Online teaching – hints and tips

 by Suzie Williams
Academic Liaison Librarian (University of Sunderland)
CILIP NE Secretary

Like many information professionals involved in teaching, since the March lockdown I have been doing lots of online continuing professional development to explore the possibilities for converting face-to-face teaching into a suitable online format for my students. Here are a few hints and tips that I have picked up along this journey which you may like to explore for yourself. 

• Make your participants feel comfortable – give them the ground rules and show them how to take part. 
• Getting participants to use tools like the online whiteboard as people arrive, so they know how to use the tools during the session. Eg. you could get people to draw the weather where they are on, to experiment with different pen widths or colours.
• Don’t be worried if students don’t engage with the tool you have chosen – think about ways you can adapt within a session.
• There is a chat section in many webinar/online teaching softwares that you can use to get your learners discussing, sharing ideas and asking questions. 
• There are free tools you use to create an wordsearch people could do as they arrive (to keep people engaged whilst waiting for everyone to arrive).
• Having a focal-point on your slides – eg. using the 2/3 rule in photography
• Use of copyright free images
• Purpose of using text on slides isn’t to remind you what to say! Anything on your slides should act as a focal point for what you’re talking about.
• Have good contrast of text and background – whilst this varies between individuals, often light text on dark background is helpful.
• In the Western tradition of reading our eyes move from left to right – think about this in terms of your audience – where do you want people’s eyes to go?

CILIP NE virtual stall at CILIP Conference 2020

 

Chat with CILIP North East members at our virtual stall

Are you attending CILIP Conference 2020? Come and chat with us - CILIP North East will have a virtual stall at CILIP Conference 2020. Come and chat with us and find out about or committee and what we do, learn about the benefits of joining the committee and share your ideas with us about future development events we could organise.

Semi-flipped classroom

by Suzie Williams, 
Academic Liaison Librarian (University of Sunderland)
CILIP NE Secretary

Recently I have listened to a webinar recording about semi-flipped classroom techniques. Go to lectureremotely which shares resources and support for remote teaching in response to Covid-19, and scroll down to ‘Semi-flipped classroom’ by Dr T.J.Moore.

He discusses what the semi-flipped classroom is about, how it differs from a ‘traditional’ flipped classroom, how you can adapt it to your situation and how students can benefit from it. The webinar is definitely worth a watch/ listen.

Key points I picked up included:

• Encouraging students to do something before the session through using their phone eg. watching a short clip from Box of Broadcast on their phone as they get the bus onto campus.
• Benefit of using polling tools frequently within a session to engage students but also to help you know if you are hitting the mark and students understand what you are teaching them.
• Students like to see poll results on the screen – they can see that what they are contributing is being used in the session.

 

Webinar: Online privacy skills (Nov 24th 2020)

 CILIP North East are delighted to be running a webinar later this month on Data Privacy. Learn more about the webinar below and book your place. You don't have to be a CILIP member but places are limited.

Webinar: Online Privacy Skills

Privacy is about choice: we each have a different perception of what is important for us to keep private and secure. To be able to make those informed decisions about our privacy online, though, we need to understand how our personal information is collected and used when we browse the Internet or use a mobile device.

In this webinar we will discuss:

• threat modelling;
• security of information;
• cookies and tracking;
• app permissions;
• privacy-friendly software and tools (browsers, search engines, etc.).

If you are joining from a computer, you may like to have your phone or a tablet with you to apply what we’ll be discussing!

Presenter details

Aude Charillon works as a Library and Information Officer at Newcastle Libraries. She is the lead author of Leading the way – a guide to privacy for public library staff published by the Carnegie UK Trust and CILIP in 2018.

Click here to register for this webinar