A Digital Mindset

A Digital Mindset:

Let’s not close the digital box on what we have learned

Who would have thought this year would turn out like this? In January this year we were blissful unaware of what was going to hit us. We had the usual excitement prepping for the start of Term 1, we had visions of walking into lectures theatres and tutorial rooms to eager to learn students. In early February this cheerful vision was starting to get turn to concern, we were hearing from students in China about, then called coronavirus, and that areas inside of China were being locked down. This became more of a concern with Australia following the USA in closing its borders to China. How would the students get here? We examined the impacts and reassessed our strategy. The first two weeks were to go online for all courses and consultation (office hours) placed online for the School of Accounting. This online access was a brief window to allow for students to arrive into Australia quickly via third party countries. 

As the two weeks of online neared completion I talked with fellow academics about these online measures. Teaching staff discovered much their surprise that students took to them with much enthusiasm. One may be tempted to say there had been a latent demand for online. Where I heard the most significant embracing of online was the consultation held via Collaborate Ultra. These consultation sessions were achieving record high attendance rates, the likes of which not been seen for 5 years prior. As the days ticked down and the reality of the end of the forced 2 weeks online approached, I could hear in the corridors the voices of my colleagues saying comments like: “Time to turn off the online stuff”. One junior staff member said to me “It’s a shame we have to turn it all off, some of the students were embracing this technology”. The new-fangled digital world was being packed back up into its box and the lid was to be placed on top forever. These digital innovations were to be placed back into the same box reserved for future ideas (e.g. “The Jetsons” flying cars). It was the end of the digital age. The lid was firmly fastened. 

Fast forward 3 weeks on. Week 5 of Term 1. The coronavirus problem was now no longer just affecting China. The pandemic had turned global, it had a label now from the WHO and had a new name of COVID-19. Australia is closing is borders. The word went across campus, the word was: “Switch to online, face-to-face classes are cancelled”. We did this without pause, without ceasing face-to-face classes. Overnight we went from fully face-to-face to fully online. We blew off the dust gathered on these digital ideas. Turned on again the online consultations and also alongside them classes popped up now online live streamed. 

We then had a heads up for Term 2. Fully online! It was happening. Get your course outline ready now. All assessments must be online. Digital mindset required for this switch. We benefited from a largest suite ever of online courses (thank you BDL team and UNSW). We drank from the metaphorical fire hose of articles, blogs and other materials and watched countless videos. It was like we were cramming 2 to 5 years of online teaching experience into a few weeks and we had to have an exam on it, i.e. the students were waiting for us to show them the way. Our heads were filled with digital ways of doing things. The Term 2 teaching staff were to then roll out re-designed to be fully fledged online classes. This term will be remembered in history as one of the largest scale digital experiments ever. Digital mindsets for the adoption. We are hopeful that we will return to face-to-face teaching, we know it coming. Term 3, possibly? We hear whispers and ideas. Lectures may be online, tutorials around 10 students per class? It is true that we may never see again in our lifetimes this scale of digital learning, however, first let’s give ourselves credit for what we have achieved, and second let’s consider what we can retain. We have all upskilled in a short amount of time to the digital mindset. Let us not lose this. When you reach your hand for the lid of the digital box, do to put the lid back on. Here I discuss some ideas of what elements can be retained.  

I classify these elements for retention into two categories: (1) Digital enhancements; and (2) Digital mindset for the face-to-face world.

(1)   Digital enhancements

This category of items that can be retained are enhancements on what we were already doing pre-COVID-19 crisis. Think about which elements you have adopted that can be retained. I have always used many of Moodle functions. I have moved beyond even this deeper usage to discover more functions within the Moodle site. Switching on these enhancements on can be continued. Even in the early days at the moment of Term 2 students are reporting to me that they are embracing these Moodle enhancements. Let’s keep these new add-ons in Moodle. Many of these options are greatly valued by students and many do not require teaching staff to maintain them during the Term. Let’s keep them switched on. Your Moodle site is no longer just a place to park the PowerPoints. Let it be as inviting as a coffee shop. Students will come and interact together in this digital landscape. Here are some suggestions of what I will be retaining when returning to face-to-face teaching on the course Moodle site:

•          Course self-completion – where students can tick a box next to a document they download or a quiz they have completed. This way they can self-manage their interactions with the site and know what they have completed.
•           Checklist activity – upload a .csv file of the checklist of items for students to complete each week. Students can then understand the weekly tasks to be completed and tick each off as they finish them. 
•           Calendar – a place where you can add important due dates, for example assignments, students can see clearly then when assessments are due. 
•           Activities – a left-hand side of Moodle site menu option that allows one-click access by students to see all the Moodle activities located in different sections of the site, for example quizzes, checklists, forums. Students can then have a quick view of what they need to complete on the Moodle site.
•           Forums (also known as Discussion Boards) – students can post up questions and interact with each other and the teaching staff. This creates a course community on the Moodle site. Particularly useful for courses with large enrolments as often students have the same questions, e.g. 710 students would likely have similar questions and then all students benefit from the answers posted by teaching staff. 
•            Search Forums – this left-hand side of Moodle site menu option is like Google for the Forum (Discussion Board). Now students can see if another student has posted a similar question. They can search for a key word, e.g. impairments, and all in one location see the entire results for that search word. This leverages off of the combined community of the Discussion Board and increases the user friendliness of the content. Gone are the days of students having to scroll through hundreds of posts to see if anyone posted or post up the identical question again, they now have the ability to be across the whole Discussion Board.

Digital submissions can be retained:

As a digital native I always have a small laugh on campus when I walk past assignment boxes for physical copies of assignments to be dropped off. I often wonder for whom do these boxes serve? Why did these boxes not go the way of the dinosaur already? The reason for this is to take a look at ourselves, our peers, are we using our university’s digital assets to the full extent? The continued existence of these physical assignment boxes answers this question as: no, not at the movement. In Term 2, if your course has an assignment you have had to adopt a digital submission mode. Why not retain this? Would it not be better to now let go of the physical assignment box? Embrace the new digital submission through Moodle. How many of us saw the overhead projectors disappear from classrooms? Did we lay down ourselves in front of them as these were removed? How many of us are holding on to old overhead transparencies? Now is the time to let go the past. Just as with these projectors being rolled away, we need to reflect on past assessment types and submissions. Let go of the past and think about the digital future. We are living right now in the digital age. Let’s embrace these new innovations and retain them for the future. Seal up the physical assignment boxes and say goodbye to the old. Students will thank you for it. Your teaching team will thank you for it. 

Here are just two suggestions out of many that I have about innovations of digital mindset that can be applied to assessment items for example, I have implemented in Term 2 course assessment and design: (a) Self-check quizzes; and (b) Prior period exams open from day one. 

(a)   Self-check quizzes

A self-check quiz, where students are awarded a low stakes mark for completing the quiz each week prior to their tutorial. Students have unlimited attempts for this quiz. By changing the grading of the quiz from being based on ‘correctness’ as might have been done in a class paper-based quiz in the digital world we can instead move to a ‘completeness’ grade. This digital mindset changes greatly benefits students because their temptation to screenshot and share the answers is removed. The possibility of collusion of working together on quizzes by means of circumventing the system now evaporates. It is up to each individual student to now complete their quiz in a completeness world. Students will now more beneficially focus their energies into completing quizzes. This is what we would like students to do, to self-test their knowledge. All the negative incentives directing students into trying to ‘beat’ the ‘evil’ quiz or work together to take down the ‘evil’ quiz evaporate now. They are instead motivated to take the quiz. This is a low stake attempt at a quiz that benefits their learning. This type of self-check quiz could replace homework checks, because it acts the say way – it is encouraging students to complete work before coming to class. 

(b)  Prior period exams open from day one

I learned from the experience of Term 1 that students had strong concerns about online exams. As part of addressing this in Term 2 I made the decision to post up the Term 1 final exam in the exact same format it was delivered in Term 1. This has two advantages: (i) students can test out this style of exam and see how it feels. (ii) Students can see the difficulty level of the exam and understand what they are working towards during the course. Prior to 2020 I did not release past exams in this way. My style was to select individual past exam questions and put them into the tutorial homework. I can now retain this policy of showing a complete and whole final exam to students from day 1 of the new term. 

(2)   Digital mindset for the face-to-face world.

Any day now we will return into the face-to-face classroom. The day is coming. As we make that step into the classroom, we can bring with us ideas that were developed in our digital age and these involve ideas developed out of a digital mindset. This category includes ideas and ways of teaching that have been created or rediscovered because of the digital mindset needed to teach online. 

Increasing engagement through the return of cold calling:

I realised in Term 1 that students were logging in to online tutorials but then not doing anything. They became passive observers to the process. I was saddened talk for around 30 minutes or more with little to no engagement. Where were the students? They appeared to be logged in, but maybe they were watching “Netflix”? After getting comfortable with Collaborate Ultra two students in each class discovered that they could turn on their microphones and talk to me. I was overwhelmed with relief! Someone was there! These blank boxes contained human beings! I was not just talking to my lounge room furniture delivering a class. I got caught up in this and I forgot the logged-in but seemingly unresponsive students sitting in the audience. Names in an attendee list but not responding at all. I was unaware that I was favouring those with their microphones turned on, we were chatting away and all I was talking to those students who were actively typing away in the chat box. This experience changed my mindset and I decided having read that feedback for Term 1 that for Term 2 no student would be left out. This required a shift in thinking, a new digital mindset. I have now adopted what is an old school concept, this is ‘cold calling’, whereby students are called on to answer questions during class by name. I have now trained up my tutors in this cold calling technique. This is incredibly easy in the digital world where the online class tools such as Collaborate Ultra and Zoom have a list of logged in students. Now tutors can read names and call on students to participate. I hope this will increase engagement and encourage all to participate. In thinking about cold calling I realise that in traditional teaching this has been forgotten. When I walk into my next face-to-face class. I will be equipped now with this old school technique. I remembered that part of what inspired me to study as an undergraduate was during my Auditing, Corporate Finance and Econometrics courses my professors cold calling on me to give answers. Why not bring back cold calling? Survey data suggests that sadly is a high percentage of students who do not hearing anyone call them by their name throughout their first year. This cold calling will bring in a more personalised learning experience. Let’s keep this when we are back in the face-to-face world. 

Netiquette and feedback:

The move to online caused me to think a great deal about netiquette during online classes and talking about giving feedback in MyExperience. We didn’t have the luxury for Term 1 students to discuss about online class behaviour, which falls under the broad category of netiquette. This resulted in less than ideal outcomes for example often a minority of students where seen to be dominating class discussions online. They were unaware that other students didn’t feel there was space for them to talk. In Term 2 I created a PowerPoint slide with editable netiquette icons. My teaching team are using them now this Term in the very first tutorial of the week to set class behaviour expectations early on in the term. I shared this PowerPoint slide on my Blog site here. This digital mindset can continue on for the face-to-face classes when they resume. We should spend time setting the class behaviour standards. Particularly we are in the Business School, we are preparing students for Business world professional communication. Let’s bring back this conversation around class etiquette. 

Feedback is another aspect that the digital mind has reshaped in two ways: (i) ask for student feedback more frequently; and (ii) discuss with students about appropriate giving of constructive feedback. Both of these aspects can be brought into the face-to-face class as well. During online teaching this year it has been difficult to gauge whether students are engaging. We were not able to see or hear them as we were in a face-to-face class. I have come to the realisation from Term 1 that without frequent feedback in the online world we are not able to get a sense of how students are going with the course. Let’s continue to ask students how they are going and any constructive feedback throughout the term. Moodle polls and surveys can be used for this task. Waiting until the MyExperience survey is too late, nothing can be fixed. There is no opportunity to adjust. We should start a conversation with students about giving constructive feedback. I have created a PowerPoint slide for this purpose. The digital world can be impersonal, and this can create potential de-humanising of feedback being written in teaching evaluations. In Term 2 I will be talking with students about giving feedback and how we are all trying to make the best of this situation. Let’s continue this awareness and raise the conversation about giving feedback, who it is sent to and that the recipient on the other end is a human just like them. 

Let’s embrace the digital mindset together.