Academics typically spend around a third of their time complaining about the extra work they are being made to do as a result of ‘institutional changes’¹ Another third is spent worrying about the state of HE in general. This leaves us with a relatively small amount of time to dedicate to the pursuit and dissemination of scholarly knowledge.

Yet, in these most unprecedented of times, most of us have managed to find and compress the ‘pause’ button on the former two demands of our time. Conscious of how fortunate we are to have jobs at all (for now at least), there seems to be a general willingness to adapt to the new climate in which we find ourselves.

For some of us the transition to online teaching feels vaguely exciting, while for others it is a source of anxiety and frustration. Whichever camp we find ourselves in, there are challenges to be faced and lessons to be learned along the way.

For that there is a deluge of videos on YouTube and social media which can tell us how to conduct ourselves online. For anyone who has the the time (and cares enough) you’ll find everything you need to become a Zoom expert, including tips on camera angles and lighting, what not to wear, how to make your front room look like a page out of Ideal Home and not the scene of a recent domestic incident, and so on.

Few university lecturers are renowned for their snappy dress sense and on-screen charisma

All great tips no doubt, but should this be everyone’s aspiration? If we become too preoccupied with the presentation aspect of it all, don’t we run the risk of turning universities into over-priced MOOC factories? (Massive Open Online Courses for anyone fortunate enough not to know that.) Few university lecturers are renowned for their snappy dress sense and on-screen charisma (bar one or two exceptions), so it seems fairly safe to assume that is not what most students are looking for from their tutors.

What is it that really matters?

With that in mind, I’d like to start by reconsidering the role of the tutor in order to focus on the things which are most important. Everyone will have their own variation on this list, but here are the things I consider top of my ‘responsibility to students’ list:

• creating a safe and supportive environment in which to learn
• providing quality resources to support learning
• creating a sense of community among learners and fostering collaborative learning
• setting transparent, formative and meaningful forms of assessment
• providing clear, constructive and continuous feedback
• taking an interest in each individual’s academic progression and general well-being

These are the things which should be forefront in our minds when planning for online delivery, and, with the best will in the world, a great home studio setup ain’t gonna get you there.

Learn from the pros

Remote collaboration is nothing new. A lot of people are already very good at it.

So where do we start? Well, we could start by gleaning know-how of people who have been doing some or all of the above for a considerable time. Remote collaboration is nothing new. It’s something a lot of people spend their lives doing, and they have become very good at it. Not only that, there are a plethora of tools out there which can help. But don’t be too hasty! First let’s take a few lessons from our industry counterparts and we might just spare ourselves from yet another dreaded ‘Moodle update’.

Lesson 1: Whiteboards

There’s a tendency in academia to reach for the latest gadget or e-learning tool in an effort to ‘prove’ we are at the cutting edge when it comes to education. Indeed, ‘innovative use of technology’ is one of the key areas we are often expected to evidence in interviews and PG teaching qualifications.

As someone who has experimented endlessly with all manner of e-learning tool to no great avail, I can tell you that some of the best teaching I have witnessed was delivered by industry professionals with no pedagogical training and little more than a sharpie, some post-it notes and a good old-fashioned whiteboard² at their disposal.

A whiteboard is a form of technology that can be used in all manner of innovative ways

I doubt there are many who would be surprised by that. After all, a whiteboard is a form of technology that can be used in all manner of innovative ways (best don’t put that on your FHEA application). Without a doubt the most notorious innovators of the whiteboard are the so-called ‘agile’ practitioners, and it is from them that I learned why a whiteboard can’t be rivalled when it comes to group learning.

One of the reasons whiteboards are so effective at facilitating learning is their tactile and sensorial nature. You have to move your body to interact with a whiteboard. You can touch it. You can hear the satisfying sound of a sharpie pen on a post-it note. You can smell the alcohol from the dry-wipe marker (not something I encourage students to do by the way). You can see a concept represented pictorally. All of this can make a whiteboard sketch more memorable than bullet points on a powerpoint presentation, as Matthew Skelton tells us in his book Better Whiteboard Sketches³.

A second reason is that they are very inclusive. Get a group of people huddled around a whiteboard and even the most introvert of them will start contributing (something I learned from the guys at BAD toolkit who kindly spent some time with my students). It’s interesting to see how discussion will start to flow naturally as the post-its emerge.

A third reason is their high visibility. This is perhaps the main reason why they are favoured in offices and schools the world over. You don’t have to go out of what you’re doing and trawl through your browser history to resurrect a spreadsheet if the core elements of that spreadsheet are on the wall right in front of you.

Enter Miro…

Hopefully you don’t need much more convincing than that as to the benefits of whiteboards, but the idea you can replicate the whiteboard experience online (to a degree) may be met with a bit of skepticism at first. Perhaps the best way to convince you is to let you experience it for yourself, and for this I highly recommend Miro.

Miro is essentially a virtual whiteboard tool. More specifically, it’s a web-based application which allows lots of people to move things around on the screen simultaneously. It is very easy to use and provides templates and various other features which offer lots of potential for facilitating group-based activities.

Here is an example board we have actually used our students.