Suggestions and support for multimodal instruction in the College
As we finish our second week of massively multimodal teaching, faculty are raising new questions about delivering instruction, student engagement, and technology. We recognize that changing our instructional techniques and strategies to enable us to reach students near and far remains challenging to say the least. We are all in this together!
At the heart of the challenge is the fact that our instructional attention is divided between face-to-face students, online students, monitoring chat conversations, and managing an array of technologies. Here are a few simple suggestions to reduce cognitive load and free up the mental resources necessary to deliver solid instruction.
- One easy and non-technical approach is to ask one or more students in the room to help monitor the Zoom chat and then to read aloud any questions or comments coming from remote students. This can be accomplished by allowing one or more face-to-face students to use a personal device, or optionally, to connect that device to one of the multiple monitors in the room (if available).
- Another useful tip is to create a more coherent class community during student discussions by asking face-to-face students to join online students in the Zoom session on their personal devices. If you try this, remember that it’s critical to have students use headsets and the mute feature in Zoom to avoid audio echo and feedback issues in the classroom.
- If you need a better live-classroom audio experience for student discussions, we have 10 rooms equipped with advanced full-room microphones. These mic arrays are optimized to allow people speaking to be heard clearly from anywhere in the room by remote listeners. The following classrooms have the Sennheiser or Nureva microphone systems installed: Aderhold Hall: Rooms G5, 116, 119, 201, 223, 626, 631; River’s Crossing: Room 136; and Ramsey Student Center: Rooms 205, 203.
In all other classrooms in the College, the person speaking should stand within 15 feet of the Epson DL21 mic on the podium to be heard clearly. Positioning oneself closer to the microphone is always better, but keep physical distance in mind.
Finally, don’t be stumped! We are here to help. Please reach out to the College’s Office of Information Technology or the Innovation in Teaching group with any technical or instructional issues. And to learn more about how our colleagues from around the College are tackling these techno-pedagogical challenges, please consider joining our deeper discussion at the ITT Academy this fall. We are meeting on Sept. 25, Oct. 30, Nov. 20, Dec. 11 via Zoom from 10-11:30 a.m. Please email Nic Holt for a Zoom invitation.
Stay safe and keep learning!