, it's not a
repository. Think of it as a journey. So they start somewhere and
they work their way through [COUGH] and they need directions and
signposts. So if it's a map orbits directions, you need to have a
consistent logical place to begin with. So it's not just an information
dump of documents. You think about the sequence of events, so it's
not a google drive, it's a journey, think about it that way and week
by week. What do you want them to focus on in that particular
space? Not the whole thing. So it needs to unfold. Yeah, that's
right- >> And I completely add to Sonia's mentioned,
especially people who are designing blended learning where
they've got on campus half of their course and then the rest is
online. The blended learning space is where a lot of mess happens
because people assumed online is for dumping PDFs and files and
at the learning only happens in class, that's not how it works,
blended learning is about augmenting your on campus or face to
face learning with your online space. So you need to template it in
such a way that he could go, this is before class, you need to be
reading this or watching this particular video come to class and this
is what we'll be doing in class. And having that as a part of your
template and then giving them some time to consolidate online and
to reflect on what they learned in class. So online space, when it's
used with the blended mode really needs a structured designed,
then just being a pdf repository as some people used to go.
>> And Sonia, thank you so much for your time today and of
course your expertise, I feel like you've really simplified what can
seem like a daunting and complex topic or topics. You've touched
on things like building templates, engaging different learning styles
and of course, the whole structure and organizing our course
design. Thank you once again, it's been an absolute pleasure to join
both of you in conversation. Thank you. For having us. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.
[MUSIC] Infographics if embedded into an online course. Well can
give a learner and easy to understand overview of the topic.
However, designing, developing and implementing and infographic
effectively in an online course requires a strategy. In this video, I'm
going to share tips and tricks on how to choose the right
infographic for your learners. Okay to start out, ask yourself the
following questions. What's the best way to summarize information
from my learners and share it visually?

Play video starting at ::32 and follow transcript0:32

What story do I want to tell my learners? And what are the key
points I want my learners to take away from my infographic?

Play video starting at ::40 and follow transcript0:40

Once you work your way through those questions, you can start
researching the type of infographic you want to make. There are
seven common infographic structures that will take you through
now with examples. Number one is informational. Informational
infographics are useful for, let's say, defining specific jargon or
difficult concepts or even just concepts in general. It's very good in
giving a definition for what is a body mass index or what is porter's
value chain analysis. What is a change style indicator for instance.
So as you can see here in these examples, it breaks down a complex
topic into something more visual, something more engaging as well
with visuals and images and illustrations. Number two, we have
statistical. Now, statistical is one of those very common uses for
infographics, showing percentages, showing graphs and pie charts
and trends. I'm sure the statistical infographic is something that you
are very familiar with and something that you've seen before as
well. So, here are just some examples about housing prices,
examples about social media engagement, marketing statistics. So
these are just examples that you can gain inspiration from. Number
three, timeline. Very useful for showing dates, historical dates,
trends, useful for let's say project timelines, historical timeline and
event timeline makes it quite easy and visual to see things
happening within that timeline. Number four is process. Now
process is great as it infographic because it can break down
complex set of steps into something that is more visual and easier
to look at and easier to digest. And one of my favorite uses of
infographics especially with the process is IKEA. I'm sure most of us
have experienced building IKEA furniture before in seeing how you
receive only a flat pack and one page of instructions. It's amazing
how they are able to break down these into simple steps using
pictures, not even using any words. It's amazing how this
transcends the language barrier and I truly think it's a great use of
it. And the fifth one is geographic. So geographic meaning showing
geographic locations. The more recent example is COVID infections
around the world. During news reports, I'm sure you've seen
infographics of where in the world infections are rising and falling
and that sort of thing, showing the map of the world. We can also
show close up map of specific country. So here, facts about Iceland,
facts about Poland, California and so on. Hierarchical, showing
company hierarchy, organizational charts, showing the animal
kingdom as well as a great example of visual hierarchy there. And
the last one is list. So this is a more general kind of infographic
where you would put down different aspects of a certain topic.
Being very popular on social media, very popular on the Internet.
Example here six benefits of thankfulness. Nine ways to avoid
getting sick. So these are just great examples. And I think they
engage has done a really good job sharing examples of different
types of infographics. And I think it's a great way to also gain
inspiration for creating your own infographics too to be sure to
check them out. Once you have a pretty good idea of the
infographic type you want to create. It's time to start considering
the tools. So you have Microsoft PowerPoint. You have Vengage.
You have Canva. You have infIgraphia and for something more
advanced you can use Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. So
yes, the final step is styling your infographics. You have to consider
these things images, icons, illustrations, symbols, they're great at
signaling the key takeaways. Contrasting color draws attention as
you can see here. Fonts give structure. So a great thing to research
probably would be fun, personalities and visual hierarchy. The last
one is lines, borders, shapes, connectors. They convey grouping. So
using them effectively is also very important and there you have it.
Good luck creating your infographic and all the best. [MUSIC]

-------------------------------------------

Today I'm joined by Fidel Fernando, who's a learning designer at

Macquarie University. Fidel's part of the professional learning team
there. He's a self-proclaimed professional dabbler who works with
audio, video, infographics, and a range of tools including interactive
learning activities. Fidel, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, Andy. Glad to be here. Excellent. Now Fidel, rather than
me talking, let's get some information from you, and maybe you
can tell us a little bit about yourself as an online educator. No
worries. So my name is Fidel Fernando. I am a learning designer at
Macquarie University. I've been at learning designer for around five
years now, within the central unit in the university. Though to be
honest, [inaudible] technology for my entire life. I also like to say
that I've had quite an unconventional way of getting here. I started
off purely as a technology person, purely using learning
technologies, graphic design principles, graphic software, and
learning management systems. A lot of this, push this button to get
this result kind of work. I've also dabbled in multimedia, such as
audio, video, small-scale, backyard/small garage type productions.
Then gradually moving towards the theory and the pedagogy side
of things which I'm currently still learning. My focus is now being
involved in the professional learning and teaching area. Meaning
academics and professional staff are my quote-unquote students,
in the subject of technology-enhanced learning and teaching. Really
bringing all of that technology experience into teaching. I guess this
is really the crucial point and time where we do need to be
engaging technology into online teaching. More than ever, we're
seeing virtual classrooms and people moving to online learning.
One of your areas of expertise is something that I touched on
before, which is Infographics. Let's start from the very beginning.
It's a very good place to start. What are infographics? First of all,
infographics by the word itself is information in graphics. From my
point of view, it really is a visual representation and overview of
any kind of information, concept, process, procedure, or data. That
sort of thing. Whether it's trying to teach someone how to build
furniture, for instance, or trying to convey statistics about the
transmission of a certain disease. It's a great way of putting that
into a very nice and attractive package that can be taken
individually. It's also really meant to grab attention. In my mind, my
own personal definition of it would come down to also it being
entertaining. Adding entertainment, humor, emotion, so that you
grab attention because at the end of the day if it doesn't grab
attention, your message won't be heard. I suppose that's a
roundabout way of saying that it's a visual communication tool that
turns concepts into a form that is easily understood, is impactful
and succinct. As you're talking, I'm starting to realize that
infographics form a very important part in the way that we access
information about COVID-19. We can go straight to a new service
online and go straight to this infographic and almost instantly
consume information which contains domestic statistics and figures
and images and of course international or global information
relating to COVID-19. As an educator, when did you first become
aware of the educational power of infographics and what sparks
your interest? I think I first became aware of the power of
infographics in education is when I experienced it for myself. When
I was back at uni, there are many instances where people could get
a lot out of simple infographic, condensing all the key points of a
complex topic. I remember at that time, I had a Palm Pilot and I
thought it was the coolest kid on the block. Excellent. You know it
had the worst resolution. But somehow information was still
effectively conveyed through the small graphical device, like charts
and that sort of thing. Of course. Imagine topic summaries and that
I can take with me in portable form. But mind you, infographics
today aleagues better than they were a decade ago. What's a really
good commercial application for an infographic? Is there anything
that comes to mind? Another example that I can think of is when
we recently bought furniture from Ikea. Ikea is famously known for
flat packing clerk furniture. Something that you have to build
yourself. Oh yes. But they're also famous for providing only one
page of instructions. Exactly. How they are able to condense the
information of how to build something this complex. Yes. How do
you put that into one page, right? It's amazing. It is amazing. In
seeing how they do it with a use of space, with the use of printing
black and white, the simplicity of the message, the consistency of
the actions and the emotions. It literally transcends the language
barrier. I don't think I've ever seen an Ikea instruction guide that
had explicit instructions in the language. It's mainly just this guy,
who's building it. I find the distillation of the message quite
amazing. I really do apologize if I sound ultra passionate about Ikea.
Not at all. In fact, I think you've probably given all the listeners a
very good visual image of what an infographic is in addition to your
very good description of IKEA manual. I'm quite sure that on
occasion there is a character who has no fingers or toes, which
makes the concept of setting up [inaudible] even more impressive.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your process for designing,
developing, and then implementing an infographic into one of the
courses that you're working on currently? Sure thing. Okay. There
are many common things that I do before creating an infographic. I
think main thing I want to focus on, there are things that you can
control and there are things that you can't control. Really at the
beginning of the process, I would think about the things that I just
have no control over that possibly are things like the parameters of
where it will appear, how big the screen size it will be in, what the
website will take. If it's going to be focused towards a mobile
handset or something like that. The other thing that I also consider
is my subject matter expert. Of course, sometimes I don't have all
the answers, and I work with someone who is an expert in the
subject. I possibly have control over how to convey the information,
but the information itself is something that I can. Now in saying
that the process of designing, developing, and implementing an
infographic varies from person to person, from subject to subject,
from audience to audience. I used to be one who would just go
straight into it. I see a blank screen in front of me, I'll just go at it.
No planning. Listening to the tiny voice in my head and making it up
along the way. But I'm sure, someone like you, Andy, who I'm sure
is very creative and goes through that creative process, it's
enjoyable, you blank piece, just put whatever in. But in this
instance, the problem with doing that is there are many things that
you will miss, especially in something like an infographic. There are
many basic things that you really do have to get right. I guess now
that I've matured into this role, into this industry, I would like to put
an emphasis on planning, right? I guess something that I call the
heavy lifting phase. It's a part where I spend most of the time
designing something and it will ultimately dictate the rest of the
project. The first part of the planning is definitely research,
firsthand research, secondhand research. Talking to people, looking
at examples. Starting your own doodles on a piece of paper. A little
notebook really does help. The next is to put down a draft. Nothing
beats seeing it takes shape. A tangible product, for instance, leads
to more ideas. It's something that you can share to someone to get
feedback. Again, in the creative industry, I try not to be married to
my initial concept at the beginning. You can't expect to be able to
create something off the bat, can't expect to get it right the first
time. It's really a game of iteration, a game of refinement. It's a
game of continuously trying to make it better and easier to
understand. Because something that you've been working on and
seeing for hours and hours on end, and then all of a sudden you
show it to your colleague and they go, "I don't get it." The reason
for that is because you've been looking at it for a long time. For
someone who is seeing it for the first time, they can give you really
good feedback. Again, another type of tip is once you're finished
with your design, show it to someone who's never seen it before
and ask them what they think. Step two in the process is gathering
all of your assets and you do this before even putting anything
down on the screen. These can be from royalty-free images,
royalty-free websites or paid websites if you have the budget, a
royalty-free illustration website or Icon website, or you could draw
it yourself. I've done it multiple times where I had to draw
something, myself. I found that extremely satisfying and rewarding
in itself. Excellent. Okay. Most of us have camera phones good
enough to take high-quality photos. Use that too. We do. Opening
the software up is the last stage. Once you have all your
ingredients, all that's left is to put it all together. I do apologize if
that sounds too simplistic. It really does take time to create an
effective infographic. The most important part is continuous
iteration until you distill the message into an elegant infographic.
That's really useful information. You're talking about the platform,
you're talking about who and where the content is coming from. Of
course, you're not in control of that. That's a third party, sometimes
at least anyway. Then of course you've got the implementation
stage and you've given us a really nice workflow in terms of how to
start on this journey with infographics and of course, when to
actually even put pen to paper in terms of designing the actual
infographic itself. Now, Fidel, you've talked about all the different
content and of course, media assets which are pivotal to creating
infographics. Can you tell us a little bit about the software which is
available to create infographics and in particular, what do you use?
Yeah. In terms of software, of course, it can get really fancy with
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop. Even Adobe XD is a great program for
creating icons and graphics. I would say that that program has been
quite easy to use and understand. But at the end of the day, I'd like
to think of it as looking for a solution that is accessible to many
people. Something that you don't have to spend too much money
on or to use something that's so obscure and complex. For
someone, for instance, for me teaching to an educator, for instance
at the Uni, I would actually recommend Microsoft PowerPoint
because it is easy to use, easy to export, copy and paste into it,
works really well. As long as you get the heavy lifting phase, taking
care of. Especially if you get high-quality graphics, high-quality
images, you can make PowerPoint look really nice. PowerPoint is
free to Macquarie University staff. Microsoft Office is something
that we have access to. I believe that it's a software that we can
leverage really well going forward. It doesn't have to be cutting
edge. As a note, I'm trying not to say to you to not learn Adobe. It's
very rewarding to learn something new and something complex.
There are tons of tutorials on LinkedIn, tons of tutorials on
YouTube. I think YouTube is great for learning. I guess in terms of
free software or accessible software, there's probably things like
Google Slides, maybe that's a Google Doc Package. Then I guess
people with Apples have access to Keynote and there's a range of
these. I guess it's similar to [inaudible] from music to a certain
extent. It really is incredible thing in the wealth of our media
platforms that are accessible in this day and age. It's interesting
because I guess you're talking about the comparison between entry
level, which seems like entry level, but nowadays entry level is so
involved through to things like all of the Adobe products which can
be involved, that can be a whole learning process in itself. But I
guess that depends on how far people are going and how engaged
people want to be with infographics. It sounds like this so many
positives with regard to infographics. But I guess one of the big
questions here is, what's the limitation? What can't they do? What
are the weaknesses of infographics. Great. Right. Yeah. I guess for
me personally, the main weakness of infographics right now is
accessibility. Whenever we use infographics for online courses, you
know that it's going to be put into a learning management system
of some sort or an interactive course. We have to export that
infographic as an image file. It's PNG or JPEG. In doing that, it
makes it less accessible. Less accessible in the sense that, let's say
screen readers cannot pick up words that we put into the image
because it's flat, it can't really read the text in there. You can only
put so much into the alt text to make it accessible that way. I guess
some number 2, having various screen sizes and resolutions
nowadays, you have gigantic 32 inch 4k monitors on one spectrum,
and on the other spectrum you have a four-inch mobile phone and
you have to cater to people who use these devices everywhere in
between that. In designing an infographic, it's quite difficult to get it
to scale correctly on a wide range of devices. I think that's an
inherent weakness of it right now, I'm sure in the future someone
will figure out how to scale them correctly. In terms of content, I
suppose there's only so much conceptual knowledge you can cram
into infographic. There's a certain depth that it can go to. I think
they're great, but they need to be supplemented by other Learning
Objects, activities, and other interactions to strengthen it more. As
always, it's an old round approach, I guess, but infographics seems
to be playing a more important role as we move into this new
technological age of online delivery. I guess some of the limitations
that you've pointed out, are things like platform related or format
related and that leads me to my next question. Where do you see
Infographics heading in the future? Yeah, I know that's a very
interesting question. I think the role of infographics heading into
the future is huge. Especially even now, I would say where
infographics are today. It's a huge part of online technologies,
online enhanced learning and teaching. Everything that we see on
mobile phones. A lot of them have been condensed into this really
nice visual format of getting your point across really to make things
more engaging. However, I think because of the advances of
technology, AI, all these neural networks, all these fancy words that
you hear, the creation of infographics and graphics in general has
been democratized. I'd like to think that I use the word
democratized directly there. Yeah. Something becoming more
common, more accessible. Anyone can have the opportunity to
create one. Makes sense. I'm excited for educators in the future
because they can create their own infographics. Like you don't
necessarily need a graphic design degree or to hire a professional to
create infographics. But I guess of course, if an infographic will be
good, that's another story. You can create it, but will it be good?
Services such as Canva, software like Photoshop or PowerPoint,
they have advanced so much. I guess really, as you asked, I'm
excited to be part of this journey, just seeing how people are
learning how to use it effectively. It's not so much my own practice,
it's more like seeing other people becoming more and more
comfortable with it. You're right. Excellent. Yeah. I'm sure you know
because your attention spans today are so short that it's just going
to get a lot bigger in the future. Absolutely. I can't be sure of the
research on this, but I'm assuming that the use of multimedia
actually helps hold the attention span and draws people in towards
one source of information. Do you use infographics in combination
with other types of multimedia, like video or hypermedia for
example? Yeah. Infographics, for me, will always be accompanied
by something that is interactive. Infographics, yes they can stand
alone, but they're much stronger if they are supplemented or
appear with something that is more rich in terms of media. As you
said, video, hypermedia, audio and that sort of thing. But my
personal favorite is audio. Going forward, personally, I think audio
is such a powerful tool and still underrated at the moment. We
have mobile phones that are capable of recording things.

Play video starting at :17:44 and follow transcript17:44

Really good microphones are not so expensive nowadays. You

mentioned using GarageBand, which is a free software that you can
use to remove and cut errors. I assume that audio is also a lot
easier to edit than video, not so much easier, but quicker. It's a lot
quicker to edit than video. You don't need specialized websites like
YouTube or Vimeo to upload it into. It's light, you can send it
through an email. Yeah. I just think that it's a nice technology that
can accompany an infographic, and it's easy to distribute. I'm sure,
Andy, people who are listening to this podcast right now as well,
they could be doing something else. You could be doing a mundane
task at home, or cooking, or washing your car, and you're listening
to something. I'm setting up IKEA furniture. There you go. Exactly.
Using an infographic. That's not true. But yes, you're exactly right.
Yeah. I'm not sure if we can multitask, but yeah. It's almost
synonymous now that when someone says, I'm listening to a
podcast, it's like, are you commuting? Are you driving to work? Are
you walking the dog or something? Yeah. We can consume
information by doing something else. I guess the level of
comprehension, who knows what it is? But, it's cool. Yeah. I think
that's a great way of doing it. Yeah. Absolutely. Hey Fidel, what
advice would you give for anyone just starting to develop their own
infographics? No worries. My main advice to someone who wants
to start developing their own infographics is not to start making the
infographic yet. Don't turn on your computer, don't turn on the
program just yet. Think of the heavy lifting phase. The first thing
that you should do is a lot of research. There are a lot of
infographics out there, topics that have already been refined and
been nicely done already. I would say, go look at these infographics
that are around your context and your area. It's not so much to
steal the idea, rather, you would take inspiration from them. Piece
it together to form your own. I say this because it will also save you
time. There are certain contexts that already lend themselves quite
well to what other people have created already, and some
infographics that exist out there have already been refined, they've
been vetted, they've been approved, and if you find a nice layout
that you can use to supplement your message, then go for it. But at
the end of the day, all you want to do is to get people to really
understand your message. After all of that, I think that's when you
create it on PowerPoint or Photoshop. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the
best tip I can give you right now. That's really good advice. Thank
you. Fidel, it's been a real pleasure and an honor to have you join us
for this podcast. You've given us so much to think about with
regard to infographics. You've run us through some really
important points about platforms, workflow, implementation, and
of course, the strengths and weaknesses, and where we're heading
in the future with infographics. Thanks for being so generous with
your time and sharing your wealth of expertise with us today. Andy,
thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. I was quite nervous at the
beginning, but you made it very enjoyable. Thank you. You're most
welcome. That was Fidel Fernando joining me to discuss
infographics.
Welcome to week 3 of the designing learning resources course. This
week we'll take the learning sequence you created in week one and
find opportunities for audio podcast to enhance the learning
experience. A podcast is a memoir for the ears, a compost for deep
conversation, a jigsaw of words with the added creativity of sound,
music, and texture. First, we'll survey the return to the audio
medium in the digital age, then examine the pros and cons of using
audio to enhance and engage learning. There are so many ways to
incorporate podcast into your learning sequence. Do you want to
give a commentary on an issue using a case. Do you want to
interview with guest and showcase multiple interpretations of
data? At the same time I also want you to consider opportunities
for your learners to create podcast. The challenge of designing an
audio narrative that invites the listener to co-create the story using
their imagination and interpretation of sounding voice can be
incredibly rewarding the learners and make this sense making and
many making all the more memorable. This week, your work to
rapidly design a podcast, I implore you to let your interest drive the
creative process and I asked you to be mindful of the way that
audio liberates our eyes and opens a gateway for intimate contact
with our heart and our eyes.
Create video, audio and infographics for online learning Week 2
Audio resource USING AUDIO IN EDUCATION Transcript – Grazia
Scotellaro

Welcome my name is Grazia Scotellaro and this is a 2 part talk

about audio and podcasts in education. As a language teacher I
have always known the benefits of using audio for teaching, one of
my very first projects involved English speaking children using audio
books to learn Italian as a second language. The principle was that
children could choose books they liked, the book came with an
audio tape (at time there was no mpr3 players) and they would
read and listen at the same time. No English translation of the story
just text, images and audio, the amount of language the children
picked up that way was remarkable, with better pronunciation and
understanding that my standard Italian language lesson. These days
audiobooks have made a comeback and sites like Audible have
become quite popular. While audio has been around for a little
while for learning, podcast took a little bit more time to made their
way as an educational resource. Podcasts really started as way to
access on demand audioblogs and radio programs with devices like
the iPod. People could download and listen on the go they favorite
shows and songs. It was only later that the idea of using this format
for education started. One of the most famous and now defunct
example of education via podcast was iTuneU that allowed
educators to create and share educational content perfectly
packaged for the iPod and later the iPhone. This was the time that I
also realized that podcasts could be a great way to provide
resources for my students that they could access at any time
without being in front of a computer. Not only I created podcast
lectures but I also used podcasts from educational sites as ready-
made materials for my courses. This not only saved time but also
made experts in their field available to my students in a convenient
and simple way. For me it was a complete game changer and
opened a door to learning for both me and my students. I can
honestly say that I have learned so many things just by listening to
podcasts and I am not alone. In the US 1/3 of people over the age
of 12 regularly listen to podcasts and figures are very similar in
Australia. I really think that tapping into this potential is really
important so I am really glad to see the audio is making a big come
back. So let’s see what is special about audios and podcasts as an
educational resource: I have already talked about the anytime
anywhere – contrary to other forms of content audio can be used
anywhere, in the car, on a bus, walking, doing chores, in fact used
well it can really add “extra learning” without too much effort. A
few years ago with some language colleagues we created some
multimedia ebooks with embedded audio files, the idea was
precisely to add extra language learning opportunities outside the
normal learning environment that students could use at any time
even when the course was over. We called in “professor in my
pocket”, we received overwhelming positive feedback from
students using this approach because the students had the
resources on their device simply and conveniently all they needed
was to press play. Another reason for using audios is that it fits in
with the “mobile” nature of today’s living, we know from statistics
that most podcast are consumed from smartphones and with most
people owning a smartphone deploying learning there well it is just
smart. And talking about Smart with the uptake of Alexa and
Google home (for example) podcasts can now be played over those
devices and with so much content already available is just a matter
of choosing what is appropriate and ask Google to play it. Audio
allows you to use your imagination – this is one of the reasons I
love to listen to audio books and podcast so much. Without images
and other media to distract you, listening especially when you are
alone it can really fire up your imagination, it can make you think
and give you a different perspective than from a video for example.
And Listening is a great skill to develop not only to make you a
better listener but also a better speaker. From a production point of
view, audio is much easier to produce than video. In the next
episode I will give you some tips and resources to create your
audios and podcasts. Depending on what you would like to achieve
you can have short episodes or long episodes. You can be the only
one speaking or have a conversation or interview. There are so
many ways to make it interesting, again in the next episode I will
share some tips and resources you can use. But if you have never
done a podcast before or used audio for education one of the very
best things you can do is go and listen what others are doing. At the
moment on my listening list I have the 50 things that made the
modern economy from the BBC or The secret history of the future.
So I hope you will join me for the next episode and the practical
side of creating audio and podcast resources. Thank you for
listening!
Create video, audio and infographics for online learning Week 2
Audio resource THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING
AUDIO IN ONLINE EDUCATION Transcript – Grazia Scotellaro

Hello and welcome back, In this second podcast I want to give you
some tips and resources to create your own audio or podcast and
share ideas on how to use the power of audio to do more than just
create resources as well as advantages and disadvantages in using
audio as a resource. But let’s get to work and assemble what we
need for audio and podcasting production. First with the obvious,
what are you trying to achieve with your audio resource at this
stage doesn’t matter if it is just an audio or a fully fledged podcast
with all the trimmings. Next think about your audience, who are the
people that will listen? How will they listen? Is you audio
embedded in some online resource like a webpage or LMS space or
would you provide a way to have the audio downloaded and used
on a mobile device? Is it just going to be you talking or will you have
a conversation or interview with someone else? Write down a set
of objectives you want to achieve, what are you going to teach if it
is an instructional audio, will you provide other resources along
with the audio, like notes, links, etc. So research, organize and
gather all you need for the content you want to cover. If it is
just you talking you can prepare what you will be saying but if it is
conversation or interview some questions will guide the recording
session. Different people have different methods to prepare the
content, I usually start with a list of dot point of what I want to say
and in what order before fleshing things out. This way I can see
how things flow and re-arrange stuff if I need to. To script or not to
script, again it really depends on what you are going to cover and
the feel you want for your final audio production. Sometimes is
good to have a dot point script to keep you on target but other
times you might need it fully scripted as you have to provide the
text version for accessibility. There are a lot of experts out there
but find the way that works best for you. Before we move down to
recording let’s talk about software to make your recording easier
both to record and edit. We all have our favorites what I am
suggesting are the ones I used over many years. And don’t’ worry I
will provide links so you can check things out later on. The first is a
free software called Audacity, this software has been around for a
long time and is the one i used in many of my teaching project as
not only is free and easy to use but comes with a large range of
editing tools to make the job of both recording and editing easier.
But you can also use windows voice recorder on your pc or
Quicktime player on a mac both work well but have very limited
editing options. Having a quite space with a good microphone is
important but for “friendlier improvised” audios your mobile device
is great. For editing I would still stick with Audacity but you can use
more sophisticated software like Adobe Premiere for example. My
tip however is to start with the simple and if you want to move on
to more powerful tools do that only once you feel that you require
more than you are getting with the free tools. When you record
think of who you are talking to, if you know your audience is good
to visualize the people, actually the person you are talking to.
Remember that most of the time and especially if the audience are
your students they will be listening alone so think of the single
person and make it sound you are talking just that one. And now
for the final bit, if you want to make your audio production sound
more professional you can add a jingle at the start and the end.
One place to check out for free jingles is Pixaby (btw it is also a
great site for images and videos but that is for another time) O.k.
we are now done with our audio and podcast production and it is
up to you if you want to share it with the world on a podcast
service like Podomatic or keep it between you and your students on
your LMS or educational site. I do need to add a few more things
before we get to the fun stuff There are some disadvantages in
using audio as a resource and is important to keep these in
consideration in your course planning: Not everything can be
explained simply with words so there are is content that really
needs more that just audio so fit for purpose is important. If you
have students with hearing impairment having just audio will not
be appropriate and this is why in my tips I did talk about the
scripting and providing the text as well as the audio. Audio is
usually best for short resources as listening for very long dense or
complex content can be less engaging. There is no body language or
other non-verbal cues to add to the meaning of what our are
saying. So keep that in mind. But now for the part I like the best,
what else we can do with audio and podcasts that is not just
creating resources for teaching. For example having your students
create podcasts for assessment - this is a great way for them not
only to submit assessment online but in a more creative and
engaging than your average assignment. Providing audio feedback
for assessment – personalizing online learning can be a little
difficult but providing audio feedback on assessment can add that
“teacher presence” that is sometimes missed in online education.
The other advantage is that you can convey so much more with
your voice than text especially to praise good work or to give
support and guidance to those not doing so well. Using tools like
Podcastle you can convert articles and news into podcasts with a
nice realistic sounding voice and all with the power of AI so try it
out. And since we are talking about re-utilizing materials really
explore what is out there, we spend so much time as educators re-
inventing the wheel. When I used podcasts from other experts and
educators in my courses not only made it easier for me but also
gave my students the opportunity to listen and learn from different
perspectives. Open Educational Resources are there to be used so
check them out I have included a link for you with some to explore.
But I will leave you with one of the best uses of audio I experienced
in my teaching life. Converting essay type assignments in audio
format. That was a real discovery, well written papers also sound
good when read aloud, so as I had a lot of marking to do but also a
long commute home from work I would use Zamzar to convert
assessment into audio, put it on my mpr3 player and listen on my
way home. By the time I read the actual paper before marking it I
already knew what is was about and it made it so much easier to
mark. Now that you know more about creating and using audio and
podcast for teaching have a go at doing one yourself, it is a lot of
fun. Happy learning and happy teaching!
Today I'm joined by Albert Atpin. Albert is an Associate Professor of
Philosophy and the Associate Dean of curriculum and learning at
Macquarie University. Now, Albert is also an expert in teaching and
innovation and integrates podcasts into his coursework. He also
integrates button accordion playing into his podcasts, but more
about that later. Albert, thanks so much for taking the time to join
us. Yeah. Thanks, Sandy. It's really nice to be here. It's great to be
invited along to do something like this. Albert, let's kick things
straight off by getting a bit of information on your education
backgrounds. Yes. I'm a philosopher, so I'm trained in philosophy
undergraduate and postgraduate work and PhD. That's pretty much
only a few things you can do with a philosophy degree. I went in
and taught philosophy but I'm very into the learning and teaching
aspect of the university, university life, university space. That's
taken me to a position as an associate dean of curriculum and
learning. I get to do really cool things looking at learning innovation
and things like that, and trying to spread the word about cool
things we can do in this space for students and for other academics.
Yeah, right. Podcasting has been around for awhile but how does it
fit into learning innovation for you? Well, I guess the thing that's
inhibitive about it is like you say, it's not a podcasting itself. It's the
avenue for rethinking how we teach that it provides. We have this
like longstanding way of teaching in universities going back to the
medieval period, with the sage on the stage. We stand up and we
lecture and we provide the content and the students duly write
everything we say down and then we examine them at the end. Of
course that's the residue from the fact that books used to be
expensive. People couldn't afford books, so it was the one person
with the book who read out the book basically. Or I guess book
were in a different language to what people could understand.
Yeah, exactly. Or people couldn't read. Yeah. It was this
background. Now for some reason we've kept that model for a very
long time. But what we really want from our students now is not
just that they get information on board, is that they do something
with the information, they're challenged by that information in
some way. Or they synthesize it and see how one could develop
that information and apply it and raise new questions from it.
What's really nice about things like podcasts is that they provide
you a way to do that, to engage with your students as listeners, for
instance, in a way that challenges their faults or takes the
information that they would have got from a lecture and allows
them to synthesize it, develop it more and push it further and raise
questions for themselves. It's that value-added element of it that's
really important to me. Well, that's interesting because I mean
lectures can be recorded. Lecture, which might be an owl. What
makes a recorded lecture so different from a recorded podcast? It
depends how you do I suppose. Well, maybe we should discuss this.
Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing that's nice about podcasts, and the
best podcasts that are around, not in an academic context but in
any field, even though they're structured and they should be
structured, they tend to have an organic feel to them. They create
this space where people can be relaxed and they can talk and are
engaging in conversation, and that removal of that formality. In a
lecture you're in a space which is about information transmission.
With a podcast, you're just listening. No one ever just listens that
you can actively listen, you engage with the ideas. But it's like
overhearing a conversation or being privy to a conversation. There's
something much more organic and much more open about that.
That's why I think they work better. They work better than the
traditional lecture. You heard it here first. Well, I honestly think in
terms of like just submitting information or transmitting
information, just a spoken voice telling you things would be exactly
the same as a lecture. In fact, it would be more ballots, one sensory
modality. This may not be a relevant question, but yeah, do you
find that you use a different time in a podcast than you would for a
lecture, for example? Yes, I suppose, because you're more aware
that you're trying to communicate clearly. In terms of the people
who are listening, there's something asynchronous about it. They
can't stop and ask you, ''Can you say that again? Can you clarify?''
It's worthwhile taking a slightly more measured tone creating that
atmosphere, but I would say not always.

Play video starting at :5:38 and follow transcript5:38

One of the things I like about podcasts is when you have people
talking together, the more than one person in the podcast. Of
course, someone says something provocative or suddenly you get
excitable, of course, you speak faster, you go into your normal
speaking mode, but I think that's part of the charm of it. Yeah. I see
what you mean. Are there certain, I guess, disciplines which lend
themselves more to podcasting in an educational format or
platform?

Play video starting at :6:12 and follow transcript6:12

If you think about the sciences or something like that, of course,

you would think, well maybe they're less amenable to the
environment that you get in podcasts than you do in the arts or
humanities, for instance. But I think with any discipline, any
academic discipline, there's a place for higher-order thought.
Thinking harder about the things that you've learned. That applies
to the sciences, the humanities, the social sciences. Now, having
said that, I think there's definitely a really nice connection between
arts, humanities, philosophy, history, those kind of disciplines and
podcasts. Another good example, actually, are things like
languages.

Play video starting at :7:9 and follow transcript7:09

Maybe people will have heard of this, I don't know, but one of the
most used language learning apps in the world is an app called
Duolingo. Other language learning apps are available, of course, but
Duolingo is I think the most popular. More people in the United
States learn languages through Duolingo, than through their high
school system. But what's interesting about that is they have these
little value-added things. Take in the Spanish course for instance,
they have a series of podcasts which you can subscribe to and listen
to. What you're hearing there are native speakers being
interviewed or talking about events in their life. But what's nice is
they do it in a slightly slower, more measured way, and it's not just
about analyzing what you're hearing, it's done in a way where
you're hearing the language used in its own environment.

Play video starting at :8:8 and follow transcript8:08

Even there where you're just listening to Spanish speakers speaking
Spanish and you're getting a little bit of English commentary over
the top about what's going on and it's really nice integrated way, it
really develops your listening skills, which is absolutely crucial to
languages. Even something like that where you would think, well,
surely if you're listening to something you'd want to understand it.
Well, even in a case like that where you might be really new to the
language, it serves a purpose and it plays a role because it lets you
listen to that language being spoken by native speakers and that's
crucial to language learning. That's really interesting. I remember
signing up for Duolingo when I lived in the United Kingdom, maybe
about 10 years ago, and there was no podcast. It was just, say this,
repeat it. Say this phrase. Can I order a sandwich in German or
Spanish or whatever it is? That was pretty much it. I can see how
podcasts would contextualize a lot of the material that you're
actually learning. Why don't you give us a background about how
you actually got into podcasting? Where did you discover the world
of podcasting and decide that that was something that you were
going to integrate into your work? Well, I'd always listen to
podcasts. Anyway, they're the kind of things that I like to do when
I'm cooking or driving in the car or just pottering around. Some of
my favorites, some of them are quite academic types objects about
another look at something in history, which the BBC have lots of
nice podcasts like that, famous historians. Then I also like a podcast
called The Power Pod, which is basically two mates going around
looking at hauntings and spooky occult things. One of them is a true
believer in the stuff and the other one's a complete skeptic.

Play video starting at :9:59 and follow transcript9:59

They spend their time whitening each other up. I love that podcast.
Just realizing how engaging these things were.

Play video starting at :10:14 and follow transcript10:14

In Australia they say soccer, but really it's called football. Who's
your football team? Nottingham Forest. They're languishing a little
bit at the moment. That's okay. Back to the podcast. Let's not talk
about Nottingham Forest. Well, that's the thing. I was listening to
old Nottingham Forest plays, talking about their memories and
things like this. Of course, you're just listening to people having
conversations, but you realize you're learning so much and you're
so drawn in, and you're so engaged.

Play video starting at :10:48 and follow transcript10:48

One thing that caught my attention with that, was just how
engrossing these things were and how they didn't seem to require
any specialist attention or anytime to be set aside specifically to do
that in the way we recommend with lectures. You could just do
these things while you were doing something else. They were made
for busy lives. They were made for multitasking. I just thought, our
students have busy lives. They're used to. I mean, we talk about
younger students being digital natives now, but what our students
are used to is multitasking. They're doing things in small snippets
and little bite-sized chunks. The idea of running a couple of tasks at
the same time and actually getting something from it. It just struck
me that actually, this is quite a nice thing. This could be quite
useful. I started to think, how would I use this? How would I
integrate this into what I do? One of the responsibilities is I had is
teaching a really large critical thinking course. The idea is, thinking
hard about what makes good rational thinking and then analyzing
evidence. Of course, some of the best examples of that that are
around at the moment are looking at people who were conspiracy
theorists or looking at COVID hesitancy and things like this. It struck
me that we could talk about those topics at a higher level that
allowed students to see exactly where the things that they were
learning in lectures had real relevance. When they learn to think
critically and learn to understand what counts as good scientific
evidence and what doesn't count as good scientific evidence. Then
that's one thing, but then seeing how those things play out when
you're actually dealing with real issues in the world is something
important. It struck me that podcasts would be a really, really
useful way to do that, so that's what we did. We just said, let's do
this. Let's start talking about, why on earth people believe the earth
is flat all of a sudden. That's the stuff that we did. How effective is
it? What's the feedback from students? Students like it. I mean,
some of them don't. But you can't please everyone, but I think
what was clear to the students was that they weren't being asked
to memorize things here. They were being asked to listen and they
were being asked to reflect on the issues in the same way. What
was crucial to it was not just the podcast itself, but creating a space
around the podcast in social media terms or through your iLearn
site, where they directly feeding back and responding to you about
what they've heard. It's not just passive, it's one part of an active
two-way engagement.

Play video starting at :14:9 and follow transcript14:09

The next time you have the next podcasts or less saying Martin, so
and so said this about the last podcast. We think that's a great
point and we want to raise this, and you'll notice with common
podcasts, people do you have right at the beginning of that
podcasts, they have little shout-outs on feedback from what's
happened before, and you find that this interaction starts to build.
It takes time, but it starts to build. The students buy into that,
they're used to that environment because of social media
interaction. It's interesting with podcasts because I've been around
for a while, like you said earlier, and there's really something that
should have been replaced as I guess internet bandwidth increased
and all of a sudden, you can see people's faces like people could be
sitting here watching out two months today. Doesn't necessarily
mean that's a good thing. But actually not now. How you speak for
yourself? But podcasts have remained despite technology and the
infrastructure, I guess, being able to support so much more than
just two or three people having a conversation and they're here to
stay. It sounds like it more so than ever. It's not just that they're
here to stay from a point of view of someone putting on a podcast
on while they cooking, listening to something about history. They're
actually really been integrated into the delivery of education.
There's people listening to this podcast right now who are probably
potentially getting inspired and thinking, I could do this. How hard
is it? What do you need? How do you get started in the world of
podcasts? This is one of the really interesting juxtapositions for me
with podcasts. On the one level, the reason I think they work, and
the reason I think they're popular in the way you're describing is,
there's a certain lo-fi quality to them. Like you say, it's old
technology ; it's people listening. We're in the brave new world of
internet and technological explosion; why we just recording voices
and talking? There's something of a charm to that. I'm old enough
to remember when people could buy music easily enough, but still
made mix tapes for their friends. I think podcasts have that organic
authenticity, which makes them seem quite lo-fi. That gives them a
charm, but at the same time, they're not that lo-fi. When you're
making them, you can't go into them with a little bit of tech. What's
the tech? What do we need? How do we get started? Well, in some
ways I say it's lo-fi, but actually, all you need is a decent platform on
your computer to record stuff; a mike and a set of headphones is
about as much as I think you need. Then a bit of a willingness to
play around, and tinker around because there are certain things
that make it good, and make it work really well. Especially if you're
saying to students, you need to listen to this. You don't want it to
sound like, 10 wasps having a fight in a Coke can [LAUGHTER]. Let's
hope this doesn't end up sounding like that [LAUGHTER]. Well, you
know what I mean by this. There's nothing worse than being told,
"You've got to listen to this for 20 minutes," but frankly, it's giving
you a headache, because the sound quality is so poor. There are a
few things you got to consider at that, but it's not that difficult. It's
not nearly as difficult as you might imagine. You don't need a large
recording studio. To be perfectly honest, in this podcast series, I've
recorded quite a few people who I think are using a specific
podcasting in USB mike, I think it's made by Rode. I can't remember
the price, but they sound great. They sound really good. That's the
thing now. You don't need to spend a whole lot of money. You
don't to buy the cheapest mike around, but they are highly
affordable, and they'll plug straight into your computer via USB,
which removes the need for any external hardware. Then it's
basically, I guess the software. What software are you using?
Before getting on to the actual software itself, it's worth noting if
you're in an educational institution, go and have a word with your
learning designers. Most of our faculties, most of our universities
have dedicated learning designers and developers. They have
recording equipment around, but they've always got microphones.
Usually they're happy to lend them to you. Most of them are these
Rode USB type mikes. They're not super expensive if you want to
buy one yourself, but they work. They really improve the sound
quality of what you do. They don't just work. In the past they would
have been a whole lot of things that we had to do to treat the
sound like, equalization, fixing, making things sound less harsh or
less bassy. Those Rode mikes, actually, the EQ frequency spectrum
is actually really good, or the frequency response. It's getting so
much easier just to plug and play, or plug and record. It is pretty
much plug and record. Let's quickly talk about software, what
software do you use.

Play video starting at :19:33 and follow transcript19:33

I think this is more because of inherent masochism than anything

else, but I use the Adobe Audition. That's because it's got lots of like
bells, and whistles, and things you can twist and turn and play
around with. I'm too much of a magpie to not want to press all
those buttons and see what happens and so on. That drew me to
that. Again, that could be quite expensive, but mine was actually
free through the licensing through university. I make use of that.
What I'd also done as well, when I found the learning curve too
steep there, there was this free software you can use like Audacity
and things like this, which are much simpler, much more intuitive,
and do easily as good a job for basic podcast as more high-end
stuff. I've used the two of those and I would say that either of them
are fine. If you're just starting out, maybe you use something like
Audacity.

Play video starting at :20:40 and follow transcript20:40

It seems relatively cost-effective. I guess people can also use Rode
microphones for your phone as well. Of course they do. I guess
people don't need to just think about having to have a computer.
There's also iPads. Sorry, I don't have to be device-specific. There's
tablets and there's phones. These days we have to do so much
more than just recording audio, people are making videos on their
phones and devices. It's not just a matter of plugging the gear in
and hitting record, is it? You've got to think about the content and
the structure. How do you approach a podcast? In a way, I
storyboard it.

Play video starting at :21:23 and follow transcript21:23

First of all, we think about the length of the podcast you want. I
might have a particular topic in mind which might be echo
chambers in social media.

Play video starting at :21:37 and follow transcript21:37

How do they rise? How do things like Google Search engines impact
how we end up viewing the world and things like that? Because
they always return from a neo alt-right type and I type in all of my
Trumpist paranoia. They always return those search things to me.
Then they start to prop us. How does that work? That's what I'm
interested in. Well, I start by asking myself, how long I'm I thinking
we need to work this? It's easy to keep talking and talking for hours
and hours about this. But really, especially if you're using it for
educational purposes, it's good to keep a tight rein on the amount
of time you're doing this. I've been putting between 20 minutes and
30 minutes on one of these just nice bite-size thing. What do I want
to get out of that in 20 minutes? What do I think I can help students
to develop and see in 20 minutes? I might pull out one or two
points there and then try to dedicate 10 minutes or so device I'm
using 30 minutes. I've got three points I want to cover. I'll just split
into rough 10-minute blocks. Then I'll break those down into
questions that I want to cover. Then because in the podcasts I
make, I always have somebody else there so they're always a
couple of us talking or we sometimes have an expert come in and
talk about what they do. What we do for the first 10 minutes, we
try and lay the foundation. It's almost like good cop, bad cop. One
of us will be like the slightly dumber one who says, "Well, what is
an echo chamber? I've heard about these things. I've heard they're
remaining in the world but what is an echo chamber." Then the
other one will explain. We start to build that not so almost like
taking the platform off the students learning. We've already gotten
to the point where they understand that. But the point of
connection between the podcast and the learning is one person's
the duper, one person's the explainer. I say, well, I've heard about
echo chambers, but I don't know what are they. That's what we'll
do in the first little section. Then we'll start in the second section,
raise some more questions. Again, it will be a bit dupe and expert-
wise. You say all of these things about echo chambers, but what are
the mechanics of that? How is that supposed to work? Then in the
final section we'll have an expert come in and tell us something
that's much deeper, more interesting. I'm very good at being a
dumb cop. I feel like I'm naturally suited to this role, especially
throughout the course of these podcast. But how do you progress
with this structure to the point where it's ready to go or you're
ready to release it?

Play video starting at :24:36 and follow transcript24:36

What's also important is it's all in good having that structure in

mind for how you're going to organize how you record it. But you
also want your storyboarding and the way you've organized your
questions to come across clearly to the people who are listening.
Have some music in there or something that breaks the
conversation. After that first section, when you feel like you've got
down pat, what an echo chamber is and why it matters. You want
something that breaks. A little five second sound break, something
that gives an auditory signal to the listener. We're about to
transition into something else here. Then even afterwards,
recording a bit a voice-over, doing your best voice-over then saying,
"Well, Alex and I decided that we'd worked out what an echo
chamber was." But at this point, my thoughts turned to some more
tricky questions and then go back. You're almost signposting bread
crumbs for your students. I had like a name for the podcast, which
wasn't just the course. We do critical thinking calls, but we called
the podcast Reason and Persuasion. We had a nice little bit intro
music, which I thought was nice, but no one else did. Because it
was me playing a tune on my button accordion.

Play video starting at :26:13 and follow transcript26:13

But the thing is, it's distinctive. As soon as you hear that, you know,
oh my God, it's Albert and his podcast again. I just get a jokes.
What's the definition of a gentleman? Some of that noise had to
play the accordion but doesn't. But it is. That's right. It doesn't
actually have to be good. It can be tacky and effective. Not that I'm
saying your button accordion playing is tacky by the way, Albert,
but I'm sure it's very good. Well, there's a limit on how good a
button accordion can be despite being tall or short for a basketball
player, it's all relative. Well, you're telling a story. I'm now just a
dumb copier.. But the point is even little things like that, slightly
idiosyncrasies, you can use and you want to use them to signal
what you're doing. This is the intro and then you want a little bit of
a voice-over on that telling them, this is the ancient history podcast
or whatever it is. Then something that transitions into your intro,
then your conversational bit and you need a little auditory signals,
little sound breaks, whether it's just a clear break between the
conversation on a separate voice over or whether it's a little sound
indent that indicates that you're transitioning. In a way you're
storyboarding and having those natural breaks between what you
do, you don't have to do it the way I'm suggesting. No one just
listens to a solid piece for 20-30 minutes.

Play video starting at :27:54 and follow transcript27:54

It's almost like you're keeping the string tense, but every now and
then you do like you're fishing. You have to give a little bit of slack
on the line just to reel them back in, make sure that content is
driving home, make sure they're engaging in the right way. You've
got a real focus on keeping people's attention and keeping people
focused on the topic, which is great. That's actually a really useful
thing. I guess that's not something people necessarily need to think
about in the first podcast they do or with the second podcast, but I
guess this is a progression that you've learnt through your different
iterations or different prolific podcasting career as such. Well, I
wouldn't say it's prolific. You've got to the point where you've got
button accordion, that's very prolific. On that note I came first but it
did come after marriage much to my wife's regret. Otherwise, it
would never have happened. Well, for better or for worse, I guess.
Exactly. But the point, when you're thinking about your topic and
the objectives you have, and the ambition that you have for your
students and your listeners with these topics, that can help you
really shape the structure of what you do. I think storyboarding it
out, working out, just setting yourself a couple of simple objectives,
not being too ambitious because you don't have that much time,
just simple goals and then organizing your structure accordingly,
and changing how you're talking, who's asking the questions,
whether you've got somebody else coming in, whether you've got a
short interview interlude, come paste it into your podcast, those
kind of things, just breaking up that content and then signaling to
your students what's happening at any given point. I think that kind
of structure just comes naturally from what we as academics tend
to do, which is think about the content rather than the delivery.
That's really awesome advice actually, part of the questions and I
guess this is another thing if you're interviewing other people. You
send them a list of questions usually, I guess, just to forewarn them
of what's ahead. Part of the questions I sent to you were things like
can you give us three tips on impacting podcasts but you've given
us about 10, so I'm not actually going to ask that question. Also,
some of the questions were how impacting is music in podcasting. I
feel like you've already answered all of those. Just quickly, can I
ask? With your podcasts, is your audience primarily students or are
you releasing your podcasts to the World Wide Web. I haven't
released them to the broader audience which we keep them purely
in Ireland. That's actually part of a broader question actually about
podcasting, which is about how frequently you do them. Now,
when you've got your podcast tied directly to a course, the
frequency with which you do them is tied to the structure of the
course. For any 13 week course or single semester course that I've
taught, I would have five podcasts in that. That's like a podcast
once a fortnight roughly. That's fine because it's self-contained
within the lecture content and the unit content, and you've got a
captive audience and you can build that in that interaction and
engagement with them in that way. We've got bonds of 13 weeks is
over, of course, they're gone and they're not interested anymore
but if you actually are looking to do a bigger series of podcasts and
you want them to be released more generally, you really do have to
think about schedule.

Play video starting at :31:52 and follow transcript31:52

Even if it's one podcast a month, if you've committed to that, you're

doing that, it needs to be something that you keep up with. Yeah.
Otherwise, you lose audience. Yeah. Audience builds over time.
Yes. But if you're promising you're doing one a month and for six
months you do that, then you only do one for the next six months,
the podcast dies. It withers on the vine. That scheduling thing is
important. You can let your courses guide the scheduling and then
keep it self-contained to that. Or if you want to release them more
generally to the general public and have them hosted on Apple
iTunes, or Spotify, or wherever, then you need to keep a regular
schedule. You probably will need to do an awful lot more social
media promotion and upkeep around that. You'll want a website,
you'll want a Twitter feed or something like that. Well, it's about
building a community around your podcast. Exactly. Otherwise, it
sits in isolation. It's spinning in the void. Yeah. It's a social media
cog that's not connected to anything else. Yeah. I guess that's a
really important point. Even in an education setting, these
podcasts, they're part of a learning community, a part of your
learning community. Yeah. It's really cool to see. It's great for me
coming from a creative background to see the amount of creativity
that's involved in the conceptualization and the actual delivery of
this podcast. It's almost like you're preparing a presentation. It's
also slightly performance, it's slightly conversational, so it's
multifaceted. Absolutely. Yeah. There's a performative element to it
and there's a narrative element to it. You're trying to tell a story.
Yeah. You're having to perform the parts of that story, what will
shape the performance. There's definitely that. Yeah. That's a really
nice way of putting it. You're using audio to tell a story and teach
people about important things. I guess we've seen this evolution in
terms of audio, especially in the last century where all of a sudden
we've learned how to record audio, we've learned how to
distribute it, we've learned how to sell it as a value-traded good,
we've learned how to integrate audio recordings into so many
different areas of life, including education. Moving forwards, we
see these massive technological advances. Yeah. Audio is still going
to be this thing that moves through the sound and goes into the left
and right earhole, basically. Yeah. That's the point. As educators,
the key medium for information, of course, the written word plays
an important part, but speaking, listening are crucial elements.
Even if I record a video and have that video lecture put in
somewhere so I don't repeat the lecture, it's just recorded, audio is
a key component of that. Audio is always going to be a feature of
what we do. In fact, it's going to become more crucially embedded
in what we do because education is moving so much more towards
this blending of online and in-person environment. It's becoming
crucial. Our students are telling us that they don't want to just
come to university campus just to listen to a lecture that's a
repetition of the notes that they could read. They do want to come
to campus and they do want to talk to us, but they want to
consume the information that we would like them to have in their
own time, in their own way. For some of them, that means reading,
for many of them it means watching or listening. For that reason,
the use of audio is going to be a key component of what we do. Not
because it's a new thing but because it's something that we've got
to get the quality right for, and as academics and educators, we've
got to become okay, and familiar with, and comfortable with the
technology around recording good audio, and editing, and
producing good audio for our students. Okay. You wouldn't tolerate
printing your textbook in blurry text. This is true. Yeah. The same is
true for audio. Albert, it has been really fascinating to spend time
with you today and to talk to you about podcasting. We covered so
much ground. I've learned a thing or two and I'm sure you've
inspired people out there to take that first step and move into the
world of podcasting. Thanks so much for joining us. It's been an
absolute pleasure, Andy. Thank you.
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Play video starting at ::3 and follow transcript0:03

Visuals convey a much richer experience than text-heavy content

alone. By using visual storytelling techniques, we can help make
complex information easier to understand, and as a result, deliver
more impactful or sticky learning messages. In this lesson, we'll
explore why you might choose to create a video, the
characteristics, and features of engaging video learning objects
using Neuroscience, and approaches to scripting videos to support
learning. Let's explore the case for video learning objects with some
examples. A video is a compilation of text, images, and sound to
persuasively convey information, messages, or stories. We see
video used effectively, and efficiently to showcase high-value
expertise through quick bots to coding concepts and frameworks
with concrete examples, offering a range of expert perspectives on
a topic, challenge, or problem, demonstrating practical tasks,
creating narrative-based scenarios for problem-solving, and
showcasing the multiple ways of doing. Video can also be used to
prime learner-generated digital media. Do you need to make a
video, or can your learners acquire this knowledge from curated
resources? What's the purpose of your video? What learning
activity do you want to prime your learners for? Would deeper
learning occur if you had your learners designing and creating video
artifacts as part of their learning journey? Kathryn Coleman
proposes we take an ecological approach to learning design. If, for
instance, you want to use continuous outcomes-based portfolio
assessment and feedback, then curate your learning space like a
portfolio. She says, "If you want them to create video reflections,
you have to include them in your course. How I teach, what I teach,
how they learn it, and then how they evidence it needs to be
connected to each other." Whether you're designing and creating
videos for your learners or priming your learners to do this, before
starting to script, it's important to consider Mayer's Multimedia
Learning Principles. We must work within the cognitive load
experienced by the viewer and listener. The key lesson is not to
overload one processing channel during working memory. What
does this mean? Spoken word, the verbal channel, and pictures, the
visual channel together work within cognitive load in working
memory. Spoken word, narration, and typed words on-screen text
calls cognitive overload in working memory in the verbal channel.
When aligned with course learning outcomes and a clear purpose in
the context of a week, a module, or a lesson, and working within
cognitive load, videos offer learners access to a channel of visual
and spatial learning, and this is known as dual coding, combining
the spoken word with visuals to enable efficient processing in
working memory to encode and retrieve from long-term memory.
When engaged, learners are better equipped to receive and
process complex information, messages, and stories. This is also
why learner-generated digital media can be such a powerful
learning task. What three audiovisual decisions must we make and
be mindful of when drafting scripts? The first is to remove
distractors, the non-essential images, any information that cause
extra processing. These can be a challenge for learners, creating
their own media as they balance informative, aesthetically pleasing,
thoughtful video communication. For example, non-essential
decorative images can be seductive and evoke positive emotions,
whereas representational, organizational, or explanatory diagrams
can act as a retrieval cue and be instrumental in helping the learner
build mental models. The second design decision is to manage
essential processing to focus learning. If we want to make
understanding immediate, we must carefully craft scripts that signal
and segment by chunking content and deconstructing frameworks.
Pre-train by introducing jargon, the names and characteristics of
concepts, and use proximity, also known as contiguity, to integrate
label with diagram components. Take a look at some of the
annotated example scripts in this week's readings. The third design
decision is to foster generative processing, support the learner's
own construction of mental models. Can you use a personal
conversational style, or incorporate personal stories, examples, or
Insights to relate, and connect with the learner? Can you humanize
learning by incorporating human movement, with hands and
gesture, or demonstration where it's applicable? Can you scaffold
examples with open-ended questions for beginners, and problem-
solving for more experienced learners? Without the removal of
distractors and the use of techniques that manage essential
processing and foster generative processing, video becomes, as
Holly says, "A passive, inefficient, sequential access medium for
transmitting information." An engaging video has a story structure,
a mixture of footage, static and motion graphics, and some on-
screen text. Strategic use of voice-over, talking head, or interview,
thoughtfully placed music and sound effects, key clear messages, an
intentional purpose, a consistent creative style, and color palette
font and music. How many of these features have you seen in
learning videos you've experienced in your own online learning?
Can you deconstruct these successful and unsuccessful examples
you've encountered? In the next lesson, we're going to explore the
production and post-production processes behind a video learning
object. To prepare, I want you to create your video learning object
mood board. Find three example videos that resonate with you and
the style of video you might like to create. When watching these
videos, how quickly or slowly does an on-screen media type
change? Was every shot a talking head or were there other
elements used? Was every message spoken to you or did you
create meaning from the sounds and images? How was multimedia
used to make an impact and provide structure to drive the story?
What was the duration of the video?

[MUSIC] Now that you have your video learning object moodboard,
some of your video design decisions have already been made. In
this lesson we'll explore the rapid design process videos including a
toolkit to support your design and production. Phase one is a
research. What is the focus and purpose of your video? Do you
have existing materials and resources to draw from? Or do you
need primary or secondary research? What data and evidence do
you want to use? Which voices do you want to highlight? Which
perspectives do you want to showcase? Phase two is storytelling.
What do you want to show and what do you want to tell? What's
the story? Sometimes a narrative structure works for a video
learning object. And we see this quite often in TED-Ed videos or RSA
shorts. Or often in program or course orientation and induction
videos. Where historical context and the progress of issues are key
devices to connect to the learner's experience to help them build
their mental models. Other times you need to think about the story
differently as three key messages or three big ideas. Examine one
of these examples linked in this week's readings. What are your
three takeaways? And remember, you can have some fun with your
videos too just like these examples. If you can engage learner
desirability through surprise, interest, confusion, or all, the more
sticky or memorable the learning experience can be. Getting
feedback on your idea scaffold this first iteration is ideal at this
early point. We recommend the critical friend protocol, which we'll
dive into in week five. Phase three is scripting. How will you show
and tell your story? What audio, voice, voice over, music, sound
effects will pair with static or motion visual elements or on screen
text? When it comes to preparing your script, what you will show
and what you will say. You can choose the traditional audio-visual
script or the two columns story table. Again, once you reach this
second iteration point with your draft script, it's a natural point to
garner feedback from peers before creating the video object. Phase
4 is pre-production. Before you start filming, you'll need to
transform your script into its itemized list of media assets, images,
footage, and music. Where will you gather images from beyond
your original creations? How will you source footage beyond your
original recordings? How will you source music, ambient noise, and
sound effects beyond your original recordings? Depending on your
discipline, there may be a wealth of media archives to draw from.
You'll find links to some examples in this week's readings and
resources. Phase five is production. How will you record your
original video assets? You can use your mobile, tablet, laptop
devices to record footage. If these are dynamic experiences in the
field, you might like to invest in stabilizing equipment like a gimbal
or a tripod. How will you produce and edit your video? Will you use
video conferencing tools like Zoom to record your talking hit or the
inbuilt recording features in Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft
stream? Will you use mobile video editing software like Adobe
Spark or combine your mobile footage onto your desktop using
Adobe Premiere Rush? Or do you have enough experience to use a
professional tool like Adobe Premiere Pro? If you were starting out,
I highly recommend doing an experiment with the adobe stock
video mobile app using the photos and footage I know you have of
your family and friends. Set yourself 15-30 minutes and see what
you can create. Phase six is post-production. Where will you host
your video? And how will you insert it into your learning sequence
for your learners to access? Do you have institutional video or
digital media repositories? Are you using google apps or classroom
and can host them on Google Drive and insert them into a lesson?
Have you set up a YouTube video account to host your videos and
insert the links within your learning management system? This
week I want you to work through these six phases of rapid video
design to produce not only your script but your first prototype too.
You'll find examples and links to resources in this week's readings
and challenge exercise. Remember, rapid design is about producing
quick prototypes and getting feedback in order to iterate. [MUSIC]
Today I've got the absolute pleasure of being joined by two guests.
We've got Dr. Prashan Karunaratne, and Pablo Hernandez. Prashan
is a subject matter expert in an academic, and Pabs or Pablo is the
production lead at Macquarie Business School. Gentlemen, thank
you so much for joining me. Thank you for having us, Andy. My
pleasure. Thank you for having us. Now, let's start off by getting a
bit of backgrounds. Perhaps we can start by getting an idea of how
you found your way into tertiary education. Prashan, would you
care to start first, please. Sure thing, Andy. I began studying at
Macquarie University and we have an honors' year after we finish
our Bachelor's year of study. During that year, you do a research
project and I was given the opportunity to take some smaller
classes which we call tutorials in Australia. I love the fact that I was
interacting with students and trying to make the knowledge make
sense to them. I also had firsthand experience because I myself had
only recently read the content. I continued that teaching even after
I finished all my study and then I finally decided I actually find more
fulfillment in interacting with the students and making the
knowledge and the content work for them and also give me
opportunities to learn from them because they apply that
knowledge and the content differently, and I've been here ever
since eight and a half years and counting. Was the plan always to
be an academic or were you going to go out and do something else
outside of tertiary education? My extended family had this idea
that I was going to be an academic. They always noticed that I was
teaching my younger cousins, teaching my friends, and they picked
up this skill of mine before I did. Okay. I didn't really pick up on that
and I thought what every other person would do is go out into the
real world and get a job in the real world. It took me a bit more
time to realize what others had picked up already. Yeah. Okay.
You're still here, so obviously, it's working out. I'm still here.
Excellent. Pabs, how about you? How did you get into tertiary
education? My background is very different since I come from
animation and TV productions. Obviously, would have never been
part of my journey to think that I would end up in university and
with working with academia. A friend of mine told me at the time
that there was a very interesting position in Macquarie Uni and I
was interested. But just applied for it not thinking anything of it,
and before you know it, I got the position. It was challenging since I
do creative work, and for me creative work definitely is part of the
journey.

Play video starting at :3:4 and follow transcript3:04

When I had my four kids, animations that I created because there
was literally what I was focused at the time. There was always
a gear for, if my kids could watch this, then it's something that
I'm into it. As time progresses you learn, you get more into all
different techniques and different, from photography, film
editing, and all those sort of things and now my journey's
changed because all of a sudden I'm creating material that is
actually my kid's, now that they're going to go to university,
they can actually tomorrow be learning from this and it's
something that I'm interested in. There's more passion to it
than just creating a video clip, for example, or a TV ad, which
there's a nice feeling of it when you create that stuff, but this
is a more lasting feeling especially because you know how
much it will impact in people's lives. I'm very happy about this
opportunity and just taking it. It's been about three years
now, so yeah, pretty happy. Yeah, that's excellent. It sounds
like Pabs, you came from the real world to academia. Prashan,
you avoided it by staying in academia; is that correct? It
sounds like the two of you quite a diverse team and as I
understand it, you're both working together on online
courses; is that correct? Very much so. Maybe you can tell us
a little bit about some of the courses that you're working on
together as a team. Well, you are a team, it's the two of you.
Perhaps would you care to fill us in a little bit on what you've
been doing? From a production point of view, obviously
there's a lot of different challenges when it comes down to
putting material that, for example, could be very boring. No
offense Prashan, but I'm just saying. But you know what I
mean. We're talking about very intricate, in a stuff that people
don't usually watch just to enjoy, so making it appealing and
making it so you can learn from that is definitely a challenge.
But I'm very lucky that working with Prashan alone, from the
academics that I worked with, he ticks everything. He makes it
very easy to work with. Prashan is very modest, but he puts a
lot into it and makes it easy, that way teamwork really works,
it's not just a one way. The reality of it, a lot of what, for
example, the stuff that we have to visualize, stuff that we
don't know. We're not very good at this. That's the reality.
Prashan, the one of the things that we've done is the Excel
skills for data analytics, and we just finished Excel skills for
business forecasting. Okay. [inaudible] that is very, very
interesting, but literally is not our forte. We're learning on the
go and at the same time, we're literally enhancing what he is
presenting. I think it works both ways. Am I correct in
assuming that Prashan is doing a lot of the content, he's a
content matter expert, and you're basically making school
cool, is that right? Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. We're
dissecting, we're picking up everything. If it doesn't make
sense, we try to make sense and visualize it. When you say
"we", are you talking about you in particular, Pabs, or are you
saying both of you as a team? I work with a production team
which is three other editors. All of us, we're not academics or
have any background with that. When it comes down to yes,
we're good at what we do which is we present stuff, we
package stuff. I mean, I want to talk about the production
process, but at the same time, is it almost as though you've
got an expert in content and then you've got these people
who maybe know something about the content, but you've
got to rely on each other and you've got to trust each other.
You're trusting that Prashan's content is spot on. You said he
ticks all the boxes. He looks quite smart, doesn't he? I like that
look. Look at all these books behind him. He knows what he's
talking about. You've got this content, but Prashan, at the
same time, I guess, you've almost got this real life filter where
you're sending it to the production team and they're looking
at it and going, "How can we make this more palatable or
more digestible?" Is that the way the workflow happens? I
guess at this point, I might talk about a little bit of the history
that I've also brought to the production of these courses.
Sure. Pre-creating these MOOCs, Massive Open Online
Courses, we just had the traditional teaching at Macquarie
Uni where we have subjects that we taught. In our first few
Excel courses that we created which was called Excel skills for
business, we hired a subject matter expert who knew the
content, and we had to then work as a team to translate that
content into scripts, and then translate the content from
scripts into what Pabs is talking about which is the production
value and visualizing that so it makes sense to the learner.
What we've done in recent times is we've then taken already
Macquarie subjects which are already taught on campus.
Now, I have a lens of how we use to transform it into an
online space. I am using that filter, as Pabs is mentioning, I'm
making it a bit easier than giving him two things to do. I filter
it into something that is seven minutes and then pass it on it.
Here is a bite, and now, please do your magic, make that bite
an Apple all over again. We've had a bit of history through this
process to make things efficient and effective. Perhaps, I've
got it a little bit wrong. Perhaps, rather than just being the
content expert, you're also a content curator. You're getting
subject matter and you're breaking it down to a certain
extent, and then that workflow involves both of you, and it's
not just always you as the creator, is that correct? Correct.
We've done 10 courses so far. With the first seven, we hired a
subject matter expert. But with the latest three that we
created, I happened to be the subject matter expert as well
because it was my subject that we taught at Macquarie. I
guess a learning lesson for everyone out there who's watching
this is sometimes, you might be the expert and then you can
chunk bite-size the content that you've had up to the
production team. Sometimes, you might not be and you can
still add value, as you mentioned, as a curator to somebody
else's expertise and still use your role in that sense. There's
many hats an academic could play, as you said, as a curator or
as an expert or both. When you're working with other people,
I guess, to a certain extent, it's relevant when you're
formulating the structure for your own videos, how important
is something like scripting? How important is it for you to
know what other people are going to say. Let's say if you're
not necessarily experienced to presenting on camera or
presenting in an online video format, how important is it to
have these scripts not just there sitting in front of you but
script so that everyone can look at it and they can work on
this script together? How do you formulate a script, I guess? I
guess I might take the beginning of this question then. What
we've done in the past is we have two types of video,
primarily. One which we call a face to camera discussion-
based video. Sometimes, we have Excel screen flow-based
videos. We predominantly like to script the pieces where we
are talking to the camera, and we predominantly don't like to
script the ones where we work into an Excel file and then
moving along the screen. We found that that's the best
balance of time and because scripting does take a lot of time.
What we usually do is we talk through, get that audio
recorded, then get a script auto-generated using software,
then we go and edit that auto-generated script, then we try
and make sure it makes sense to a third party, and a third
person might edit it. We try and shrink the script to seven
minutes, so that all takes a lot of time. So whenever Pabs is
taping myself or our other presenter, Nicky, we'd like to script
those. But if we're walking through Excel, because either I am
very familiar with what I'm doing with Excel or our other
presenters are very familiar with what they're doing with
Excel, we try not to script those, and we do a natural talk
through, walk through flow. We find that it's useful to the
learners as well, because they can see us thinking out loud,
which is what they should be doing when they're running
through Excel. So we find that's the best balance over
scripting and under scripting and doing a bit of both, some
videos and not every video. I guess the piece to camera,
you've got the succinct articulate message, which is basically
really important for the start. Correct. This is the main
message, and then maybe discussions, or there may be other
formats that follow. Pabs, from a filmmaking or videography
point of view, what can you tell us about the production side
of things, especially maybe in relation to scripts, but maybe
just give us your experience on your end of this process. The
reality is that you're dealing with a lot of information, and the
challenge obviously is how do we make this something that is
simplified to the point that it sounds like you're talking to me
just like we're having a conversation. Because at the end of
the day, the student is watching video after video the video,
and you have to remember, we're giving them an overload of
information. How do we break it up, so it's actually enough
not to the point that is an overkill, but at the same time, it's
another they can learn, and is also easy and realistic as we're
talking about a lot of videos that we're producing. There's
three stages really for the production, which is pre-
production, production, and post-production. Pre-production
really includes the idea of how we're going to develop the
scripts. Like Prashan was talking about, we do parts to camera
so that at least the student understands this is the professor
who is going to be guiding us. Even though we don't see in
other parts because we're doing an actual screen grab, at
least you get the personal touch like that conversation with
you've done this. Great. What we tried to do with our
conversations, even though Prashan is actually reading from a
teleprompter, but it's actually conversation. So the tricky bit is
make those scripts conversation, so you as a student, you
think it's directed to you in another script, and I think that's
why his stuff is working because students feel that is more
realistic. Some personal touch. So that's tricky, but you learn.
The more you do it, you start picking it up. You start realizing,
hey, we can tweak this. That's the first bit which is the pre-
production, then the production comes in, which includes all
the filming. We break it up in two sessions. We do all the bits
are to camera, and literally, we'll dedicate in a week, maybe
 three days, and we'll go film all the bits that are going to be
the introductions for the videos and then maybe the endings.
It doesn't need to be in the studio, but sometimes we go and
take it in the campus and make it look a little bit more realistic
because you have to remember the students actually think
you're doing a course in that campus. So you want to bring
them in a little bit more to where would be the place if they
were actually doing that course? This is global, so a lot of the
students have no clue what Macquarie University is. Yes, of
course. Then the second bit is that Prashan will go and do the
screen grab on his computer and do the talking just the same
way, and the editing bit is the post-production where we get
all that information, all the introductions, all the material, and
we put it together and make a proper package. That's when
the editing really comes in handy too, not because we know if
it's right or not, but more to put in like little marker. This bit is
becoming a bit too head stuffing. Can we simplify by putting a
little reminder? Make sure you click here, so you can do this.
Do little things on screen, visualize it.

Play video starting at :16:39 and follow transcript16:39

Let's face it, when you're looking at Excel screen, it could be very
just boring. So enhancing different graphics, enhancing different
techniques or putting titles or different things like that, that as a
learner, you're thinking, yeah, this is important. We're thinking
because yes, we don't know the subject. Is this going to be
something that if I was taking that lesson, is that something
important or not? That's when it comes in handy and the editing
stage as we create that, and then we send it to Prashan, and then
somebody else and Prashan will have a look. Form a clean look and
see if everything is making sense or something is missing, then you
can edit it out or put something else in. Edit in. Edit in. For example,
the viewers will be seeing a globe behind Prashan at the moment.
I've just edited that in post-production, just because perhaps said
global. It's that stuff that you can do in post-production. That's
excellent. You've touched on the point that the delivery needs to be
believable. Well, people want it to be believable. It's more easy to
consume if you feel someone's talking to you. Things like making
sure that the environments and the atmosphere or the ambiance
wherever you filming is relevant. People feel like they're part of
where you are, I guess, and also post-production, which is where
you make the message really succinct. You can really tighten in it
and look, you can do amazing things in editing, not just getting rid
of editing out, I guess false starts or mistakes and that stuff but
also, like you said, adding graphics or just directing people back to
the message and the reason why you're there. Of course, that's not
something that traditionally you could do in a lecture theater or
lecture hall, is it? It's not necessarily a new platform, but potentially
it's a platform which makes it more relevant and more palatable to
people who are listening. People who are going to be watching this
and potentially just thinking about, starting out on this journey,
thinking, I can make a video or I can do this, that are probably
looking at us and go, and thinking, I can do what these guys are
doing right now, which you can, so perhaps give us some advice.
For entry-level users or entry people who were making this video
give us three tips potentially that we can take away in terms of
getting started and making our videos look good. I think that the
first thing and a lot of people have as a mental block. I'm not even
sure if it's a mental block, but a lot of times people think that is the
gear that you have that will actually deliver the best video. Yes, the
issue about gears is that keeps changing all the time. Of course. It's
not necessarily about the gear that you use, but it's knowing the
tools. You can even do with a phone if you're starting with, which
we've had to do before and you can still make amazing stuff. The
first thing, one of the points would be, don't worry about the gear,
but it's learning it, learning what you have at hand. Yes. Because
there's different levels of production, we have like a high-end.
Obviously if you have budgets great, no problem, but if you don't
know, you're starting out, even with a phone and a proper little
mic, you can still create something that could touch somebody,
which is my second point. Remember that you are a storyteller. The
storyteller, basically, your job is to make somebody have some type
of feeling. You want to make them laugh or you want to make them
shed a little tear, or you want to create something, you want to
inspire them to learn. If you can create any feeling, then as an
editor you've literally done your part. You just want that little
feeling. The second point is, just remember that you're a storyteller
and whatever way you approach telling the story, you have to
create some type of feeling. My last one would be, just keep your
message simple. Because it's not so much about quantity, but it is
the simplicity. A lot in our work dealing with academia and the
complexity and the lines that we use, you get a score for how you
write your script. We're actually spinning that around and we are
like simplify that. Now, make it shorter, make it simple. If you can
talk to a kid and make them understand that, that's literally is key
points and that works. Just keep your message simple, and at the
end of the day, that's like a recipe right there, three ingredients
that will work for anything that you do and so far is working.
Perhaps in terms of video editing, what software do you use? Of
course, not everyone starting out at an entry level is going to be
able to afford or master technical and complicated software.
Perhaps after you tell us what you can use, you can give people
who are just starting out some tips on maybe what software's
available and low-cost software or even free. Yeah, we live in a day
and age that you can edit stuff from your phone, so it's amazing
that we have so many options out there. Yeah. Right now, I'm using
Premier Pro, which is the Adobe package. Before I was using Media
Composer, which was more for cinematic stuff and before that I
was using Final Cut. Once you learn software, it's the same
technique, it's just a different button and interface, but apart from
that it's the same buttons and the same thing that will carry you.
Right now, literally last week, I had my son who does his little
YouTube stuff and he doesn't have the Adobe package because you
have to do subscription. That's the reality of this. You can get all
this free software, but it's subscription-based. One of the packages
that I really enjoy and it's totally free is DaVinci Resolve, which used
to be just a color correction, which was like a high-end color
correction software, but they've incorporated a lot of amazing
tools. You can do your audios, sweetening, you can do titles, you
can do a proper edit, and it's free. When I say free, you can do the
whole edit. That's probably your best bet and there's literally no
need to do anything else. Just that little software will just work and
you've got a good head start right there. Now, Prashan, where does
all this fit in the future delivery of education? I guess because of the
way the platforms are, it's encouraging us/ forcing us to make our
content as bite-sized as possible. For example, the last few Excel
online courses that Pabs and I have been working on and just
released a few weeks ago actually. It was one Macquarie Uni
subject converted to three online subjects. We've already divided it
by a third, 93 parts. We've taken a 12-13 week course and made
them four-week courses. They're already bite-size to begin with.
But then even within that, we've divided it into multiple seven-
minute, eight-minute videos. We have really bite-sized everything
as much as possible. I guess what happens now is when you think
about everyone doing this, students can pick and choose the bite
sizes they want. What we thought previously was the Macquarie 1
subject is now three subjects on Coursera online. A student might
think, I only need number 1, and I'll get to number 2, 3, 4, 5 from
somewhere else and they will mix and match the pieces to create
the portfolio that makes sense for their line of work and make
sense for their aspiration. I guess what we used to think, oh, the
students should do this and this but now it's a little bit of this, a
little bit of this and maybe something from somebody totally
different. It's really creating better stories that students can create
this content for themselves by being the curator of their own
knowledge of which pieces fit for their story. Also helps them with
their ongoing learning because it's easier for them to add pieces as
their career progresses. Before you had to go and enroll in a whole
new degree and spend another two or three years studying a whole
new set of skills. I guess the piecing of these items help students
just pick and choose what they want and keep picking and choosing
along the way and continue their learning process. I guess that's a
benefit if everyone's going to be continuously learning,
continuously improving, and curating the courses that makes sense
for them. That's really amazing. You've got this flexible modular
approach , and you're facilitating. You're not just saying, hey, you
got to do this and you've got to do it in this order and you've got to
do it by this set time, maybe there's still this time restraints, but
yes. Perhaps we're heading towards a future with greater choice
and less time or flexibility in terms of when we can actually study.
When we take in all this information, we don't have to be at a
lecture theater at 10:00 o'clock in the morning tired or exhausted
and going, I've got to sit through an hour-long lecture. I can choose
when I'm going to listen to these seven-minute pieces, which is
great. Thank you so much for joining me. What a pleasure it is to
talk to both of you, and one an amazing team. You both come from
diverse backgrounds in terms of academia and well, have said real-
world, we're not going to call it real world. Let's say practical
backgrounds, creative background. It's great to see the two of you
working together and of course collaborating on these courses,
which basically is having a real impact on people from all works of
life. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Andy.
It's been a pleasure to talk.
Welcome. My name is Gratis Katelaro and in this video would like
to talk to you about the role of feedback in educational design for a
complete project or apply to a singular learning object for any of us
involved in education. We know they're appropriate, targeted and
well structured feedback. It's an important aspect of our profession
and not only for our students to improve their learning. Some of us
have been fortunate to learn from having colleagues observe our
classes to provide peer evaluation for our teaching or participating
in evaluating project or complete cause designs. In my career, I
have created materials, cost modules and entire courses from
scratch and having colleagues and peers that provided feedback
was invaluable. One of my most treasured experiences was when I
created a course module that was based on the idea of a travel blog
to teach italian. It was quite a novel approach to design an online
module for intermediate level students. It included some innovative
resources but also assessment tasks like student creating video
trouble ads or use real website from the target country to plan a
train trip or book a hotel etc. I was not sure how this approach was
going to work for either people teaching at or students using it. I
used a variation of the feedback system. I will talk about later
simply because I could not put everybody in one place or have it
done all at the same time, but I wanted both teachers and students
feedback so I gave the project to a few people in different roles.
Students and teachers to evaluate it by telling me what they liked
about it, what they did not understand and anything else that could
have been done better.

Play video starting at :1:48 and follow transcript1:48

Honestly, I have to tell you that the best feedback came from the
students, they told me exactly what was good, what could have
been improved and ideas that they had to make it even more
engaging. Still today is probably one of the most enjoyable projects
I did and use it as an example for innovative teaching. One very
important lesson I have learned was to include the student view
using real students if I can or people acting our students to really
test how something is working from their perspective. But we all
know that giving a receiving feedback is something difficult. People
can get defensive and receiving feedback and those providing it can
be equally uncomfortable and honestly appraising work. Perhaps
holding back on valuable insights just to avoid misunderstandings.
But feedback is important when we are absorbed in our developing
or creating phase. Sometimes we like the outside view necessary to
see very important or missing elements always to make our project
even better. So I would like to discuss a process. There was device
specifically to create a non confrontational way to give and receive
feedback in the early nineties. It is called the critical friend protocol,
but you would also find that mentioned as the tuning protocol
originally created to provide feedback on student work in the US. It
was later adopted as a way to fine tune learning design project a
developing face or to provide end of project feedback. How does it
work? Usually when a critical friend protocol session is organized.
Project creators are invited to present to a group of critical friends,
colleagues, peers any some occasion. Also students, their task is to
provide feedback. The session is facilitated by a facilitator or
moderator to keep time and ensure that the face I will discuss later
are followed in the appropriate way.

Play video starting at :3:45 and follow transcript3:45

The whole process usually has a strict time schedule to ensure that
each of the step is done quickly and efficiently. Normally the entire
session would not take more than 20 or 30 minutes in total. This
method of providing feedback involved seven steps with each step
requiring presented the critical friends to engage in a particular
way. Sometimes just listening or taking notes. So let me explain
more clearly by describing each step and what presenters in those
providing feedback. Do presentation phase he represented or a
spokesperson. If it is a team of people will give an overview of
summary and explanation of their project or resource including any
issues or questions for the feedback in this face,. It is important to
clearly describe not only the project but also the amES who it is for
etcetera.

Play video starting at :4:38 and follow transcript4:38

As the presenters speak the critical friends, listen and take notes of
anything that needs clarification. This part would usually last 6-8
minutes. The critical Friends need to remain silent. Just listen and
take notes clarification in this phase. The critical Friends can ask
questions to help clarify anything that was not clear in the
presentation. It is important questions are specific and only on
what was not understood or needs more information from what
the presenters have said for example is the same. The secondary
students This phase would last 3-4 minutes assessment. This face is
often referred in the Critical Friends protocol as quiet time as the
aim of this part of the session is to give the people were providing
feedback time to think about what has been presented. Question
posed by the presentation team and answer for clarification to
formulate the feedback that is going to be provided. Feedback can
be collected in a range of ways from writing it on sticky notes to
appropriate prepared feedback forms or even rubrics. This face will
take 3-4 minutes. Now the feedback proper begins with the critical
friends, starting with what they liked about the project resource
etc. Again here it is important to be specific on what is positive but
not provide alternatives or advice. So statements like I like of the
student write a diary or I like the inclusion of a video to explain how
to create a podcast. It is also important to keep referring to the
project or object and not referring to those who have created it. So
Project not your project. This phase would last 2-4 minutes.

Play video starting at :6:24 and follow transcript6:24

The next phase is that I wonder he is. The critical friends can raise
some questions or concerns but not offer advice or solution. The
aim of this step is to frame it as I wonder as a question that the
project personal team will need to reflect on. For example, I
wonder if students will have the necessary skills to produce a video
During this phase. The presenters do not respond but remain silent
and take notes. This face will last 3-4 minutes, reflection phase. This
is the face that the presenters talk about the feedback they have
received and what they think about what has been raised.
Normally, this discussion is among the project team not directed to
those who have provided the feedback. This face would last 3-5
minutes. The last phase is that I have this is when everybody can
contribute to with other ideas for the project. A softer approach
would be to use the what if it can be very dynamic and can really
open up a range of possibility that the project team had not
considered this phase would last 3-4 minutes. So as you can see,
the whole process is formulated in a way to encourage constructive
feedback and opportunities to share ideas, not simply criticize the
project or resource. Above all, this process also promotes
collaboration challenges your own and other's ideas in a safer, not
threatening environment. Learning is, after all, getting out of your
comfort zone and the support created within a critical friends
session can provide the ideal way to explore possibility and give
confidence to sometimes try something different in a different way.
And I think this is the value of this approach. As I've said earlier,
feedback is something important, but if it is not managed well, can
be more destructive than constructive.

Hello and welcome. In this video, we are going to show you an

applied example of the critical friend protocol. I am joined by my
colleague and fellow and Learning Designer, Billy Bruce. Welcome,
Billy. Thanks for having me, Grazia Now Billy, it's my understanding
that you would like some feedback on our learning results you have
been working on. In two minutes, can you please present your
learning resource to me as succinctly as possible? Yeah, of course.
Is it okay if I just share my screen? Absolutely. Cool. What I've just
brought on screen, there for you Grazia, is something called a best
self portrait. In our class, we're going to be creating best self
portraits with the students. What they'll need to do in this activity
is go and collect stories from their family and friends about them
performing well, so doing a task well. What I need is a spot to put
all of these stories in, so I need it to all be in one spot. Then once all
their stories are uploaded, they can put the mean on the left here,
as you can see. Just as an example, if you click on this item, you can
bring a story up. Once they've uploaded all of these stories, then
the students will analyze them and try and understand their
strengths, so the things that they're good at, and they can go on the
right here. That's just a little bit of information. Please welcome any
feedback on what I've got so far. Can I ask you a question first.
Other students, what things do they upload? Do they upload an
image? Do they upload videos or audios? What things do they need
to provide in their stories? Good question. One of the reasons I
chose H5P was because you can upload different file types. In here,
they can put an MP4, or they could put texts, or they could put an
MP3 audio if they want to, so they have a choice. It's up to them.
That's very good. Thank you, Billy. This looks very interesting. I
really like the way that students are given the choice of the
different things that they can provide because different students
have different strengths, so they might like to do audios, or videos,
or of course images. That is really, really good.

Play video starting at :2:40 and follow transcript2:40

It's a little bit off putting that when you open the screen, that there
are not that many images. I also, I wonder if the fact that there are
no instructions on the screen, the students might get a little bit
confused.

Play video starting at :2:59 and follow transcript2:59

Two very good points actually. Now that I think of it, I haven't really
given any instructions yet on what they'll need to do. Yeah, that's
definitely something I'll need to consider. Do you think I should put
them before giving them this learning item or maybe I should put
them on top here somewhere? What do you think? Well, I wonder
if it's better to actually have the instructions very prominent on the
page so that as soon as they open they can actually see exactly
what they need to do. Yes. Yeah, great, I can do that. I can put the
instructions on the background, so that's an easy fix. I wonder if the
icons that you have for the strength and stories where they need to
click on, it will be a good idea to actually have them different so
they know where to put the stories and then how to compare them
with the strength. Yeah. Good point. There's no way of telling the
difference is there at the moment. Good idea. I can change these
icons too, so that's good. When you open the screen. Now that
we're talking about images and engaging the students, some really
nice background rather than black. People come in really excited
about doing this activity. I agree. It's not very warm yet, is it? It's a
bit generic. That's possible too, so I can bring [inaudible] to the
background is if need be. Good, very happy. Thanks, Grazia for your
feedback on my prototype, I'll go and make those changes now.
Thank you, Billy. It was my pleasure to provide you some feedback,
and good luck with your prototype. Thank you. See you. See you.
Bye.
Today I'm joined by Dr. Anne Forbes from Macquarie University.
Now Anne's got a unique story and that she joined the realm of
academia quite late on originally and was involved in science and
research and then she moved to the States with a young family and
her husband. It was in the States while she was a professional
mum, that a piece of feedback drew her into a role as an educator
and later moved back to Australia. Gained a formal education
qualifications and in 2014 completed her PhD. Thanks so much for
joining us today. You're welcome. Good to see you, Andie. Well,
this is a podcast, so I guess. Good to hear. Good to meet you. Lovely
to meet you too, Anne. Thank you. Now Anne let's get started. I
personally love good feedback. I don't know anyone who doesn't.
What can you tell us about what we actually know about the
impact or the effect of receiving good feedback. Good feedback
provides you, or the receiver, I guess, with very explicit specific
information that's relevant for whatever it is, that's just you're
getting feedback about. It's given in a way that's not threatening.
It's affirming. It's describing some of the things that you have done
well and some of the things that you could perhaps improve on that
kind of things. I think it's important not to give too much feedback,
that extraneous away from what the targeted feedback is. I guess
for me, probably when people receive good feedback, they don't
feel threatened. They can see that it's relevant to what you're
trying to give feedback about that thing. Does that make sense? It
does. It sounds like it's going to be relevant but also measured to a
certain extent. Yeah. It's got to be given, I guess, in a way that the
learner or whoever's getting the feedback understands what you're
saying. I don't know if you're giving it face to face, you can read the
person somewhat by looking at them and seeing their reaction to
what you're saying. If you're doing it through a different
environment, for instance, like online, you've got to then think,
how will the receiver take that feedback? What are they going to
do with it? I think there's a difference there. If you're in front of
someone and giving them feedback, you can see what impact that's
having on them. Yes. If you want the feedback well recorded and
leave it for them to then look at. How will they take that? Is it going
to help them to shift what it is that you're focusing on? Will they
use that to help them do something differently in the future? That
kind of idea. Okay. I'm going to come back and revisit the concept
of giving feedback in-person versus giving virtual feedback later in
the podcast. But then can you draw on some life experiences which
have really impacted I guess your career in education. Yeah, I guess
for me, I think being a mother has been a really very important part
of what it's being to become a teacher if you like, or an educator.
It's almost like, it's not that you are that career person, it's just how
you bring your interactions with people that you've experienced in
your life into that role. As I had young children, even though I had
no educational background. To me, it made sense to why we need
to go out into the wide world, and explore and find out about
things, and ask questions about what it is that you see. Not provide
answers to children, but give them probing questions that would
get them to think that idea. I think a lot of my experience as a
teacher was founded in those early years of being with young
children, being a mom at home, and treating the way that you
interact with everyone. That includes very young tiny people as
important as it is how you interact with adults. But you said that
you got involved in education when you moved to the states and
that was a formative time for you in terms of, well, your teaching
experience. What impacted that time over there have on your
desire and your passion and enthusiasm for education? When we
first moved to the US, I had two young children. One was nearly
three, one was merely one, so neither had started school. When
the oldest was about school age. We found a school a really
interesting alternative primary school that was a private school and
the whole way that the school operated was around a child-
centered approach to learning. I've just found it fascinating to go
into this school and see and all that kind of thing. I immediately
felt so at home in the environment. You will welcome just a parent
to just come in and stay there, I would go in and by then I had
another child who would be on my back in a backpack, and I'd go
around with this one on my backpack and would be doing things
with the children. It was the teachers there that said to me, "Why
don't you come in and try and do some teaching and be part of our
teaching community." I went on, no, I don't think I could do that.
They went no, you could. It was there that I was allowed, if you like,
to become practicing, starting to be a teacher, and I absolutely
loved it. It was just amazing and it was, I just had that experience of
being able to do it, being allowed to do it, and then that was what
planted the seed of this is what I need to be doing. How amazing? It
was just amazing. It was so cool. I just wished when I was, as an
adult, I just said I wish I'd had the opportunity to go to a school like
this as a child. Just the May it was just like why on all schools like
this? That experience that I went through there was how I've
created my whole educational philosophy since then. I've just have
a very different view, I guess, of what school's about compared
with a lot of people. Because I've lived that inquiry-based approach
and know it works, that's what I actually do in all of my teaching
and preparation of materials that I'm going to use when I'm
preparing stuff at university and so on. That's an amazing story. I
actually got goosebumps when you're talking about the transition
from going along with your child on your backpack to someone
saying, Hey, you should come into each, you should be one of us. It
was so cool, it was an adjust the environment as well with the
adults, the teachers there, and the way it was a community,

Play video starting at :8:34 and follow transcript8:34

it was just exceptional and just so exciting. What's being profound

is how that has moved with me through my life since then. Yes. One
of the interesting things about your story is that it seems that this
feedback or even validation from the school or the community was
the catalyst for you actually getting into education. You wouldn't
potentially be here today, had you not received this really amazing
feedback from your children's teachers saying, hey, you've got this,
you can do this, we believe in you. Yeah. Can you tell us how that
feedback made you feel and then moving forwards, to how
feedbacks played an important role in your career as an educator?
Yeah, so I agree that it was that essentially by them inviting me to
come and be part of the school, that was the feedback. It was
affirming. You are good at these, you've got this, it doesn't mean
you've nailed everything. You don't have it all now. You're going to
develop and grow. But we believe that you're going to be able to do
that. I think getting that type of feedback also means that when I
became a teacher or whatever, a formal if you like an educator.
That was also how I then responded to learn of this. The fact that
that was modeled to me in that way also meant that's what I did.
It's not like I just mocked people's books and put a little gold star on
it. It was the verbal feedback. It was articulating it. I think that's one
thing that's very important in feedback is you're not going to just
say to people good job, well done. It's actually got to be in a
message, a form that sinks to the receiver. The receiver is got to go,
they actually do understand me, and so I get that. It's an
interaction. If you feel, for example, what I felt when I got that
feedback. It's like, well, yeah, actually, that is right. I understand
what they're saying. I feel they can see me, they hear me, they see
me. I think that's what you've got to be able to do in feedback.
You've got to be able to help the learner feel heard and seen and
that the work they've done is valuable. Might need tweaking a bit.
But if you give it in a way that they feel affirmed and positive about
it, they'll keep trying, and that's what I did. I kept trying. I was
always trying to be a better teacher, better at helping to explain
things to children so they don't understand it more, more field is
science. That's often an area that is tricky to people. Was how can I
explain this in a way that they will really understand it in their
everyday lives. A lot of what I do is link explanations to, well now
I'm at university, so I'll try and link it to university students' lives.
What's an example that will help them really understand that type
of thing. There's some excellent examples there and thank you.
They range from everything from early childhood through to
tertiary education, and you've even provided some examples of
peer-to-peer in a colleague feedback. One thing I can't help noticing
as I'm talking to you, is you're an incredibly nurturing person so it
sounds like feedback comes quite naturally to me. Can you think if
maybe some times when feedback hasn't worked or it's backfired
or potentially feedback just hasn't been offered in an appropriate
manner or setting? Well, yeah, it's interesting. I can remember one
time at the school in America, I did a parent-teacher interview.

Play video starting at :12:43 and follow transcript12:43

There was a parent there and they were not happy. They weren't
happy with what was going on. They didn't feel that what I was
doing was appropriate for their child, etc. They made that very
clearly known to me in this parent-teacher interview. Now in the
interview itself, I think I was civil and polite and didn't disintegrate
or anything. But afterwards, I was devastated with the way that
they'd provided me with feedback. I basically went to bed and just
cried all weekend. It was like it was amazing. I felt absolutely cut to
the call with this reaction from these parents. I was inconsolable,
etc. I guess that weekend, the director of the school contacted me
or came around and saw me and said, "Tell me why you feel like
that." This is an example I think all of perhaps what was bad
feedback to me because I didn't respond well to it. I said, the
reason I feel so devastated is because I was doing those things that
they were saying, but they didn't see that. It was that I felt they
actually hadn't understood what it was that I was doing with their
child. They'd only seen one part of it. For me that was really
devastating to not have them be able to see all the other things
that I was doing for their child. Perhaps the learning for me there
was, why couldn't the parents see that? Do you know what I mean?
The learning there was there's something there that I need to take
from that because the parents didn't understand what it was I was
doing for their child. Now, what the director of the school said, she
said, "I think it would be really good for you to meet with these
parents to talk through this." I didn't feel up for that. They wanted
you to meet with them again? Yeah. I didn't feel up for that.
Understandable. Be able to do that. Now, retrospectively, if I look
at that, it's really interesting because sometimes when you get
feedback that's really devastating to you, it's the way it's delivered
that's so important. Perhaps if they'd said it differently, it wouldn't
have caught me so much. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But
I think that awareness of knowing how feedback can be delivered
so badly means I've been very careful with how I give feedback to
kids. You can't give feedback so you devastate people. It's not
effective, I don't think to do that. You've got to do it in a way that
helps them to see something but still move forward. Yeah.
Obviously it needs to be constructive, but it almost, I mean,
obviously it wasn't there, but it sounds like that feedback was very
reactive to something to an emotion that they were experiencing
so they were angry or they're upset or maybe they were concerned
about that child and they were coming to you and they were
unleashing potentially these emotions on you and through that
process, the feedback potentially it wasn't constructive or useful?
Yeah. It is, and I think that's one thing that I think is important in
feedback keys. The emotionality of it. Perhaps you've got to keep
that more neutral and you've got to deal with, that's why earlier we
were talking about it's got to be explicit. Yeah. What is it that you're
giving feedback about? It can't be an emotive sort of "I hate
everything" sort of thing or whatever it is, or the whole of this
assignment that you've submitted is garbage. You can't do that. Just
be specific. Talk about a part of it. I guess an example might be, it's
like if you're on a playground and you here somebody going, "Don't
do that. You're naughty. You're being a naughty person," type of
thing. The person is not naughty, it's part of their behavior that
needs to be fixed. It's not that they're a bad person, it's that
something they're doing needs somehow to, don't yell at someone
or whatever. Don't throw stones at them or whatever. It's not that
they're a bad person, it's part of what they're doing. I think you've
got to narrow it down to what's the specific thing. Perhaps me in
that situation with the parents, it was too broad a brushstroke, it
was too wide and it wasn't looking specifically at something. It was
almost saying to me you're a bad person. Yes. Which I wasn't and I
knew that and that was what was frustrating because I could not
articulate what that was. I think because I was still a our young
teacher, if you like, in terms of I haven't got a lot of experience. I
guess experience is also one of the critical components for a
teacher in terms of receiving feedback from other people, be it
from parents, students, colleagues, or supervisors. Earlier we spoke
about giving advice in 3D or in-person and the difference between
that and online or virtual feedback. Do you have some advice for
people who are wanting to offer high-quality feedback in a virtual
or online environment? One of the things, presumably for online,
you're going to be teaching adults, though I think regardless of who
you're doing online feedback for. One of the things I think you need
is have a rubric. I think you need to show the learner what it is that
you're aiming for. You've got to have very clear learning intentions
for whatever it is that you're doing, whatever it is that they're
learning about, and criteria that show the levels of success for that.
People need to know up front, this is what we're aiming for. This is
what a high level of achievement would look like for this particular
learning intention and so on. It's not like a shock when they get
given something. I think people need to know this is what we're
trying to learn about and so the feedback them that you can
provide, a tricky thing, I think with an online environment is often
there isn't a lot of interaction. A lot of it is pre-prepared. It's like a
podcast like this, or it's a video, or it's go and read these articles,
etc. Then everything, it's captured. You don't necessarily have an
interaction with the person who's the instructor of the course. It's
all pre-packaged. I think one of the things you need to do is firstly,
have a rubric that's got what the learning intentions and
achievement criteria are. But I think a well-designed online course
to give feedback needs to be broken down so that the person who's
designing it needs to imagine what a learner is going through. As
they go through the different steps, what feedback would you need
at different steps to help you realize what have I learned in that
little bit and now how does that help me go on to the next step? I
think perhaps good feedback in an online environment means it's
broken down into small chunks. Yeah. You don't have go away and
learn all this for a week and then we'll give you a generic
summative feedback at the end. I think it's got to be so that you are
getting step-by-step learning in small increments. Obviously, as part
of that, this whole insertion of feedback needs to play a fairly
critical role in the actual incubation or the course or unit design.
Are there any useful tools that you've come across which can help
people give effective feedback online? Yeah. At university,
unfortunately, a lot of our feedback tends to be summative. It
tends to be at the end. We use Turnitin, which is the online thing.
That's where we can provide feedback. Now, while I don't think just
doing summative stuff at the end is a great idea, one of the benefits
of Turnitin is that you can create a bank of comments. I think that's
useful but you can have a bank of comments so when you're giving
feedback, you don't have to search for an original comment every
single time. You can sometimes have a bank of comments that
might be useful for providing feedback. You're almost building up a
stock catalog or database of comments which you find are useful
and effective for students and thank you so much for your time
today. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Your
enthusiasm and passion, I know this is going to sound ridiculous,
but it is inspiring. You inspire me and I'm sure you're going to
inspire a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. Thank you.
Yeah, well too think about really important component of
education and that's feedback. There was a moment when you
were talking today when I got goosebumps and I thought, I wish I
had you as a teacher during my formative years. Oh, how my life
could have been different. Like I said, it's a real pleasure. Thank you
for joining me. You're welcome.