Next, we'll turn our attention to the second guiding principle, which is designing for flexibility. We have defined designing for flexibility as devising alternative strategies so that our course can function in multiple contexts. We've talked about how designing for variability within the learning environment itself is one way of ensuring that course designs will be able to adapt and respond to changes that may occur even whilst the course is underway. So earlier in our discussions today, Chris, you mentioned how in your regular course or your face-to-face version of the course you often work with your students through class discussion to understand how they are appreciating material, whether they're understanding the topics that you're discussing, whether they have questions about it, and there's a lot of back and forth discussion. You're able to get a sense of how they're engaging just by talking, sometimes extemporaneously or spontaneously and in a sense are able to read the room and then make adjustments to your instruction on the fly. So as we think about that type of an interaction, how are you thinking flexibly about how you might need to refine that particular approach should your course be operating in a different environment like an online one, for instance? Yeah. So I think that outlines one of the big issues I've been thinking about this idea of information gathering from students, trying to get student feedback in a different way so that I can then have a better sense of how to address that with feedback of my own. So when I'm thinking about it in these terms, one of the things I'm trying to figure out how to revise or refine is how to maintain this notion of dialogue between me and my students. So again, the student-teacher interaction example that I'm thinking about. So you have to think about alternative or different ways to get more pervasive or more constant feedback from our students throughout the course of the semester. So maybe small snapshot opportunities for their feedback either through exit cards or through other mechanisms that are just quick, but that will allow me to get a steady stream of feedback about how things are going for them throughout the course. Because as you said, I can't read the room necessarily in the same way that I can in the physical classroom. So trying to understand different alternative strategies for how I can gather student feedback is an important thing that I'm considering for the online course. It sounds like you'll have to be very intentional about that, something that you'll have to plan for a little bit more in advance than perhaps you had to in your face-to-face version of the course? Yes. So when we think too about the student content interaction, you mentioned earlier when you were discussing the MVP, how you were thinking that one version could be simply posting videos or lectures of your lectures online, as you think about shifting from context to context, how are you thinking about how you might be able to use those resources in different ways across multiple contexts? Yes. So this idea of recording the lectures and posting them for students to download was the idea of the base case, the MVP that we discussed earlier. But having these lectures recorded, the more I think about it is giving me some alternatives to think about in how I might have students interact with that particular content. It's letting me think about different alternatives and different ways of not just having the students interact with the lecture presentation, but how the interactions that students have with that might be able to be captured by me so that I can start to understand some of there questions or comments about the lectures. So by video taping the lectures, two options came to mind. The first option is more of the flipped classroom approach that we've heard about a lot, where I can assign the lecture videos as homework and then students can come to class with questions or comments or other points that we can discuss. So this approach would certainly be an extensible approach because I could not only use that perhaps in an online course, but I could use that in my regular face-to-face course when we come back to that, again, adopting this flipped-classroom idea. In the synchronous online course setting however, I could lecture in class if I needed to, there's nothing to say that we're having asynchronous meeting. So the class might be online, but I can still lecture in class and for that option, I could do my lectures online, I could be running the slides in our video conferencing software, and in some respects that could be a base level approach for doing the lecture. It's something to think about because I've heard students say in the past that sometimes they'd rather just sit through the lecture, than have to download them and view them later because they can always stay on task, it's easier for them to stay on task when they're sitting at the lecture. They also sometimes might see this idea of downloading the lectures to view at home as just another homework assignment that's already competing with their other assignments. So that led me to think about, could I improve on this second option? So yes, while in asynchronous online setting, I could lecture in that meeting, are there are other things I could think about? That's where thinking about the recorded videos was important. Lecturing in the synchronous online class has its problems too, we could have a bad network connection, and there goes the lecture. We could have some other technology problems, and there goes the lecture. So again, once we move online, having to think about some alternatives, getting towards redundancy a little bit, but thinking about alternatives where if something goes wrong I can still maintain what's going on with the lecture. So one approach that I'm thinking about is to still post the recordings of the lecture. But then when we all come together in the synchronized class, I will take a chunk of time, 30 minutes or so, and have all the students then go into the videos and view the lecture on their own during that synchronized class meeting. I can tell them that as they're doing so, be sure to send me any questions or comments or other points of confusion as you're viewing the lecture. This will allow me to start getting a sense of what students are thinking about the lecture as they're viewing it. Now, one of the things about teaching online is it's a lot of things for an instructor to monitor. So yes, while I could lecture in class, online it would be difficult to be doing that and also try to gauge student feedback as it's coming in. If I assign the recordings to the students to view in class essentially and send me their feedback while they're viewing the lectures, I can start to read their questions, see their comments, and start to assemble some answers and some other discussion points. So that when they're done with the period of viewing the lectures, we can then all come back to the synchronous core setting and start a discussion about the lecture where I can answer some of their questions, bring in some of their comments. So it's a slightly different approach than we might think of. If you say videotape lectures, I think the knee-jerk reaction is students can watch those at home. So having them view the video taped lectures in class may sound a little weird, but it's a way that I'm thinking about that helps me gather feedback in the moment as they're viewing the lectures so that we can then use that information for the rest of our course. So it sounds like you're thinking about devising an alternative strategy that accommodates asynchronous session, rather than just thinking of your prerecorded videos as being used in asynchronous session. So that sort of temporal elements is another characteristic of your learning environment that you are considering? Yes, and if we thought about a high flex contexts, if that was actually what we had to do, I could still use the same approach. Some students would be in the classroom, some would be online, regardless, take 30 minutes now, everyone view the lectures, send me your questions and comments, and I will be assembling all that information. So it's an example of how I can use this different approach in different contexts in a variety of ways, but it could still work no matter what the context is. Thanks for sharing how you're thinking about designing for flexibility, Chris. Next we'll turn to our third guiding principle, which is designing for redundancy.
