Adopting and adapting technologies: case study

During the academic year I utilised several pieces of open sourced software to effectively deliver on my vision for an effective online learning environment. There were two primary intertwined components I wanted to develop and enhance in order to deliver my course effectively online. The first of these was to create a more professional quality of video lectures since this would be the primary source of passive learning for the students. The second was to combine these videos with accessible and easily constructive quizzes so that the students could actively engage with the material after each video lecture. The whole ethos for this mode of delivery was to enhance the blended online learning approach to be as effective as possible. This being said, there were some caveats to the software I wanted to use. The first was that the software had to be free and open source and the second is that it had to be simple to use so it could be potentially scalable and utilised by other academic members of staff across the University. After some research, the two pieces of software that seemed to fit my remit was OBS and Itempool. OBS was the software I utilised to develop a more straightforward and professional appearing series of video lectures. This was possible since OBS gave me greater control and flexibility over exactly how my videos were presented without the need of time consuming video editing and expensive video editing software. I could effectively develop videos that appeared edited with clean transitions between multiple devices and windows without the actual need of any editing. Additionally, OBS allowed me to refine and calibrate the audio for my recordings to make it a more pleasant listening experience for the students. This again was pre-calibrated and therefore did not require any more tampering after the video was recorded. Finally, OBS could also be used efficiently within Zoom to deliver a more refined live lecture experience. As well as all the benefits previously mentioned that could now be used over Zoom, one of the critical advantages of OBS over Zoom was that I could shift seamlessly between multiple programmes and windows whilst still maintaining an image of myself on screen. This led to a much more refined and fluid live lecturing experience since I wasn’t constantly having to unshare and re-share my screen multiple times. Many staff and students commented on how professional both the live and pre-recorded lectures looked as well as how smoothly the live material was delivered.

Tagged: Adopting and adapting technologies