Broadband Issues

[bfreese]

How does our level of access to the internet shape pedagogy in a remote teaching/learning paradigm? What challenges are we seeing, or do we anticipate both for ourselves and our students? And why does the campus VPN matter now more than ever before for you?

This forum channel is dedicated to the technical structure that under girds remote learning.

I encourage everyone to listen to the March 17 episode (8 minutes) at https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443930/future-tense, hosted by Molly Wood. It is a suitable starting place to understanding the broader issues – both political and environmental – that surround this new internet landscape we all find ourselves in, as well as the attendant opportunities and challenges both now and going forward.

[Matthew Belskie]

A key part from the podcast in the first message:

Spectrum is offering 60 days of access free to households with K-12 or College students for homes that do not already have it (https://corporate.charter.com/newsroom/charter-to-offer-free-access-to-spectrum-broadband-and-wifi-for-60-days-for-new-K12-and-college-student-households-and-more). Comcast doing the same for low income households (https://www.businessinsider.com/comcast-att-making-changes-to-internet-due-to-coronavirus-fears-2020-3).

[Tyler Ritter]

Learning Community Chat: Broadband Issues
A Zoom session for faculty to discuss this topic will be held on Thursday, 3/19, from 2:30-3:30 PM EDT.
The discussion will include considerations and workarounds for students with limited or no internet access.
Facilitators: Matthew Belskie, Educational Technology Coordinator; Courtney Rivard, Associate Professor, English and Comp Literature

Zoom link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/980736856

[Paul Wolff]

I was just in a meeting with colleagues discussing this and one of the topics that keeps coming up around this issue is the fact that so many families will have potentially multiple students needing to connect, along with parents who are working remotely. Some of our students now have young children at home as well. Even when a household has decent broadband, this could put a significant strain on those resources.

As a result, many of our faculty are moving towards shifting instruction to a more asynchronous format (or offering both synchronous and asynchronous in tandem). If you’re considering this, in an effort to make this transition less stressful for your students, please post your questions here or feel free to schedule a consultation.

[Radhika Dhingra]

One other note. This is not just a student problem. Faculty also have poor internet connections.
I will likely have to sit outside a building on campus to record my asynchronous lectures, because we live far from town.

[Paul Wolff]

Radhika – this is an excellent point. I believe there was discussion of a way for faculty to request exemption from not being able to come to campus in these situations – I’d recommend reaching out to your dean/department chair to see if there is a way for you to make use of your office for recording purposes.

[Radhika Dhingra]

To frame it as a question: does anyone have any ideas (other than sitting outside a campus building) to cloud record lectures via zoom?
Would a local recording of the lecture be adequate, given that a transcript will not be available?

[Paul Wolff]

Radhika – One option would be to record locally and then upload to Youtube. You can set the video to be “Unlisted” which will allow you to share the link with students, but the video won’t be searchable. Youtube has auto-captioning, which isn’t perfect, but which is similar to what Zoom offers.

[Matthew Belskie]

I asked Courtney Rivard for her top 3 practical tips for asynchronous teaching and learning and here is what she shared:

Think about breaking your class into separate chunks of time that follow a general outline that will be repeated for the remainder of the remote teaching classes. Here is an example that is largely a re-tooling of think-pair-share:

1. watch (or read) – 10-15 minutes
   • students will watch a prerecorded video or read your lecture notes/powerpoints
2. think and write – 10-15 minutes
   • you ask your students a few questions that make them think about what they just read/saw. Students then write their answers to your questions, and post them to an online forum you have designated for class discussion (i.e. sakia forums, teams, slack, etc.).
3. share and respond – 10-15 minutes
   • students read through their peers’ responses and they are required to respond to a set number of peer comments

Because the class is not happening in real time, you may want to set a deadline for completion for each or all activities. Remember, though, that students will need some time to complete them, so make sure to post these well in advance.

[bickford]

this is VERY helpful, thanks.

[Paul Wolff]

One recommendation to accommodate some of your students who may have Internet connectivity issues: Record a lecture to Zoom Cloud, which generates an auto-transcription. You can then take that file, edit the text so that it’s readable (and correct spelling issues with technical, field-specific terminology) and distribute to your students as lecture notes. If you teach from slides, you can also distribute the slide deck to accompany the notes. This will require far less resources from your students, from a broadband standpoint, than streaming a video or attending a synchronous session. Of course, you can post the lecture video as well for those who have a solid connection and even hold synchronous class sessions or Q&As in tandem.

[Paul Wolff]

If you take this approach, good practice would be to reference the slide number as you’re talking so it’s easier for students to follow along who can’t stream the video.

[Matt Osment]

If your home wifi is shaky, you may accomplish many (but not all) tasks using your cellular connection and your phone. I always keep my phone handy when in a zoom session in case I lose my wifi connection.

Feel free to schedule a consult to learn more: https://keepteaching.unc.edu/consultations/

[Matt Osment]

If you have a smart phone…

Download the apps:

Zoom
Outlook
Onedrive
PPT

1. You may conduct your session entirely from your phone over a cell network.
2. To make it easy to rejoin the session quickly, store the meeting idea in your outlook calendar which you can also access on your phone
3. Of course, it is easiest just to present from the zoom phone app.
4. But if you want to display ppt’s, store them in your onedrive.unc.edu and use the phone ppt app to present. I do not recommend trying to create your ppt on the phone however.

To be doubly-sure that the ppt’s are displayed, create an alternative host who has access to your ppts. You may tell this co-host “next slide” and let him/her run the slideshow.

[Author]

Posts