EDUC5105, Unit 4: Don't call me Shirley
Before I continue with this post, I’d like to highlight a clip from Airplane! the 1980 film starring Leslie Nielsen that I had playing in the background while I was thinking of what to write in my post for this unit. In this 17-second clip, Nielsen’s character unloads the classic line, “Don’t call me Shirley.”
So why am I writing about a funny one-liner delivered in a 40 year old film? Believe it or not (and this is probably a bit of a stretch, but this clip inspired this blog post, so that’s why I’m including it), it’s because what I perceived to be its relevance to presence: A lack of instruction results in a poor response to an emergency, a social miscommunication between Robert Hayes’ and Leslie Nielsen’s characters result in misunderstanding, and the lack of cognizance from a (real) pilot puts the plane in immediate danger.
And right now I’ll take a niiiiiiiice big stretch.
The Artifact
Nearpod is an interactive learning tool that can be used to facilitate participation during in-person and online contexts. It was introduced to me in Unit 3 with the artifact presented by Jennifer Fougere (2022). In addition to Nearpod itself, it was Jennifer’s use of it to create an interactive lesson for her Higher Level French B class. In the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme framework, subjects under Language B are language acquisition subjects that are intended to take foster development of an additional language. Using English as an example, Higher Level English B is intended to take students to a minimum of A2 (2016), or basic language use, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, n.d.). With this in mind, Nearpod, as demonstrated through Jennifer’s activity, would be an ideal tool to facilitate discussion and reinforce use of target vocabulary. In the context of business, I can see myself putting this to great use as a way to facilitate broader discussion with my students when examining case studies. Additionally, since I rely heavily on the use of video clips and questioning to create events that are meaningful, memorable and motivational (Allen, 2007), a platform that allows for integration of video and recording of open-ended questions would be a great help in making that happen, regardless of online or in-person context.
So where does presence come in to this? I’m taken back to 2020, when schools shut down in Germany and we made the switch to online teaching. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this if there is time to prepare, but our preparation time was one day plus the weekend. In between setting up a communication system between the teaching team, figuring out the optimal set up for technology, and clearing out a room to use uninterrupted for a 7 hour stretch, being able to prepare resources was a distant dream at best. My teaching during this time was a slapped together combination of Zoom’s whiteboard feature, Padlet, Google Slides, and Google Classroom, where I posted about a million links to every video, article, and survey that I had my students complete. Coupled with the endless days of talking to black squares and hearing next to nothing from my students after they got over the initial excitement of online learning, teaching online became increasingly exhausting to facilitate.
To be clear: socially, the value of interraction my students saw during class time (aside from whatever unfacilitated/unsupervised chat they had on the side) was quite low - they were often reluctant to participate, and by month 3, as much as I tried, it was challenging to facilitate an extended discussion. Cognitively, my students were there, but the unpredictable nature of technology (i.e. inconsistent network uptime that German internet providers are famous for) really presented an obstacle for assessment and knowledge construction. My lessons and activities were largely designed for an in-person context, and it was hard to come to grips with the fact that the change in context really threw a wrench into my preparation. Finally, while I was present as a teacher, the biggest challenge was faciliting any sort of meaningful discourse due first in part to the black square/muted mic phenomenon, and secondly due to the lack of platform that could be used to host these discussions in an organized extended text format.
All that being said, I get the sense that Nearpod would have been a great tool in addressing most, if not all of these issues: the ability to integrate video and other types of media would mitigate the million links issue, while the metrics and user tracking available for facilitators would allow for more effective individual formative assessment. Finally, the ability to integrate survey questions gather responses from students on the same platform would streamline the participation process. However, hindsight is 20/20, and while I’ve got my fingers crossed that we never have to enter a lockdown situation again, it’s nice to know that this application exists.
Looking forward, I do plan to use this in my in-person classes (I actually signed up for a subscription last week), as I can see its potential benefits for students who are reluctant to participate in class. Specifically, Nearpod could be used as a scaffold to support extended participation: Start with answering a survey question and seeing how their anonymous response measures up to that of their classmates, move on to a providing a sentence to describe why they provide their specific answer in a later lesson, and then repeat using physical contexts (e.g. raise your hand to signal agreement, discuss answer with a partner, etc.). On the flipside, Nearpod could also be used to ask open ended questions, and for classes with students who are eager to participate, they will have the option to share their thoughts digitally, thus allowing more opportunities for their classmates to join discussions.
Source:
Allen, M. W. (2007). Designing successful e-learning: Forget what you know about instructional design and do something interesting. Pfeiffer.
Fougere, J. (23 May 2022). Jennifer's Activity - Nearpod French HL DRAFT. [Online forum post]. Moodle. https://cbulms2.cbu.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=83742
Fuz. (2014, November 4). Airplane! - Don’t call me Shirley [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmJiZ8VcfD4
Benchmarking Diploma Programme language courses to the CEFR. (2016, December 9). International Baccalaureate. Retrieved June 8, 2022, from https://www.ibo.org/news/news-about-the-ib/benchmarking-diploma-programme-language-courses-to-the-cefr/
Council of Europe. (n.d.). Global scale - Table 1 (CEFR 3.3): Common Reference levels. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Retrieved June 8, 2022, from https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale