Lecturer’s Blog 2: “I am here live! I am not a cat!” by Maite Lameris

I don’t know if any of you had similar experiences, but over the past year I have often felt like I was a living meme; both when pre-recording classes and when doing live teaching online. Even though I was never stuck in a cat-filter, I sometimes can identify with those that are. Like many others, we also had to suddenly move everything online. And this sudden move to online teaching called for quick decisions on how to best offer our courses in an online setting. In April of last year, our team made the decision to provide only pre-recorded lectures and tutorials for a big first-year course I was coordinating. My recording studio (read: my dining table) and my software (read: PowerPoint’s built-in function to record your voice with slides) were far from ideal. I often yelled in frustration at my screen and had to start recording all over again. Despite the fact that live sessions also do not always go smoothly (think here: “I am not a cat!”), I want to make a case for doing most of our classes live.

Let me say that the decision to record everything for the course was not made lightly, nor was it what we ideally wanted to offer the students. But it was the best we could do with the team of teachers we had. Unfortunately, we had to work with a small(er) team for a big(ger) course, we were in different time zones and we could not all contribute to the course what we would have contributed pre-COVID. In short, we had to make the best out of a crappy situation (which I think many of you might recognize) and offered only pre-recorded lectures and tutorials in our course. And, even though I am very proud of what we put together last minute, I would not choose to do it like that again.

Why would I choose to do it differently next time? Despite the course not being evaluated badly, many of the students indicated that they missed interaction with their teachers. Offering live tutorials would definitely help with this and you might argue that live tutorials are the better way of interacting with your students than live lectures. But I would say that, also in live lectures, there is at least a sense of interaction as the students and the teacher are working on the same topic at the same time. After a year of very little to no actual student contact, I think we should jump at anything that can create a sense of togetherness (and not just for the students). Moreover, the students indicated that there was not enough opportunity to ask questions about the material. At the time we worked with a forum, in which students could post their questions. But, according to the students, this increased the threshold to ask a question, whereas live sessions would have made the threshold lower. This piece of advice from the students surprised me a bit. I would have thought that asking questions in a live setting is more ‘scary’, but I guess I thought wrong.

I would also make a case for live classes from a teacher perspective. I now have some experience with pre-recording classes and with doing it live, and I definitely prefer the latter. Pre-recording might be fun when you have the proper equipment and video-editing skills, but let’s face it, most of us are not in that position [shout-out to the Marketing department for their awesome studio!]. The result of this are poor-quality videos that do not take less time to make than doing the class live. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all the pre-recorded videos are bad. Maybe you have found your way in this, maybe you have a green screen at home or bought a proper microphone, but speaking from my experience: any live class I do is much better than a pre-recorded video. On top of this, giving a live class with students present is also just much more fun. In a year that is not well-described by the word ‘fun’, I would say that this is an important argument. But not only in a COVID-year this argument sticks. Generally, many of us have to do our teaching on top of a lot of other tasks, some of which might be valued more highly by our employer than teaching is. And sometimes, this can mean that teaching is something we feel we ‘have’ to do versus something we ‘want’ to do. Finding ways to make our teaching more fun could change this feeling and thereby also decrease some of the pressure we feel. Ultimately, doing something that you enjoy gives you energy versus taking it away from you.

I can think of two counter arguments for live classes. Firstly, offering pre-recorded classes gives students the opportunity to study in their own time, to go back to the material and re-watch part of a lecture that they find difficult. This was also something the students liked about our course at the time. But giving live classes does not mean that we cannot record them and post them to the students afterwards. It just means that those students that want (and need) the (feeling of) interaction are offered this. And at the same time, the students that thrive better when studying in their own time can make use of the recordings. Secondly, pre-recording might reduce the workload for us, as we can record the videos in our own time. Whether it should be normalized that this might mean we are recording our videos at night or in the weekends, is a different question. But aside from this, it is a fair argument. So, how could we offer live classes without increasing our workload? One suggestion would be to consider making larger groups of students by, for example, combining parallel tutorial groups. So instead of 4 teachers giving the same online class at the same time, this can be done by fewer teachers. To facilitate interaction (in a bigger group) and making live online teaching less tiring and more fun, you could form teacher-teams. One teacher gives the lecture, while the other functions as a side-kick, handles the chat and gives the floor to students to ask questions. You could also use such a set-up for live lectures. It makes giving the lecture more manageable as you are not the only teacher present and it is easier for students to follow when there is some variety in who is speaking and in teaching style. In the end, everyone closes their screens being drained less and having enjoyed the class more.

Maybe I am preaching to the choir here, but in my experience a live class trumps pre-recordings. And even though many of us hope that we can go back to some on-site teaching in the next academic year, it is also very likely that, in particular, lectures will still be online. In any case, my hope is that, whatever we are facing in the (near) future, we will do it live!

I would like to pass on the opportunity of writing a teaching blog to Juliette de Wit, who in my opinion is the most caring teacher that any student can wish for.