Tips for Teaching with Video for the First Time
By Adam Noyes
Many teachers and students are experiencing virtual learning for the first time. This is truly a trying endeavor for everyone involved. Luckily, streamingmedia.com has a great guide, with tips for teaching online for the first time. Check out some highlights from that article, below.
When I started to write this, a handful of universities had already announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all in-person instruction would move online to minimize the virus’ rapid surge. By the time I finished this revision two days later, things had gotten bad enough that March Madness is planned to televise from otherwise empty arenas. By the end of the month, I expect a majority of universities will have long since followed suit. My sincere hope is that COVID-19’s impact on human life ends up being small enough that soon there is a widespread belief that society overreacted in making this bold choice to aggressively slow the pandemic’s spread.
But even in the most benign scenario, I defend this decision by universities, at least, for three reasons. The first is that COVID-19’s spread is expected to ramp up simultaneously as college and high school students leave campuses for Spring Break and travel around the country and back again, incubating viral infections as they go. The second is that the mortality rate for COVID-19 is very low for those under 50 with uncompromised immune systems, but dramatically increases for those over 50. The average age for a tenured professor in the United States is right around 54 years, so slowing the spread of the virus as much as possible around college campuses is critical to protecting half of our top researchers and teachers. The third—and the far less morbid focus of this column—is that the educational technology available for teachers and students is ready for prime time and a full-scale crash test, even if we didn’t get to plan that opportunity how we would have preferred
Streaming media will be expected to carry much of the weight as teachers are unexpectedly compelled to jump into teaching online with thinly stretched support staff and little time to prepare. High-quality educational video is everywhere, and the tools to produce it are built into our phones and laptop computers. Teachers who never intended to become educational video producers will likely find that doing so offers the lowest barrier to entry for continuing their instruction until the crisis ends. For the most part, I expect that this will be done with a collegial spirit and that faculty and students will muddle their way through this crisis and have an unexpectedly rich learning experience.