Isadora
Mok-Kulakova &
Laura
Perissinotti

Isadora Mok-Kulakova: Online Learning Environment Lead, Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary, Canada

Laura Perissinotti: Learning Technologies Specialist, Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary, Canada

Self-moderated discussion conducted July 2020

Q Isadora and Laura can you please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about the work you do?

IM My name is Isadora Mok-Kulakova and I am the online learning environment lead at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning. I’m originally from Hong Kong, and I used to be a student here at the University of Calgary where I obtained degrees in psychology and education. I taught elementary school for a little bit before I decided to go back to school and get my master’s in education, specializing in educational technology. After that, I worked at the IT support centre, supporting e-learning tools such as Elluminate and Blackboard. A few years ago, I started in my position as the online learning environment lead at the Taylor Institute. Now, I’m supporting tools like YuJa, Zoom and D2L.

LP My name is Laura Perissinotti and I am a learning technology specialist at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning. I have a PhD in physical chemistry. I’m originally from Argentina and I love technology and teaching. I came to Canada to do a postdoc in biophysics at University of Calgary and during the program, I started working as a learning technology coach for the Faculty of Science. I joined the Taylor Institute two years ago and began my current role. I provide assistance to instructors in a range of different technologies that are institutionally supported; I explore new options and how to implement them.

Q What do you think is the biggest challenge experienced when moving to remote teaching?

LP One of the biggest challenges, I would say, is presence. Remote teaching is difficult because you don’t see your audience, you don’t see their expressions, and you lack that instant feedback. Another challenge is that it is difficult to keep constantly updated and informed on the rapid changes in technology. The features are changing all the time, for example the way they look, and new features are being introduced. For this reason, we need to continually revise our slides to make sure that all of the information that we are sharing is accurate. There have been some unexpected challenges while we have been presenting.

IM I know there were times when there were power outages or we lost the Internet connection at home, so every time we do a workshop, we have to make sure we have multiple devices. If I’m using Zoom and I’m sharing my screen, I need to have at least one other mobile device beside me. Sometimes, that may not even work. I may see something shown on the screen on my end, but Laura and all the other participants are seeing a black screen. When you’re working with technology, you have to expect those things. If we’re taking time to switch screens when it’s online, sometimes it feels like it takes longer. When it’s in-person, it seems that people could be a bit more patient as we’re going through the transitions because they can see what we’re actually doing in the classroom.

The other thing is just to give you an example. Last year in the summer of 2019, we implemented YuJa, the video hosting platform. Our workshops weren’t that well attended. At one point we had maybe three or four participants, and only half of them were actually facilitators. We didn’t have that much participation, but when the whole COVID situation happened and everything was switched online, all of a sudden we had forty participants, and we’ve never had that many participants in a face-to-face workshop. Just having that extra pressure of more bodies posed a lot of challenges.

As Laura said, the vendors come up with changes all the time, mostly because there might be bug fixes or a new feature. Sometimes when they come up with these updates, it’s not something we can control. All of a sudden, something new gets presented while we’re in the middle of the workshop. That can be a little bit scary and embarrassing sometimes, to be honest, but we always try to do test sessions prior to our workshops.

LP I would say the other challenge is in the format that we offer for training. Sometimes we’re offering different workshops focused on different technologies and they are an hour to an hour and a half long. We have participants who are looking to find out a particular thing about the platform, but they have to sign up for the entire workshop to just learn what they want to learn. It’s difficult to offer that balance in training. You can offer drop-ins where some people attend to just ask their questions, but sometimes they will end up taking the whole workshop because they don’t have a particular question or they don’t know what to ask. It’s difficult to find that balance.

IM Prior to COVID, we were supporting a smaller number of instructors, faculty members, grad students and postdocs online and we were doing face-to-face consultations and workshops too. From March 2020, when everything moved online, Spring and Summer courses were all offered remotely and there were a lot more instructors that we needed to interact with. All the work that we do has grown exponentially. The good thing is that we now have some additional resources and learning technology coaches who are able to help out with faculty members.

Q What are the opportunities created by digital education?

IM Working from home really makes our work situation authentic. Everything is done online, so we’re meeting instructors on Zoom or via a phone call and through remote sessions, so we can still assist them even if they’re just working from home.

LP I would add that in terms of tools, there are so many out there that you can use. If you’re an instructor and you’ve just switched to remote teaching, I would start simple with a technology that is institutionally supported. Just stick to one, get comfortable with it, and then you can start exploring all the other options that you can find out there, because there are so many. There are a lot of things that you can do, for example, with D2L. You don’t have to go out there to find a tool.

IM Laura and I always speak in our workshops; our role is not to sell a particular product, learning management system or particular tool. Our job is to let you know what’s out there and what options are available. We say to always start simple, start small. When you have more time to explore and experiment with the tools, go ahead, but don’t try to overwhelm yourself with trying to use all the bells and whistles. And we’re happy to experiment with you. That’s part of our job—to experiment, play, and test. There are so many different tools that allow you to do the same thing. So sometimes you just have to make the decision, “Why would I choose this and not the other tool?”

We want to make our tools accessible and user-friendly, but at the same time we need to think of security. So part of our job is to work with IT and make sure that the right settings are in place. Let’s say, if your students need to join a Zoom session, how can we make that secure and easy so that the students don’t have to download too many things or use one specific browser.

LP If you think about digital education, it gives students a lot of control over their learning by giving them access, choice, and control in terms of how they navigate the different content that you are sharing with them.

Q What tools do you use most for teaching online?

LP Well, my most commonly used tools are D2L and Zoom right now. And I have to say, Zoom is really useful. It has changed the way we teach online a lot. The ability to share your screen and also give participants the ability to share back is so important. It makes it more interactive. Also, Zoom provides a lot of features that help you make your sessions interactive and more engaging.

If I have to name a favourite resource for teaching online, I like those resources that are interactive, to which you can add some sort of interactivity, and I have a few favourites. For example, I love one called H5P. That is easy to use. It’s free, open-source and you can create resources and then you can put those resources into D2L. I love Google Apps; I use a lot of them. Yes, I would say those are my favourite ones. I love to have interactivity. I think interactivity is very important when you’re teaching online because it can be very isolating and thus passive. Adding that interactivity to the resources that you are sharing with your students is important to keep them engaged with the content.

IM So the ones that I use most would be D2L, and Zoom and YuJa. These are the ones we do workshops with. Part of our job is also to troubleshoot, so if instructors are having an issue with these platforms and it gets escalated past the IT support centre, they can be referred to us at the Taylor Institute. If it is something that we cannot address, we will refer the instructors to our educational development consultant or to our instructional designers. If it’s a bug, then we will report it on behalf of the instructor or the client. So really, when we are working with these main tools, we do a little bit of everything.

Another tool that I like is Snagit, which, if you’re an instructor or member of staff at the University of Calgary, you should be able to get off the IT software distribution site. What Snagit allows you to do is to take screenshots or quick recordings of your screen. I personally find that very useful, because a lot of the time instructors will contact us with an issue with D2L or they will ask a question about how to do a particular thing, and instead of sending an e-mail of two or three pages of instructions and including screenshots, you can just take a video that’s less than a minute long and that shows the whole process. That speeds up how quickly we can do our job. I also want to give a shoutout to the University of Arizona because they have a lot of good materials on how to use D2L. We always go to their site to get ideas and then see how other institutions have provided their documentation.

Q What do you expect higher education to look like in ten years’ time?

IM I think that with more courses being offered online, we don’t want students to be just passive receivers of information. We don’t want them to just go into the D2L site at the University of Calgary, download information and do an online exam. We want students to be able to show their work, collaborate with their peers, and build a relationship with their instructors. Maybe they can show their experience by creating videos on their mobile devices, because it’s so easy to do these types of things now. Students can easily upload them to the D2L site or YuJa and share the experience with their colleagues and peers. And of course, with Zoom students can collaborate with each other and do group work, have group discussions, and do something together.

LP So I’m thinking about micro-credentials, and I would like to see Blockchain being implemented more widely, especially when concepts like trust, value, privacy, and identity are all coming into question as we go into this new suite of technologies. However, that would imply that we need to rethink and reimagine many aspects of traditional systems of education. So I also imagine a lot more of virtual reality and augmented reality. I know a number of institutions have already implemented those technologies in their courses. Those technologies provide a higher level of interaction, allowing the students to visualize things in 3D and even interact with them. This is happening so fast, and I think it’s really amazing—the things you can transport to different places and through time. I think, and I hope, that will be something that becomes more common in the next few years.

Reflection

It’s been well over a year since we started working from home. It’s beginning to feel like a normal summer again where we can actually take some time off before the Fall term. At the same time, we can’t help but wonder why instructors aren’t reaching out to us as often anymore. Is it because the COVID restrictions have been lifted and they can finally enjoy some downtime? Is it because the university has announced its return-to-campus plan for the Fall and many classes will be delivered in-person once again? Is it because instructors have become so proficient in the use of D2L, Zoom and YuJa that they don’t need our support anymore? Or perhaps they have just been accessing other resources at the University, such as UService (IT), the learning technology coaches, our vendors or the eLearn site? Does our department need to increase its promotion so that the community is reminded of the different services and resources that the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning is offering? We’ll never know the answer, but we suspect it’s a combination of all these reasons.

To give you an idea of how things have changed during the pandemic in terms of teaching and learning technology usage and support at the university, here are some statistics and anecdotes:

1. This table highlights assessment tool usage in D2L @UCalgary between 2019 and 2021. You will notice a steady, if not significant, increase in the use of online assessment tools within our LMS (Learning Management System), especially during/after the Winter 2020 semester.

2. 1,005,522 Zoom meetings were held between 1 July 2020 and 1 July 2021, though not all of them were course-related, as many units were also using this tool for business or administrative purposes.
3. YuJa usage has significantly increased over the course of the pandemic. The tool allows instructors to pre-record their lessons, edit their videos and incorporate accessibility features such as captioning. Students may also use it to share their experiences and submit assignments in the form of a video. As of July 2021, more than 49,225 media and captures objects had been hosted on YuJa (these include video and audio files that have been uploaded directly to the user’s My Media page, as well as videos that were created using the YuJa software station on both PCs and Macs).
4. Since June 2020, the Taylor Institute’s eLearn site has received more than 312,194 views. The site was redesigned, and we have also added more videos and included accessibility features such as closed caption and bookmarking. Recently, we launched a blog section to provide monthly updates about core campus online learning platforms.
5. It’s just a personal observation, but the average consultation time spent with instructors has decreased this year. We can usually cover all the questions or resolve issues in less than an hour now or we can send a quick e-mail so that they can complete the steps at their end. Thinking back to 2020, there were so many occasions when our one-on-one time on Zoom would last up to two hours. Isadora remembers how she once ended up having a four-hour Zoom call with an instructor. Initially, they were exploring the D2L and Zoom functionalities, but then it snowballed into a conversation about video production and an e-mail/authentication troubleshooting session. Though it was physically and mentally exhausting, it’s an experience that she will always remember. These sort of experiences helped us appreciate:
   • The time, care, and hard work that instructors put into designing their courses and creating the best learning experiences for their students, even in the midst of a pandemic;
   • The interconnectedness of our campus platforms and how we need to be very careful when making system changes (take for example, in the case above, the instructor was not able to log into Zoom to pre-record a lesson for his class because he was having trouble with his IT account. Resetting the password led to e-mail and MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) issues on multiple devices);
   • The collaboration between the Learning Technologies Group at the Taylor Institute and the IT department at the university as we make decisions together and support each other while serving the University of Calgary community; and
   • The roles of online learning environment leads and learning technologies specialists because they get to work with both human beings and machines.

There are still many uncertainties. To help support our community, the learning technology and design team at the Taylor Institute is currently developing a learning module on adaptive/adaptable course design. Keep an eye on https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/learning-modules!

About

Isadora Mok-Kulakova holds a BA in psychology and a Bed from the University of Calgary, Canada. Her interest in adult training led her to complete a master’s degree in education, specializing in educational technology. She was the IT department’s e-learning specialist for seven years before transferring to the Teaching and Learning Centre, now the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary, in April 2014.

As the online learning environment lead, Isadora facilitates the use of technologies to enhance learning and teaching. Her role entails working collaboratively with faculty, students, staff, and administrators at the University of Calgary to enrich learning experiences. Isadora supports the use of university technology platforms such as D2L and Adobe Connect, through consultation, training, and troubleshooting.

Laura Perissinotti holds a PhD in physical chemistry and completed a postdoc at the University of Calgary, Canada in the field of biophysics (Centre for Molecular Simulation, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science). Laura worked as a learning technology coach for the Faculty of Science during her time as a postdoctoral scholar.

As a learning technologies specialist at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, Laura provides a range of support and resources around technology integration. She supports faculty and staff who are interested in using technology to help transform students’ learning experience. She organizes and runs workshops and one-on-one consultations with interested faculty and staff members on a wide range of projects involving technology to support their teaching—everything from using D2L more completely, to teaching online using technology, or producing videos.