The best of two worlds

Image by moonlight3 from Pixabay

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.

Since a couple of years, I have implemented video as the foundation of my teacher job. I record everything I do and share it in the cloud. One activity that my students have especially appreciated is my QnA sessions. I encourage them to send me questions when they get stuck, and then I will record videos where I present the solution. I believe that if one student has a problem, there are several others. Thus, it is much more efficient to provide a video answer to ever question I get, because that will benefit the whole class and not just the one who asked the question. Video is the perfect tool to do this. Let´s say it takes 30 minutes to compile a written answer to a problem. The time to record a video solution is similar. When you get up to speed with the technology, it might even be the faster alternative. QnA sessions could perhaps be even better if they were live streamed, so that additional questions can be asked on the fly. But the crucial aspect is that once the video is online, it stays there and keeps adding value over time.

I started with my QnA sessions in 2019. When I gave the same course in 2020, I noticed that some of the questions I got were the same as last year. Then I could just hit reply and send a link to a video where the solution was given in the previous year. The required time for feedback had just shrunk from 30 minutes to perhaps one minute per question! And instead, I recorded a new QnA session with the latest new questions, thereby adding more content to my portfolio. That will make the 2021 edition of the course even better. You see, it takes a couple of years, but finally the investment starts to pay off. The same goes for the recorded lectures. I can provide a link with a time stamp to the section in the lecture where I explain a certain topic.

There are similarities between working as a consultant and a teacher. As an acoustician, my clients ask me questions about how to design buildings so that the proper sound quality and function is achieved. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the same questions often arise in every project. This is like my QnA sessions. In the past few weeks, when I provide answers to my clients, I have started to attach a time stamped link to my acoustic lectures where I explain the specific problem they might have. And with tens of hours of lectures online by now, I got most of the common topics covered. In the latest 2020 edition of my course, I switched to using the English language, to exponentially increase the potential reach. That means that I can now also use this strategy with my international clients.

And here comes the icing on the cake. When my clients get educated, they start to ask more questions. You know how it goes, if you don’t understand anything, you can’t even ask for help because you don’t know where to begin. If you get some basic understanding however, you get better at identifying what your problem is and it becomes easier to ask relevant questions. These questions from my clients are invaluable. They tell me exactly what they are struggling with. And this is precisely what I must include in my course before the students move out in the “real world” and start to design buildings on their own. The most difficult task of a teacher when designing a course, is to know what topics to include.

This is what constructive alignment is all about. The marriage of two worlds. The most value-adding iterative process I have ever seen.

Synergy.