Alternate Delivery Program

LECTURING ONLINE

For anyone considering some form of online lecture or presentation, the problem is trying to replicate the “presence” you take for granted in a face-to-face (F2F) setting. There are many options, but you need to understand their pros & cons to choose wisely.

GUIDES & DEMOS

Show & Tell: Online Lecture Options (MS Word | HTML)

- Creating a Camtasia Movie (Techsmith.com tutorial)

• Producing a Flash File for Use in Blackboard
• Posting a Flash File into Blackboard

Example from Caroline Forestiere POLI 301 WT2009.

- Creating a Screenflow Movie (Mac only)

Note: Screenflow is basically the same as Camtasia except that it is mac only and it only outputs Quicktime movie files.

- Jing from Techsmith

Note: Jing, is a free (for now) screencast capture tool made by TechSmith.com, which also makes Camtasia. If you just want to make short (5 minute) "quick & dirty" narrated screen captures and "mini-presentations," this is a great tool.

Here's an example from the Maryland Blackboard Users Group (MDBUG) Conference

- Wimba Live Classroom

Wimba can be used to do live interactive presentations on the Internet.  Here is a demo from Educ 647 FA2009.

FACULTY EXAMPLES

UMBC Blackboard Best Practice Videos

The link above goes to Karin Readel and Chris Swan's "Show & Tell" demos about how they use Blackboard. It was made with Camtasia, and is only available to UMBC faculty. We also provide iTunesU interviews about their use of online discussion board portfolios.

Mattias Gobbert, Math 221 "Introduction to Linear Algebra"

To help model to students how to think about solving math problems, Matthias records his lectures with a tablet PC using Camtasia. This allows him to "write" or "draw" his formulas or proofs as he was accustomed to doing in class, but the recordings allow students to literally "rewind" Matthias to review aspects they may not have understood the first time through. They can do this on their own time as many times as they want.

Using Clickers to Control Online Access to Recordings of In-Class Lectures

This adds another element (clickers) but Tamara Mendelson's use of Blackboard to host audio-recordings of in-class lectures is a siimple, but effective way to give students online access to lectures they can play, pause and restart at their discretion. As such, this is a great "time-shifting" pedagogy (almost like TiVo for class) that allows students to control how, when and where they learn from a prof's lecture. The use of clickers simply makes it harder for students skip class. Not foolproof, but it's an interesting approach.