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

Upgrading my live streaming setup with a system camera and a studio microphone

My YouTube channel has seen some serious growth lately and I realized that it is time to up the ante regarding the production value. Up until now I have been using a Logitech BRIO webcam, and a Jabra Speak conference phone. They get the job done fine, but the camera struggles with White balance and focus and the microphone picks up a ton of room reverberation. So, I pulled the trigger and invested in a proper mirrorless camera with real optics and a spring-loaded studio arm to mount a large membrane microphone. This gave a huge boost in production quality and my online meetings have never looked and sounded this good. I am also proud that I kept going with basic equipment for almost 1½ years before upgrading. My past self had a tendency to get stuck in gear acquisition syndrome instead of producing content. You should always let the content come first, and then invest.

Acoustics, Engineering, EducationRikard ÖqvistFebruary 13, 2021livestreaming, online education, camera, audio, recording, video, DSLR, studioComment

The best of two worlds

I have always stood with one foot in the private sector and the other foot in academia. These two worlds are like Yin and Yang. When working as an acoustic consultant, efficiency and rapid progress is the name of the game. Solve the problems as using the fastest and simplest solution, send an invoice and move on. In academia (especially with research), you thoroughly investigate all possible paths and strive for perfection. Quality over Quantity is the name of the game here. I have never felt comfortable living in just one of these worlds. My gut feeling has always told me to keep one foot in each camp, even though it typically involves more work. Well, until now, that is. It is a long-term strategy that is starting to pay off in a beautiful way. The marriage of two diametrically opposite worlds has the potential to create a lot of value.

When you know why, how is irrelevant

Yesterday, I livestreamed and published the final lecture in my introductory course in building acoustics. When the dust had settled, I realized that I have never ever felt such a sense of meaning, in anything I have done in my professional career. There has been a lot of friction along the way, especially with technology. Yesterday’s lecture was a personal record in IT problems. First, I did not click the right button when the stream started, so I accidentally presented the first ten minutes of the lecture to an audience that could not see or hear me, and thus had to start from the beginning again. And then my computer crashed in the middle of the lecture and required a reboot. These are major setbacks, but I am amazed by how fast I could just snap back into it and continue the livestream with a genuine smile on my face. As Nietzsche said, “he who has a why, can bear almost any how”. My livestreaming lecture endeavour was a clear example that he was correct.

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