Hybrid Teaching Update #2: Early progress
I am off on leave for 2 weeks but I wanted to get a quick post out before I’m dragged away from the computer by my children. By popular demand you’ll find the list of 50 rooms that have been earmarked for hybrid listed below. I’ve also added a little bit about the service design approach we’re using as well as a few highlights from our to do list.
The big fifty
As detailed in our previous message, there are 50 core teaching rooms being upgraded to support some level of hybrid teaching, first as Capture & Stream then as Dual-Mode, depending on how fast we can get the hardware delivered and installed.
Dalhousie 1LG02 | Dalhousie 1F18 Env 4 | Dalhousie 2G14 | Dalhousie 2S11 | Matthew 5017 |
Dalhousie 1LG03 | Dalhousie 1S05 | Dalhousie 2F02 | Dalhousie 2S12 | Scrymgeour 1.08 |
Dalhousie 1LG04 | Dalhousie 1S06 | Dalhousie 2F03 | Dalhousie 2S13 | Scrymgeour 2.08 |
Dalhousie 1LG13 | Dalhousie 1S08 Music 2 | Dalhousie 2F10 | Dalhousie 2S14 | Scrymgeour 2.12 |
Dalhousie 1G05 | Dalhousie 1S10 Music 1 | Dalhousie 2F11 | Fulton J18 | Scrymgeour 3.08 |
Dalhousie 1G06 | Dalhousie 1S18 Clay | Dalhousie 2F13 | Fulton J19 | Tower Geography Jun Lab |
Dalhousie 1G10 | Dalhousie 1S19 | Dalhousie 2F14 | Fulton H2 | Fife Campus Classroom 1 |
Dalhousie 1G15 | Dalhousie 2G03 | Dalhousie 2F15 | Fulton F20 | Fife Campus Classroom 2 |
Dalhousie 1F01 Env 1 | Dalhousie 2G12 | Dalhousie 2S02 | Harris LT | Fife Campus Classroom 3 |
Dalhousie 1F06 Env 2 | Dalhousie 2G13 | Dalhousie 2S03 | Matthew 5016 | Fife Campus Classroom 4 |
These rooms have been selected for their suitability to support the small to medium size teaching that will make up the majority of in-person teaching next year, while large lecture style teaching is recommended either online or via asynchronous content. There may be some changes to this list along the way as we progress though the actual installations and if requirements change.
Note that We’re in discussion with the School of Medicine to discuss their requirements separately and will communicate the outcome of that work directly with the school.
Service Design approach
I mentioned previously that we’re taking a Service Design approach to this project, but what does that mean? A quick google will give you a multitude of different explanations but I really like the below video’s simple way of putting it:
The key elements of service design as applied to this project:
1. Customer centric
Our ‘customers’ are the students, academics, and support staff who will use this service, with each group coming with different requirements:
- Students want easy access to a quality learning experience, whether they are on campus or online.
- Academics want a service that allows flexibility for their teaching without significantly increasing their workload or disadvantaging any of their students.
- Support staff want to be able to administer and support the entire process easily without fiddling with spreadsheets or contorting their work practice to accommodate bad design.
So, we will be engaging with each of these groups to ensure our design fits their needs as much as possible rather than trying to fit them around it.
2. Co-Creation
Wherever possible we will try to involve our stakeholders in the design process. We’ve already started with the Dalhousie pilot room and there will be more to come as we get more rooms online, including the conversion of the Eduzone into an innovation space. Similarly, the lab and studio rooms are being co-created with the schools to ensure the facilities they have are suited to the teaching they need to do.
3. Holistic
This project is not about simply installing some hardware in 50 rooms and walking away. Although there is only so much we can fit in for September, our long-term goal is to look at the full journey that each user group makes for any learning session, from timetabling to how session recordings are managed. A student doesn’t care about which department in the university is responsible for which element of their experience, they only care that it all works. In this project we want to look at the entire process and design it from that student’s holistic perspective.
Service Design resources:
- Service Design Academy – Great expertise only a few miles away at Dundee and Angus College
- This is Service Design Doing – Great books on the subject
- Service Design Tools – online resource for service design tools.
- Service Design Show – YouTube channel and podcast
To-Do list
In the next couple of weeks (while i’m on holiday🤔) there will be a lot going on. Here are some of the key activities:
User Research
Jane and Kim will be getting started on the user research that will help guide our design efforts. They’ll looking back into the staff and student pulse surveys and the NSS data to build some context of where we’re coming from in terms of the staff and student experience over the last year. They’ll also be making a start with some user interviews so we can start to build some persona profiles to help us steer our design process in the right direction.
Design
Jonathan and Ed have already started getting their heads around the interfaces and workflows based on ten initial user testing in the Dalhousie demo room. Our challenge is to figure out how a lecturer can enter one of these hybrid rooms control their teaching environment without getting overloaded by settings, controls, and things going wrong. Similarly we need to figure out how online students can access the teaching easily, reliably and without feeling in any way excluded.
Infrastructure
Stuart, Douglas, Jonathan, and our AV partners at Streamtech continue to deal with the huge challenge of sourcing and installing 50 rooms worth of kit on top of the bespoke requirements of the studios and labs.Website
Website
Finally, we’re working hard to get this very website up and running for all our digital education service, including a resource area specifically for the Hybrid project.
See you in two weeks
Apologies for the brief catchup this week – there will be plenty more info in the future. Note that Blair and Natalie will be giving an update about this and other aspects of our L&T preparations for the new academic year during Wednesday’s Townhall meeting, so make sure you come along at 3pm via the Teams Live link.
Have a good two weeks and i’ll see you after the 16th.
Hamish
Dear Team, I have been teaching a hybrid class in Dalhousie 2S02 for the past couple of weeks, on Wednesday 6-8 pm. so there is no support to get at this time of the day.
On Tuesday afternoon I went there and ended up with three IT specialists to set the system up and getting all the problems out of the way.
However, although most of the technology worked, we could still not hear the voices of the students sitting off-campus which is highly unsatisfactory, as they can only participate through the chat room.
How can I make the system work so I can hear the off-campus students?
All best, Anja