Engaging Viewers with Q/A
Worcester Polytechnic Institute had more than eleven thousand lectures captured and streamed live since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is more than double the amount of live and recorded lectures for the same time period in 2019.
Not so long ago, streaming lectures belonged to the groggy, pajama-clad student who couldn’t bring themselves to attend class. Today however, live streaming video lectures bring a synchronicity to the educational experience that many students sorely lack.
To maintain the quality of education during these social distancing times, it’s not enough to simply deliver lecture content: best practices call for engagement. One way to make this happen is through the Q/A tool in Echo360.
Echo360 is the lecture capture system in use at WPI. It’s deployed in multiple classrooms on campus and can be used as a media creation tool from instructors’ personal computers.
To access a live stream, students log in to their Canvas site. They click on the Echo360 button on the left-side menu and then navigate to the day’s class. A class that’s streaming live will be designated by a green “LIVE” button, as shown below.
Once a student has joined the stream, they can access the Q/A tool on the top of the player window. It looks like a thought bubble with a plus sign.
Adjunct Teaching Professor Christopher Wood, of Fire Protection Engineering, has been utilizing the Q/A tool for several years. Wood teaches both online and face to face courses.
“I don’t generally have a lot of students physically in class, so I look to get ‘live’ feedback about my teaching with regards to whether I’m successfully communicating my intended message,” he wrote in an email interview. “Having the online students comment or ask questions helps get that live feedback so I can address it while I’m still capturing the class.”
Wood started to use question/answer interaction tools while streaming in order to build more community. The Q/A tool in Echo360 compliments the way he uses the discussion board in Canvas.
“I think it’s very easy for online students to feel isolated and I want to break that down as much as possible,” he wrote.
To use the tool, professors and students can click on the bubble + icon, as shown in the picture above. A text entry window opens on the right of the video stream.
Live participation, in radio or tv, typically involves a screener who decides whether a question or comment is fit to go out live. While the Q/A tool has no such function, Wood has never had any problems with inappropriate questions or answers.
According to Wood, if a student were to post something inappropriate he would mute the screen, thereby disabling the visual part of the stream.
“I don’t think this is too much of an issue,” he wrote. “but again, I’ve never had the problem and wouldn’t avoid doing this (Q/A tool) just because of that minimal risk.”
