tools

Tools are not systems – interactive lectures done right

This post is my entry for Indie Web Carnival July 2024 with the theme ‘tools’.

What is a tool, as opposed to a machine or a system? One important property is that a tool leaves you, the tool-user, in full control. A good tool becomes an extension of yourself, increasing your capabilities without restricting you. It doesn’t make decisions on your behalf. It gets out of the way, allowing you to directly interact with whatever you’re using it for – disappearing into the background.

When I teach large scale lectures (dozens or hundreds of students), I want to be able to really interact with students. This means not just running a poll or two, but having actual back-and-forth conversations around those polls and other questions. And I want to do that digitally, because relying on raised hands and students speaking up means I’d only ever be talking with a few usual suspects who are comfortable doing that in a large group.

A tool for live teacher-student interaction must meet the criteria above. If it’s in the way, if there’s too much friction, limits, or distractions – either for me or for students – it just wouldn’t work. But every polling/audience interaction app that I’ve looked at seems dead set at doing too much, too rigidly, and with too much fluff. They’re systems. They get in the way. Which makes them utterly inappropriate for use in teaching, in my view. Education is something you make together in the moment. It’s a creative act. Teaching must be responsive and flexible – otherwise, why be in a room together?

During the pandemic, I ~~built~~ hacked together my own online lecture platform. It was wonderful. It allowed me to have super direct and free-flowing live interactions in lectures with hundreds of students, but without all the distractions and overhead this comes with in videoconferencing apps or on Twitch or YouTube.

A screenshot of a livestream combined with polling buttons and a chatbox. — A screenshot of me during an online lecture under lockdown in 2021, from the view of a student. Note the plain black background. No unnecessary distractions and other fluff.

This past year – back in meatspace – I’ve kept using my system for multiple-choice polls and many-to-one chat in my lectures. My own tool is so simple and direct that it does allow me to feel like I’m actually having a conversation of sorts with hundreds of students at the same time. It’s fun!

Photo of me on stage lecturing in a large auditorium, with a screenshot of the screen superimposed. — Me on the stage of Delft University of Technology’s largest auditorium in September 2023, showing a PowerPoint slide with a multiple choice question, poll results, and an overlay showing one student’s reason for their answer. (Screenshot superimposed over the projection area for clarity.)

Photo of a laptop screen showing PowerPoint presenter view and an OBS window. — What my laptop screen looks like during a lecture: PowerPoint presenter view on the left, OBS on the right with the many-to-one chat and polling controls. I can see students’ names, but those are not show when I put one of their messages up on the projection screen. And they can also choose to be fully anonymous. (Photograph because OBS doesn’t fully show up in screenshots.)

If I’m being honest, ‘simple’ might not be the best description. It’s basic, yes, but it requires hacking together some very amateurish PHP code with Powerpoint through OBS, and it relies heavily on my input for stuff that could (for an actually competent programmer) be automated or otherwise simplified.

But even though it requires skill and concentration on my part, it really does function as a tool. It gets out of the way. It doesn’t require any setup beforehand or shoehorning my questions into fixed formats like all those ‘proper’ polling apps do. I can use it to do what I planned to do, or I can decide – on the fly – to ask completely different questions. Students can ask me anything at any time without disrupting the flow of the class. And I can show those student questions and responses on the screen with the push of a button – if and when I choose to do so.

(Ow, and this thing doesn’t require any sign-ups or cookie banners. After a lecture, all the data just disappears. Zero tracking.)

I think more apps should be tools in this sense. Especially in education. Ed-tech is often way too complex and frictionfull.

If only I had better coding skills and more time to make this thing usable for others 😋.

My sketch- and notepad

This post is my entry for Indie Web Carnival June 2024 with the theme ‘DIY — Something from (Almost) Nothing’.

I like using stuff that’s discarded or otherwise just lying around. Not only from an anti-consumerist and environmental viewpoint, but also just because it’s fun te see how far you can get with scrounging from what’s lying around.

Lots of paper gets discarded while only one side has been used – if that. The recycling bin at work is often filled with good as new, uncrumpled paper printed only on one side: misprints, handouts, once-read reports that were cleaned out of a drawer somewhere, leftover assessment forms or attendance lists, etcera. Sometimes it’s two or three sheets. Sometimes whole stacks.

I collect these to fill my sketch- and notepad: a simple stack of paper with a cardboard back (also scrounged from the recycling), held together by a big black binder clip. I have a 10cm stack of free refills in my office drawer. It grows faster than I can use it up.

Some of its current contents: leftover forms, datasheets, misprints

The fact that the paper is free and saved from the trash means there’s no ‘is it worth the nice paper in my nice sketchbook?’-decision moment before making a quick drawing, diagram, or list.

And the fact that it’s loose-leaf means that I can easily:

spread out stuff on the table during a meeting as I fill each sheet (I’m often the first and only one at the table who starts making a quick diagram or visualization. Works wonders.)
collect related notes and sketches that I want to keep in a set of manilla folders
leave sheets with explanatory sketches with students after having a discussion with them (they love this!)

I’ve been this set-up it for years now. A+ would recommend!

Recording Quick Feedback Videos

As an alternative to written feedback, I make simple videos. Once you have it set up, this actually takes less time than responding with text. It’s more fun, and research suggests it’s also more effective:

Students found screencast technologies to be helpful to their learning and their interpretation of positive affect from their teachers by facilitating personal connections, creating transparency about the teacher’s evaluative process and identity, revealing the teacher’s feelings, providing visual affirmation, and establishing a conversational tone.