Distance education in front of an audience

During the Covid years of 2020 and 2021 I went all in on distance education and experimented wildly with live-streaming and recording of lectures. But this spring I am back in the classroom again, and it has been very interesting to apply the lessons learned and the content created. In 2021 I held a few lectures in Building Physics on the topic of moisture, which I also recorded. It was the first time I lectured on the topic and my full focus was simply to keep my nose above the water line and get through the lectures without making to big a fool of myself. The students were very clear in their feedback and most wished for more calculation examples and less lectures. Consequently, this year, I thought about how to approach this and decided to replace all the scheduled lectures with calculation sessions instead. I am now extremely curious to see what the students´ judgment will be.

Education, ComputerRikard ÖqvistMay 23, 2022education, online education, distance learning, technology, school, lecturingComment

Back to normal?

Campus is open again for business. In a month from now I start the 2022 edition of my building physics course. It feels a bit strange to return to the physical classroom. I haven’t done a real lecture since early 2020. They say that if you don’t use it, you lose it. We will see in a month whether there’s some truth to that. I have been very active posting vlogs every day since 2019 and I have a feeling that the experience gained it will come in very handy now. Such a weird feeling, I have practiced so hard in front of the camera - around 1000 videos. It will be very interesting to see how that translates into a physical room.

EducationRikard ÖqvistApril 4, 2022zoom, distance learning, education, elearning, classroom, lecturesComment

What teachers get wrong about e-learning

I read some excellent posts and comments this week by Jakob Heidbrink, where he explains the friction he has encountered with the sudden shift to e-learning. More specifically, he described the agonizing process of recording his lectures and how he spent eleven hours to record a 60-minute lecture. Heidbrink is correct in his analysis regarding the required time. I usually say that it takes 10X the time to record and post process a lecture (video editing), compared to just giving it in the classroom. I suspect most teachers that have tried this route will agree with the observation. However, it sounds to me like Heidbrink suffers from the “perfection equals paralysis” condition (also common among engineers). The primary reason for the 10X increase in time he explains, is that he re-records over and over because he stumbles upon words, scratch his nose, cough, and so on – basically just being human. He claims that when a teacher does this in the classroom it is acceptable, but on a recorded lecture such mistakes are not allowed. I disagree and here’s my proposed solution.

Live streaming university lectures on Youtube

When I do my university courses, I usually reserve the last five minutes of the final lecture for course evaluation. I have found that the most valuable method is to keep it simple. I ask the class to write down on a small anonymous paper note one (1) thing that was good about the course, and one (1) thing that they wish I do next year. This is a powerful method, because when you are forced to give just one answer, you tend to choose the one at the top of your mind. The most important. On one of the notes I read “I wish that you would record the lectures, so we can go back and repeat them”. When I read those words, it felt like a bolt of lightning had struck my head. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that? I am doing the lectures anyway, so why not add a camera and a lapel microphone and start recording them? If you are reading this post, old student who wrote that note, I salute you. That little note back in 2017, planted the seed of a powerful idea and you have helped hundreds of people by now with their studies in acoustics, and the number is growing. I cannot thank you enough.

Education, Acoustics, HabitsRikard ÖqvistSeptember 12, 2020elearning, distance learning, educationforall, transformingeducation, learning, livestreaming, teachingComment

Big change comes one step at a time

A significant part of my teaching consists of lectures. They often take on the character of a monologue and are therefore the perfect place to start transforming your education to the cloud. Back in 2017 when I was just starting out with online education however, I still felt overwhelmed. There were so many new factors to consider. I wanted to record my lectures with great visual video quality with multiple cameras, crystal clear audio and a screen capture of my slides and preferably live stream it. I have always been interested in technology and find great pleasure in figuring out how things work. But to realize full blown video production in real-time while you are simultaneously giving your lecture was indeed overwhelming. Three years later and that is precisely what I’m doing.

The greatest opportunity

Unused human potential is something that bothers me to the very core. My dream is equal opportunity to proper education for anyone on the planet. Imagine how many potential geniuses there are in poor countries of the world, that currently lack access to education. Maybe there are one million PhDs out there, just waiting to unleash their ideas upon academia? Imagine how this untapped potential could change the world. How it would increase the growth of human knowledge. How many more research papers would be published every month? The value this would bring is incalculable. Big changes bring big opportunities. The virus induced rapid change to distance learning has suddenly made the dream a reality.

EducationRikard ÖqvistMarch 28, 2020online education, distance learning, virusComment