Episode 3: Module walkthrough videos with Thiago Hinkel

Download: 03-Dr.Hinkel-Transcript

REBECCA

Welcome to the Teach Anywhere Podcast: Tech Stories from Real Educators, where we interview faculty and instructors about how they use educational technology in their courses at UVic. My name is Rebecca Edwards, and my pronouns are she and her. Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge and respect the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. With me today is Thiago, who is a PhD candidate and instructor in the Faculty of Education here at UVic. Today, we are going to discuss Thiago’s experience creating videos for his course. Welcome, Thiago. Welcome to the podcast.

THIAGO

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

REBECCA

Alright, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we start chatting about your course, I was hoping that you could introduce yourself. Perhaps you could start by telling us how you came to UVic.

THIAGO

Yeah, for sure. So my name is Thiago Hinkel. As you mentioned before, I’m a PhD candidate here at UVic, Just going into my sixth year in my program. And during my time here at UVic, in addition to being a student, I have also been teaching as a sessional instructor. It’s funny how I ended up here and usually it’s a question I get from people. People will ask me, Why did you choose Victoria? Because we moved from Brazil, right, five years ago and people usually ask me, Why Victoria? And what I usually tell people is that we did not choose Victoria. I wanted to do a PhD; I had finished my Masters in education back home in Brazil, and because I wanted to continue pursuing a career in higher education, the next step would be to do a PhD. And we always wanted to do something abroad as a family. And so I started searching for programs abroad, and UVic was a program I found. I applied and got accepted. And that’s why… that’s how we ended up here. So not much choosing the city, but more being accepted to be a student at UVic.

REBECCA

Lovely. Thanks so much for sharing that. And on that note, what is the focus of your PhD, and what are your research interests?

THIAGO

For sure. Yeah. So my area, the focus of my study is the use of digital technologies in education by teachers. So although my research involves talking to teachers who are in schools now and people who are known for using technologies in their schools, the objective of my research is to inform teacher education programs on how teachers should be taught on how to use technology and not only knowing about technologies, but more importantly, what are the experiences that will enable these teachers or these student teachers to use technology in a pedagogical way or to think about technology pedagogically.

REBECCA

That’s really interesting. How did you become interested in researching student teachers? Like what inspired that particular passion?

THIAGO

That was something that started in my Master’s program. So they did have a strong focus on teacher education. So, already in my masters I studied something similar to that, I interviewed student teachers per se, people who were still doing their education and not teachers as I am doing now. Um maybe the focus was a bit accidental really. Like maybe I did not choose to do that, but it was a research project my former supervisor was working on, So my master’s kind of got into the same package and that’s when I started developing an interest for that and it does align with me in the sense that I myself have been a teacher now for 20 years. And I love being a teacher and I love digital technologies. They’ve always played an important role in my life, initially as a student and even before that, not as a student, you know, just for fun. I learned so much by playing computer games for example, I learned a lot of english by playing RPG games. So computers were always connected to learning for me on my personal experience, and when I became a teacher, it just felt so natural that I would have to include digital technologies in my practice as a teacher.

REBECCA

Okay, well thanks so much for getting us started. I’m going to draw us into talking a little bit about your course if that’s okay. So you wanted to tell us about one of the courses that you taught this semester, and I wanted to ask you to tell us the course name and what this course is about.

THIAGO

So the course is EDCI 339, Distributed and Open Learning. It’s a course that is part of a series, like an Ed Tech series if we can say so. There are five different courses in the series, like from 335 to 339, and I’ve been teaching EDCI 339 for the last four years now. It’s a fully asynchronous course. So even like before the pandemic, it was already an online course, right? And in addition to being an online course, it is of course about online learning and teaching. So it is offered by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. It does have a pedagogical perspective, a strong pedagogical perspective, but it’s often taken as a, as an elective by people from different departments and faculty. So I would say like maybe 15 to 20% of the students I get are people in education, who are like getting ready to be teachers and want to to learn, you know, how can you design instruction to be delivered online, especially resorting on open resources, but I also get people that are just interested about that. So the focus of the course is like to understand what online learning is. There a lot of in the beginning, lots of theory, you know, what’s open learning, what synchronous, what’s asynchronous, but lots of it involves hands on activities for students. So basically how I have it set up, students will either read something or watch something, and then they are sent out to explore an online platform, and then come back into Brightspace, where the courses offered, to reflect on that and report back to me and to the class. And during the course people get to explore a lot of platforms as I was saying. But the two main assignments students have in this course is to work on instructional video. It’s like the second most… the bigger and second most important assignment in this course, and their final project is uh students are asked to build, design and build their own mini course to be delivered online, which includes the video that they have worked on. So it’s very personalized in the sense that students can choose any topic they’re interested in, either they’re on a personal level or an academic, professional level, and devise a mini course with like two units or two lessons in it. Yeah.

REBECCA

Well, that’s great. So you used a word that kind of tweaked another question for me. So you said that a lot of the learning that students do in this course is very personalized, and I just wanted to ask you when you’re teaching this course, what kind of instructional strategies do you really focus on? So you used the word personalized, but are there any other kind of specific instructional strategies that you, that you like to use?

THIAGO

Yeah. So I tried to make it as personalized as possible in the sense that students have lots of choice. Right? So of course the reading they are doing for each module and the video that I assign for each module is going to be the same for each student, but as they are sent out to explore things, they are on their own to choose a topic, right? Or to build things that interest them.

REBECCA

Okay, perfect. Um and so my next question for you is perhaps, maybe the most important one, is how do you use educational technologies in your course? You mentioned that this is a fully online asynchronous course. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what technologies you use and how you utilize them?

THIAGO

So the main hub for this course is Brightspace. So, I have all the modules set up there, and I try to explore Brightspace as much as possible, like using many of the features that are inside Brightspace, and I know there are many features. Right? And probably in one course you cannot use them all. So some of the things I use there a lot is like the discussions, the discussions tool in Brightspace. Again because it’s asynchronous, I don’t get to meet students during the week. We don’t have a time for Zoom or anything, right? So discussion topics gets used a lot. Um I always try to include lots of variety in the way students learn or the instructional content. So again, there’s like reading, there is videos and things like that and videos that I produce and that maybe is like one of the strong points in the course now, the instructional videos that I have out for students that include both instruction in the sense of what they’re expected to do in the course, like a walk through of each one of the modules, but instruction per se like, you know, talking about concepts and things like that.

REBECCA

So when you, when we were talking before the show, you mentioned that you, this use of videos is something new that you tried last semester, and I’m curious when you decided to try these videos, what was the problem that you were trying to solve?

THIAGO

Yeah. So to find a way to communicate with students that was going to be more engaging and more appealing to them. So before I started using videos, like not videos that I asked them to watch that are out there already, but videos that I produce, most of my, my instruction would be by using words, by text, right? Either by sending them emails or providing like very thorough descriptions in Brightspace of what people were expected to do for each one of the assignments, let’s say right? And that was comfortable to me because at the time I did not feel comfortable myself of recording videos or like being on the camera, especially because of like a language barrier right? Of course I’ve been speaking English for a long time and feel comfortable but like recording a video is like a different level because I don’t know it’s like a record that is created and it can be played like so many times, I don’t know, so I confess I was scared by that. But then I spent so much time typing text, and I was assuming or imagining that for students like to read all that text, maybe it was a little, you know, boring because it was always the same format. So it was actually during the pandemic that I started actually because of my job, like a different job to do, I had to do workshops online, right, and those workshops were getting recorded, so not that I didn’t have an option, but that was just the nature of the job and that actually gave me lots of confidence, like after I would watch the video and say, well this is not so bad after all, maybe I’m going to explore this for my course, right? And I think also because of the pandemic, I got to know some technologies or got like to develop skills in some technologies that I didn’t have before, for example, Zoom, right, which was the thing that probably was around before the pandemic, but it was not so popular. And today of course I’ve had to use Zoom so much that, you know, I’m very comfortable with the technology. And because Zoom now is connected with Echo 360, which lives inside Brightspace, right? It’s very easy for me or practical to start a Zoom call with myself, share my screen to show the course page, walk students through. So I have, I’m recording both my screen, I’m recording my face too to make it more personal and more engaging potentially to students. And once I’m done my recording, if I record to the cloud, which is an option inside Zoom, my recording is going to end up inside Echo 360, which I then can go in trim a bit, just cut out some of the parts that I don’t need, check for if the close captions or the transcriptions are nice, and just make it a available to students.

REBECCA

So you mentioned that you’re using Zoom to record these videos, and I’m curious, I think you’ve kind of answered this question, but I’m curious if you have anything else to add on how you picked Zoom as opposed to some other technology.

THIAGO

That’s actually a great question because before using Zoom, I had experienced using Camtasia, which is a video recording and video editing software. Right? That gives me more options. It lets me, for example, add visuals to videos and things like that. But just the processing times of using Camtasia, it’s like very, very long, right, to record and then chop things out, and then added it, do a fine editing, and then I would have to upload to Echo, wait for it to process. So it seems that it involves like way more steps than Zoom. Maybe I would have like a, I don’t know, more professional looking video at the end If I were to use Camtasia and, you know, were to add all those other details, but that’s not exactly what I needed for this video. Right? So, and because, and this is a question I usually get asked by people, so like do you record your videos like every time new videos for each term, which seems to be like double work or more, but I prefer to do that because, you know, when I walk through the course page, there are dates and things like that. I don’t know, maybe it kind of expresses my mood too, which I think it’s important to express to students again to make it more engaging and like a person experience, I don’t know. So I prefer to redo the videos each term because I also think I improve maybe my skills of making videos. I learn new things about the course. So I just don’t want to reuse the videos. And if I were to be using Camtasia like every week to do that, the workload for me, It would be like to high. And by using Zoom, again with the connection with Echo360, which like comes in handy, really comes in handy for me, makes things easier for me.

REBECCA

So it sounds like Zoom is just a really simple way for you to do what you need to do. So it’s very practical, and you’re being very strategic because you like to do new videos each time that you run the course. Something that you mentioned just a minute ago made me think of, of the idea of instructor presence in an online course. It sounds like you use these videos in order to connect directly with your students and create kind of a virtual self, which can interact with the students. Is that right?

THIAGO

That is correct. Yeah. And that was something I learned later on like the whole idea of an instructor presence or online presence and how important that is, especially if it’s an asynchronous online course. Right? Again, I don’t get to meet synchronously with my students like unless they request for like office hours, which then I provide them with a Zoom link and we meet live. Right? But that is very rare in this course. Often students will just send me an email and really, and before that the only thing they knew about me was like a very small picture that I can add in my profile. Right? So this way, I think students get to know me and I think the whole idea of feelings before, that comes through too, yes, you’re not like learning from a computer, you’re learning from a machine, a robot, right? You’re learning from a person, and maybe that week they’re not having the best week or maybe they’re having a blast. And so the video is going to come out more engaging. So yeah, definitely. I think maybe the main thing, these videos, like the whole idea of engaging and creating a stronger presence, definitely those videos have helped out. And, and one of the reasons too I’m saying that is by the end of the term, when I get feedback from my students saying, you know, what were like the things that you like the most in this course or helped you learn more, many of the people who do the course Experience survey, for example, will tell that the videos are very helpful. You know, it’s like personal, it gives them all the details they need so they can see me and both see my screen like walking them through.

REBECCA

Yeah. So I was going to ask about that, how your students reacted. So it sounds like you had a really positive reaction in your course experience surveys. Did you have any students that kind of mentioned anything to you? Like 1-1 about your use of video?

THIAGO

No. Usually I don’t get a chance to talk to them like a 1-1. But usually I do a mid-term feedback assessment, which is inside bright space. Some people mentioned the videos there, but it’s especially the course experience survey that captures that.

REBECCA

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I have a question about anything that got in the way when you chose to use video. So it sounds like you made this decision, you started doing it, you picked your technology and then you implemented it and I’m just wondering if there was anything kind of surprising that came up for you as you kind of went through this process, Did anything get in the way or was there anything that was much smoother than you expected it to be?

THIAGO

Yeah, I think a big challenge for me is to make sure the video is getting to my students and that they are watching the videos, right? So I know there are many places in bright space that I can make these videos available to students. And I noticed that, you know, throughout the years now teaching in bright space, that maybe not everybody necessarily follows the same path in bright space because you know, you can get to things like through many different ways, right? You can use the blue bar on the top, you can use the content area depending on how that was set up for that course. Specifically, you can create an echo 3 60 media library. Right? So I realized that my video was not getting to everybody. And I realized that because sometimes I would get an email from students asking me something that I had covered in the video very clearly. Right? And then I would ask, I would of course reply to the students with the question, but I would just ask like, oh, I mentioned this in the video, they do have a chance to see it. And then some people would say, oh yeah, I did not know about these videos, right? So because maybe they were like hidden in the course. So that was one of the challenges for me and like a way to overcome that. Now, what I tried to do Is to make these videos available in more than one place in bright space. So I have them in many places. Actually, I created an Echo 360 video library. So I like to have like a repository for all my videos. I have 11 modules or 11 weeks in this course. So I go into Echo, I create a course, specifically a specific library. I create 11 classes that are named after each one of the modules in my course. And then as I record the videos, I place them in each one of those those classes. So that’s one way, the second way is for each one of the modules. I have a brief introduction which is written up and I’ll add our embed the video for that module in that description too. So if the student navigates to the content area and clicks a module from the panel on the left, the first thing they’ll see on the right when it comes up is a brief description of the module and the video is embedded there too. Another thing I do is like I create an announcement for each one of the weeks in the course, that has a summary of everything students are expected to do and I add a quick link for everything. So there is a brief description of the module in the announcement with a quick link to each one of the activities and there, I also embed the video and finally I send my students an email every week again with the summary very similar to the announcement. And there I add a link to the video. So I’m providing like the video in for different ways and I know not everybody watches the videos, right? Because yeah, because if you don’t watch the videos, you can still do the activities by the textual description and everything right? But of course if you watch the videos, you get a better experience and I understand people are busy and you know, have many other videos to watch from different classes, but those are some strategies I try to use and that is not something only for my video, it’s for other things in the course to write. Sometimes I take for granted out. If I send an email, everybody will see the email, which maybe is not the case always. So try to make information or content available in different venues or places in bright space.

REBECCA

So you mentioned a couple of things that I think are really common challenges for students who are learning online, perhaps also students who are learning face to face. Um, one thing that you mentioned was just the navigation of the course and I think that sometimes we forget how unfamiliar the course environment can be for students and how challenging it can be for them to even find the things that they need to do. So I’m glad that you recognize that your students are navigating their courses in different ways and trying to provide, You’re trying to provide signposts to them to say, go here, look at this. And I think that’s just really helpful and shows how much you care as an instructor. And another kind of thing that you mentioned was just the fact that law lots of little pieces of your course can be missed by students because they have a lot of competing priorities and a lot going on. And it sounds like it was a lot of work for you to prepare all these different emails, announcements and all the different pieces that you do. But it seems from what you’ve said that your students have found this useful and you feel that it has made an impact on your students learning. Is that right?

THIAGO

Yeah, I think so. And you know, because they don’t have class time per se. I don’t have to go into the class to teach. So the time I have to do that, right? And I don’t have to start from zero now. So I re utilize courses from past semesters, right as they are structured in bright space, but I just have to tailor them and adapt them to teach them specifically.

REBECCA

Yeah, I can imagine that the first time that you prepare all of these materials would take a huge amount of effort and then every time that you kind of reuse them, it would just get a little bit easier. And so that’s wonderful that you have been able to use your courses. And on that note, I’m thinking about the way that you used video in your course this last semester. I’m wondering if there’s anything that you would adapt in your approach for the future? Is there anything you would do differently?

THIAGO

Yes. Something I’ve been thinking about is like the format of the video as I was telling you, it’s usually like a walk through. I’m showing the screen, I’m showing bright space often or other platforms I ask students to visit and I’m showing myself smaller on the right Something I have thought a lot about is like the length of the video, right? Because I always tried to have my videos like shorter than 15 minutes, but some of them have to be longer and when I check like analytics later to see how much people have watched and how long they have watched. I have learned that like the longer the video, it’s maybe you know harder. Yeah, I lose students. So two things I have in mind now that I want to start incorporating trying to make my video shorter and make sure they are not longer than 15 minutes, but also to add what you call them like checkpoints throughout the video. That’s a possibility with Echo360 right? You can the video will pause and students have to interact and you can either make this a quiz, you know, just ask them to answer something you have just covered or just like a checkpoint really for them to give like a clearer idea of progression too. So you know how you know already how much you have watched then, how much you have left or sometimes maybe students don’t want to watch the whole thing, they understand like what they have to do but they have like this very specific question. So if I were to add these checkpoints in the video, maybe it would help navigation, write something similar to you have like two Youtube videos. Now if they are longer you can see in the progress bar that you have some checkpoints and as you hover your mouse over it’s kind of going to give you a summary of that or you know like the name of a section. So that is something I was thinking of implementing in the future.

REBECCA

So kind of making it so that the videos are a little bit like more personalized and students can choose how they interact with the video and kind of go on their own learning journey as the video progresses I

THIAGO

think. So which aligns with, we were just talking in the beginning of our conversation today about personalizing, right? So give that chance to students so they don’t have to like scroll back and forth to find exactly what they needed? Those checkpoints were there? I think it would make navigation easier and maybe more appealing to students.

REBECCA

That makes sense. So one question that I didn’t ask at the beginning, I think we’ve covered a little bit, but I’ll ask it now is could you just describe to us? So you’re using video in your course and you’re not using it as a piece of content. You’re using it as kind of a navigational strategy and also a way to infuse instructor presence. Could you just give me a short, like what are the videos for like what do students get out of the videos?

THIAGO

So the main part, I want to make sure they know exactly what they’re being asked to do in a specific module, right? And of course I I do have like grading criteria and very detailed like textual instructions on what they’re being asked to do. But I think what the video allows me to do is like to help them make sense of that. So like the instructions is telling you you have to do this, this, this and that right? And in the video I have the chance to say like where I am coming from or where I expect them to come from, right? And how to make sense of that? Like the y part maybe is being coverted and how all the parts make sense to together or where I want to get at with each one of the modules. Like why are we studying this? Why do we have a module in the course that it’s called a personal learning networks? Right. Why is that there? And what sense does it make? What is the objective of each one of the modules and how does it relate to the whole idea of the course and and why? Why? I think that’s the point, why it is there.

REBECCA

So, it sounds to me like you really cover a lot of that task understanding peace and the videos. So not just like task understanding about specific activities, like what it is students need to do in specific activities, but really task understanding about like what, why students are studying the material that they’re studying in that particular unit and how that relates to the bigger picture. Which is something that instructors really bring to a course that kind of understanding of the socio contextual factors and that expert knowledge that students don’t have and couldn’t necessarily get out of a textbook. Right?

THIAGO

And it also gives me a chance to introduce some of the materials too. Just like, you know, I am asking you to read this or to watch this, Why am I doing this right? Why why have I curated this piece and a different one? And what role it plays?

REBECCA

Like the value in each piece of content and information that makes sense. Okay, so, I wanted to ask what is one piece of advice you’d give to another instructor who wants to try out kind of these types of videos in their course.

THIAGO

Yeah. Just to try recording, maybe try experimenting with the tools. I would argue that you know, maybe most people today are familiar with zoom, especially because of the pandemic, right, people kind of had to adapt to this. So I would argue that maybe many people today are comfortable with zoom. Just try it out and try the option to record into the cloud because that is very handy because you know, you don’t have to deal with a file on your computer. You don’t have to upload it and see how it goes. I know that video, it’s a format that is appealing to students I think maybe more appealing that reading something I don’t know. Yeah, just give it a try and see how it goes.

REBECCA

Alright, well, thanks so much for sharing the story of your course with us in Chicago. Before we say goodbye, I’d like to ask you one final question and that is what is one question that you wish that I’d asked you and how would you have answered that question?

THIAGO

Maybe you could have asked me if I was like willing to explore with a different format for this course, let’s say a podcast like what we are doing now, right. I just mentioned to you before that video as I understand it. It’s an appealing format, but more and more as I’m studying and learning about podcast. It seems that podcast is the media format now. Right? The big thing. So yeah, maybe the question would be like, would you be willing to explore different formats like podcasts for your course? And I would say, yeah, definitely. Let’s say maybe I’ll give it a try this term instead of having a video for a module, maybe I’ll have a podcast episode.

REBECCA

Okay, well thank you again for joining us. Um, it was lovely to chat with you and learn about your use of video in your course. It sounds like you’re doing some really interesting things and it’s made a real impact on your students. Is there anything else that you’d like to say before we wrap up?

THIAGO

I would like to thank you for the opportunity just talking about it now. Of course, I usually talk about it but not in this format. And I’m just realizing now that have realized many things and it helped me reflect about my practice and just motivates me to keep improving it and helping my students

REBECCA

awesome. Well, that brings the episode to a close, make sure to visit our website at uvic.ca/teachanywhere where you can learn more about teaching and learning at you vic. So thanks to our visitors for joining us and we will talk to you again soon

Hosts: Thiago Hinkel & Rebecca Edwards

Guest: Thiago Hinkel

Technical Production: Thiago Hinkel

Transcript Preparation: Thiago Hinkel

Theme music: “freesound1.wav” by freezound5 (https://freesound.org/people/freezound5/sounds/588258/). Available for use under the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication at freesound.org.