More and more screens pop open in the virtual lecture hall. In some cases, the webcams allow a peek of a painting or a bookcase. Margot Kersing, who teaches at the department of Public Adminstration, takes a sip from a big white mug. Her cat walks into view, briefly.
Next, her colleaugue Andrei Poama logs into the the session where people are testing the Kaltura Live Room software. This program for online education is planned to replace all the face-to-face teaching until the summer. The quarantine measures of the Dutch government are currently planned to last until the 6th of April, but are expected to go on for longer.
So, all teaching will be web-based, starting next Monday. Which means that teachers are in a hurry to test the software.
“You look as if you just came out of the shower”, assistant professor Natascha van der Zwan says. It's almost eleven on this Wednesday morning, and she is leading a session with about thirty people from the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). “Are you implying that we look as if we didn't shower?', one of the freshly logged-in listeners asks. By now, there are tens of little windows into people's living rooms.
Raise hands
“Some things we try , will undoubtedly go wrong. But that's not a problem”, Van der Zwan tells everyone. She can mute the participants. People who want to ask a question, can raise their hands virtually by clicking on an icon at the top of their screens.
The test session starts. Quizzing in Kaltura turns out to work fine, it appears.
Kaltura also has a whiteboard function. “Let's draw”, the digital schoolboard says. “Can one of you draw something?”, asks Van der Zwan. Assistant professor Maarja Meerkens starts. A red circle, two dots, a curved line: a smiley looks at the participants. “Great”, Van der Zwan says. “You're getting thumbs up from the people who have their webcams turned on.” “What a work of art”, Poama types in the chat.
The test session starts. Quizzing in Kaltura turns out to work fine, it appears.
Kaltura also has a whiteboard function. “Let's draw”, the digital schoolboard says. “Can one of you draw something?”, asks Van der Zwan. Assistant professor Maarja Meerkens starts. A red circle, two dots, a curved line: a smiley looks at the participants. “Great”, Van der Zwan says. “You're getting thumbs up from the people who have their webcams turned on.” “What a work of art”, Poama types in the chat.
“Could you talk a bit more slowly?”, someone asks. “The internet is bugging”, another remarks, “I've lost visual input.” More than twenty of the users have their webcams turned on, and it's making the system work very hard.
“It happens”, says Emre Sener who coordinates IT for FGGA's education. “Yesterday, everything dropped out for a short while. The university is working to buy more server capacity, but it in the meantime it helps if people turn off their webcams and use audio only.”
Traumatized
Next up: video. Van der Zwan: “Yesterday, I got an error notification when I wanted to play a video. Let's see if it works now. It's a movie that a colleauge and I made for our flipped classroom. Our first one ever, full of horrible awkwardness. It's the most embarrassing clip I could find, and I hope it doesn't leave you traumatized.”
There is an echo: you hear Van der Zwan twice. “I think you should mute your microphone”, someone points out. When she does and the echo goes away, the thumbs go up again. Then the video freezes, and the virtual classroom is quiet for about twenty seconds. Poame circles his finger around his ear to point it out. “Unmute yourself”, someone types in the chat.
Van der Zwan clicks on her microphone. “Can you guys hear me again? Yeaah!”And thus, every problem the staff runs into, is solved step by step.
Kaltura allows you to divide the participants in smaller groups and let them work at assignments in break-out sessions. Van der Zwan gives an assignment: in the next 10 minutes, think of ways to use this option in your classes.
“I am uncertain if this will work”, she says. She manages to split the people up into six different groups. Webcams are turned on again, and in group number 3 five university teachers and one journalist are looking at eachother awkwardly. Above the screens there is a white field where you can write or draw. Someone tries to start a game of noughts and crosses, someone else posts a picture of a facepalming chimpanzee.
More importantly: in the smaller groups, the digital interaction turns out to work just fine. Video and audio are better, and this is a good way to do an assignment or talk about a scientific paper with about four students. In theory, Kaltura classrooms can hold a hundred people, but it works best with groups of twenty people or less.
Time for turtles. Van der Zwan shows them in the Live Room. “It is a very calming video that I may or may not have viewed very often in these stressful times. Ah, we have movement! But not the calming sounds of the sea, sadly. I'm probably doing something wrong, I guess.” And so the process of trial and error continues.