Video Conferencing in Museum Education (K-12) Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

a my name is Jensen Hughes i'm currently
education manager
and I was motivated to study elearning
because I wanted to see how it might
apply to my work practice and broader
one of my recent assignments was a
subject called learning technologies and
as part of that assignment we had to
develop a technology plan so that was
more or less an argument for why we
should integrate this particular
technology to enhance learning in your
professional workplace and what I did
for that particular assignment was
developed up a technology plan for the
use of mobile video conferencing unit
fast forward a couple of months to my
professional practice I presented that
similar argument to executive staff and
were successful in acquiring a mobile
video conference unit
so with the video conferencing
programming will have a range of ways in
which we broadcast that out so that
might be point to point in which case
we're going to one particular school or
it might be in the vast majority of
cases multiple points so you'll have
anywhere between three to five to more
schools participating in that which
means you could effectively be reaching
anywhere between 50 to 150 students
real-time with that comes a lot of
moderation and a lot of being able to
jump between schools and what is the
best model there is when you get
conversations happening between the
schools rather than just say from the
museum to one particular school and that
takes that takes a bit of work but
that's the best outcome and so the way
in which I've applied the learning there
was being able to get an insight into
what methodology and teaching practice
is going to best transfer into that mode
of Technology so we've got a lot of
programs that we run at the Museum which
educator led in there in the gallery
spaces so how can you take that same
experience in that same content that's
already been developed and adapted for
that online experience for example will
often do experiences such as a transport
tour where we actually explore the
gallery space and augment that with a
mix of video still image and live
footage and we try to replicate it as
much as possible and stay true to the
format in terms of making it highly
interactive in terms of what the
interactive experience might be using
video conferencing at the Museum we will
take something like a science show which
is a very much a format that's reliant
on interaction so you'll have the
educated delivering material but so much
of that relies on the response from the
audience and to resolve some of the
questions and an open-ended questioning
so what we do in the instance of say a
science show is make sure that that
interactivity is put at the center of
the experience and will often do things
like supply material and resources prior
to the fact prior to the actual
video conference workshop so that
teachers can prepare students for give
them a bit more contextual understanding
of what that learning experience is
going to be like have them think about
how the students think about what some
of the questions that they might have
around some of the science concepts for
example or of the educator and what will
also do is have follow-up activities
after the fact so it's this sort of
continuum of learning that we look at
for that experience because what I'm
really conscious of is that while the
video conferencing is great for that
real time interaction and that
synchronous learning what's the
experience that leads up to that and
after the fact because there's so much
more learning that goes on outside of
that as well the other thing that we do
in terms of the interactivity is making
sure that that those experiences at the
students end is is especially for
younger audiences is something that's
physical so we try and engage the
physical body as much as possible
whether that be forming responding to
particular things or getting them to get
up and move about rather than them just
looking at a large static screen
in terms of the technologies that we're
using video conferencing at one end of
the spectrum we're using mobile video
conferencing technology where there's
restrictions at at the museum for the
actual kit and not being reliant on the
studio which we have so the benefit
there is that you can go into the
gallery the experience is much more
low-tech but it's much more realistic in
terms of being out for the students be
able to see that the specific context
the benefit as well is that on that
level of interactivity we can have
students more or less direct where that
goes so if you if you open up the
questioning you can have students say or
can you show us over there can you take
us over there which gives us the
capacity to do it whereas if you're in a
studio setting that the main control
that you might have is around different
camera angles or different positions for
cameras so that allows us one way for
for the audience our learners to
navigate some of those learning
experiences the majority of state
schools they have in they have video
conferencing technology and depending on
where they're located they'll have that
situated in either really good place or
a really difficult place it becomes a
little more difficult for secondary
because they'll often be one point which
with timetabling makes that a little bit
harder but the majority of schools have
the technology at their disposal
currently what we're finding is that
more and more schools are sourcing the
ways of going outside of that and
utilizing other technologies such as
Google hangout Adobe Connect for example
there's certain restrictions on state
schools in terms of how they might use
that but there is a lot of exciting work
that is being done for say Google
Hangouts and the possible partnerships
that happen there the benefit there as
well is that the reach becomes that much
more global because they're not closed
systems you're able to get schools from
Honolulu to to Australia through to
Denmark and have that conversation
online the production on the other ones
are very onerous like you have to have
someone that's operating a try cast then
you have to have a staff member that's
it
the cameras up and it can be wallet that
the experience is really rich it can be
quite it can be quite laborious and
sometimes take away from the magic of
exploring a gallery for example
its a mix of formal evaluation and also
in formal evaluation using drawing and
written responses in terms of evaluation
of some of the more formal programs will
have our formal methods which will be
getting students to complete surveys
getting teachers to complete surveys
other ways which have been really useful
in terms of getting insights from
students in the bigger concepts that
they're learning we use a lot of drawing
for example especially for the younger
audiences so we might pose the question
and what did you learn from your visit
to the museum today and we get the
students to draw that so for example if
they're doing a transport tour there may
be a number of key characters and a
number of key objects which are featured
in there and we look to see how often
those kind of images are communicated
that's evaluating assessing students
recall of some of those but it's also
some of the concepts that we might
communicate on one of those experiences
and where students are able to visualize
that and communicate that in terms of
monitoring the delivery of teaching from
it from a teaching perspective I find
and documenting that process throughout
and reflecting on that a massive means
of evaluating how effective your
improvements have been in terms of how
it's affected that's your own personal
use of it terms of how effective it is
from the students perspective I think
ongoing feedback and eliciting that from
the students is really important and you
can you can kind of see where things are
sort of falling down in terms of that
particular technologies not use it being
used or that particular approach is not
being taken up and I think from a
teacher's perspective it's been really
conscious of what's working and what's
not and the same kind of checking
mechanisms that you'd have face-to-face
or in a classroom setting it does apply
online so you know why aren't those
things being taken up why isn't that why
aren't people delivering on some of
those things and reflecting on that
in terms of tools online to assess
levels of learning I think you've got
the cold hard facts and the material
that's really important to assess for
that particular task I think it's also
important to see what learning is
happening outside of that not being too
restrictive in it and I think being
conscious of them other ways in which
that learning might manifest so in some
instances it's not purely the the final
markets the extent to which
collaboration happened or the extent to
which those students supported other
students in their learning and building
a bigger picture of what that online
learning experiences which isn't simply
completing the task
you