![]() On March 13 we all left MU for spring break assuming we would be back on campus on March 23. Now it is May, and other than going to grab some essentials from my office, I have not been back on campus. The last 8 weeks of my face to face classes have been online. It has been a strange time. It was during spring break that it was announced we would not be coming back. This was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand it gave me a week to figure out how to change my face to face classroom activities into online facsimiles. When it came time to record the first video I thought I'd dress up in my aloha dress and take the students to O'ahu, I figured we could all use a little chuckle as I welcomed them from the beach. I realized I had a lot more fun pretending to be somewhere other than my spare bedroom for this remote lecture time, and thus turned to my old friend cosplay! When I was in high school and college, I used to go to Star Trek conventions, regularly, in full costume and hang with other friends in full costume! This was before the term cosplay was commonplace (yes I'm older than I look!). I started to think, how could I incorporate my geeky love into something that would be surprising and engaging. I analyzed my topics and tried to think about them as into what fandom lore would they fit? For my microbiology course I came up with:
For cellular biology I did video series with each short video covering a single learning objective. I kept the same theme for each series and we did:
I got more excited and into staging, creating, and editing the videos as the semester went on. I started adding background sound effects and music. I tried, whenever possible, to create discussion threads based upon the theme to encourage students to apply the knowledge from the videos. And whenever I answered their discussion posts, I stayed in character and used gifs from that fandom. The biggest takeaway I have from this experience is be ALL IN. If you're having fun, students will have fun!
You might be wondering how long did this take for each lecture?! It was about 1 - 2 hours of work time. I wanted to get record in a single take, without having to create a script because I teach organically and wanted that same feel to these videos, so there were a few times I messed up and had to restart the video. Once the video was recorded I would trim it and add some background sound effects or music to enhance the ambiance. What I used:
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RobiSci Ruminations
Thoughts about teaching and research from an Assistant Professor at a small liberal arts college in Indiana. ArchivesCategories
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