Dublin Core
Title
Elliott Ingersoll - Audio Reflection
Creator
Elliott Ingersoll
Date
5/7/2020
Rights
Format
mp3
Language
English
Sound Item Type Metadata
Transcription
Hi everybody, my name is Elliott Ingersoll. I am professor and performing the role of Department Chair for Counseling, Educational Leadership, and Adult Learning. I’ve been with CSU since 1994 and my primary areas of expertise are Psychopharmacology, Psychopathology, and Counseling and Spirituality.
What are the most challenging parts of the transition?
Well, I've learned that there's no substitute for the energy one can get as well as give out, working face-to-face with students and other faculty. Plus, the use of humor, which I try to use a lot, changes when you go to a remote technological platform. Topics arise in a face-to-face discussion that can lead the humorous segues, but the timing is essential. The pacing of Zoom conversations, limit how effectively the segues can be done.
The counseling faculty and I, we actually did some work looking up research on why we're so exhausted at the end of each day, having gone remote. And it's the paralinguistics, that are different on Zoom. And as counselors, of course we're trained to tune into all of these, so this would include vocal accent, pitch, volume, speech rate, fluency. All of those things vary, if there's even the slightest delay in the signal coming from the instructor’s system or the student’s system.
So according to a lot of the research we found, we're feeling exhausted because we're working much harder to discern these paralinguistics. And rather than gently surrender ourselves to the flow of conversations, sometimes we find ourselves swimming against the current to keep everyone on the same page.
Emotions is another tricky part. My students have been amazing and they've been like, I'll ask a question and they'll post a thumbs-up, a thumbs down, an emoticon and they all have slightly different things they prefer, but that's been helpful too.
I have a 73-person Psychopharmacology class and that's been the most challenging. I never anticipated doing that remotely, and again the students have been phenomenal. We had a synchronous discussion and we basically decided with a majority vote that they wanted lectures pre-recorded, in 20 minutes segments, even if it's three or four 20-minute segments. They thought that broke it up nicely. And then, we broke Q&A and dialogue down into five time slots, for 15 students each.
So, yeah it was more work doing like five Q&A slots, but at the same time it felt much more intimate, because I got to talk to everyone in the group and the students felt they were a little more connected, because they were in the smaller groups.
Question 2. What are the most common needs expressed by students?
Primarily, our students are in a licensure program, School Counseling and Clinical Counseling and they have a) wanted total transparency. And in contraindication to some of the messages people have been getting, where students say, “We're getting too many emails,” they were like, “No bombard us. We can't, we can't get enough emails.” Because they want to know what the state licensure boards are doing, and we're in contact with them. They want to know if our accrediting body, CACREP is going to modify guidelines, and they have and we've been in contact with them. So, what we've done is we have sent out a once a week Friday, kind of a pandemic update and we've put all the information for that week, in the pandemic update. If something arose that was more time-sensitive, we would send that out prior to Friday. So again, troubleshooting with the state to make sure there are no delays and licensure and that these students matriculate through the program and graduate, these are among their main concerns.
The other big one, many of our students take the state licensure exam as an exit requirement. But exam centers are closed because of the COVID-19. So, we very quickly came up with two comprehensive exams. One for School Counseling, one for Clinical Counseling, that are basically review exams from our Prep for the Licensure Exam Workshops. We put them in the form of comprehensive exams and we've so far, helped 27 students change their exit requirement and take this online comp via Blackboard.
Question 3. What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?
This is going to sound a little out of left field, but I've been recording my Panopto lectures with a ventriloquist dummy, Carl. He's been quite a hit with the students. I've had Carl for gee, 50 years. I got him from Father Christmas back in 1968. But, it's kind of funny because the way Panopto and my computer camera work, Carl looks about as big as me which kind of adds to the illusion that he's assisting with the lectures. And frankly, like podcasting, having a co-host so to speak, allows for a lot more humor and so I've been able to bring another humorous aspect in with doing the lectures with Carl.
I've also put quizzes and reviews in the form of songs. I was a professional musician for 30 years. So, I figured music memory is a little more pervasive for some people than rote learning. And so, I put quizzes and reviews in the form of songs that they can sing along with, and also that helped them review key concepts about different classes of medications. So again, it's just kind of surprising and a little weird and they like the novelty of those things.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
I'm going to sound like a baby boomer, which I am, but there's no substitution for in-person interactions. The remote technology has been great. It has been a life saver in many ways, but it's not a substitute for being there especially for me. Sitting still while lecturing, goes against every nerve in my body. I'm a very aerobic lecturer and for like large classes, I'm moving in and out of the aisles, up and down. So, that's been a challenge. But the remote tools can be adequate. But they're not ever going to ever be better than having a face-to-face with a professor, who has good chemistry, good rapport with the students.
And going back to this idea of an energy exchange, there really is an energy exchange in face-to-face interactions, that does not happen or happens much less in remote interactions. I never realized how important that was to keeping student’s attention and renewing my own energy.
Question 5. How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
Well, I think that sometimes videos are appropriate. And, I think Carl will be making some regular appearances, via video. I've even thought of a way to have him kind of Skype in as a pre-recorded thing, but I think we can review concepts while also keeping it humorous and interesting with that.
I'll probably keep writing and using songs as part of the teaching process. Again, it's a good way to review key concepts and it seems to break up the monotony, and the students have liked it a lot. And it's been, I think, enjoyable for me.
So, those are the insights I've got. I hope it is resourceful.
What are the most challenging parts of the transition?
Well, I've learned that there's no substitute for the energy one can get as well as give out, working face-to-face with students and other faculty. Plus, the use of humor, which I try to use a lot, changes when you go to a remote technological platform. Topics arise in a face-to-face discussion that can lead the humorous segues, but the timing is essential. The pacing of Zoom conversations, limit how effectively the segues can be done.
The counseling faculty and I, we actually did some work looking up research on why we're so exhausted at the end of each day, having gone remote. And it's the paralinguistics, that are different on Zoom. And as counselors, of course we're trained to tune into all of these, so this would include vocal accent, pitch, volume, speech rate, fluency. All of those things vary, if there's even the slightest delay in the signal coming from the instructor’s system or the student’s system.
So according to a lot of the research we found, we're feeling exhausted because we're working much harder to discern these paralinguistics. And rather than gently surrender ourselves to the flow of conversations, sometimes we find ourselves swimming against the current to keep everyone on the same page.
Emotions is another tricky part. My students have been amazing and they've been like, I'll ask a question and they'll post a thumbs-up, a thumbs down, an emoticon and they all have slightly different things they prefer, but that's been helpful too.
I have a 73-person Psychopharmacology class and that's been the most challenging. I never anticipated doing that remotely, and again the students have been phenomenal. We had a synchronous discussion and we basically decided with a majority vote that they wanted lectures pre-recorded, in 20 minutes segments, even if it's three or four 20-minute segments. They thought that broke it up nicely. And then, we broke Q&A and dialogue down into five time slots, for 15 students each.
So, yeah it was more work doing like five Q&A slots, but at the same time it felt much more intimate, because I got to talk to everyone in the group and the students felt they were a little more connected, because they were in the smaller groups.
Question 2. What are the most common needs expressed by students?
Primarily, our students are in a licensure program, School Counseling and Clinical Counseling and they have a) wanted total transparency. And in contraindication to some of the messages people have been getting, where students say, “We're getting too many emails,” they were like, “No bombard us. We can't, we can't get enough emails.” Because they want to know what the state licensure boards are doing, and we're in contact with them. They want to know if our accrediting body, CACREP is going to modify guidelines, and they have and we've been in contact with them. So, what we've done is we have sent out a once a week Friday, kind of a pandemic update and we've put all the information for that week, in the pandemic update. If something arose that was more time-sensitive, we would send that out prior to Friday. So again, troubleshooting with the state to make sure there are no delays and licensure and that these students matriculate through the program and graduate, these are among their main concerns.
The other big one, many of our students take the state licensure exam as an exit requirement. But exam centers are closed because of the COVID-19. So, we very quickly came up with two comprehensive exams. One for School Counseling, one for Clinical Counseling, that are basically review exams from our Prep for the Licensure Exam Workshops. We put them in the form of comprehensive exams and we've so far, helped 27 students change their exit requirement and take this online comp via Blackboard.
Question 3. What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?
This is going to sound a little out of left field, but I've been recording my Panopto lectures with a ventriloquist dummy, Carl. He's been quite a hit with the students. I've had Carl for gee, 50 years. I got him from Father Christmas back in 1968. But, it's kind of funny because the way Panopto and my computer camera work, Carl looks about as big as me which kind of adds to the illusion that he's assisting with the lectures. And frankly, like podcasting, having a co-host so to speak, allows for a lot more humor and so I've been able to bring another humorous aspect in with doing the lectures with Carl.
I've also put quizzes and reviews in the form of songs. I was a professional musician for 30 years. So, I figured music memory is a little more pervasive for some people than rote learning. And so, I put quizzes and reviews in the form of songs that they can sing along with, and also that helped them review key concepts about different classes of medications. So again, it's just kind of surprising and a little weird and they like the novelty of those things.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
I'm going to sound like a baby boomer, which I am, but there's no substitution for in-person interactions. The remote technology has been great. It has been a life saver in many ways, but it's not a substitute for being there especially for me. Sitting still while lecturing, goes against every nerve in my body. I'm a very aerobic lecturer and for like large classes, I'm moving in and out of the aisles, up and down. So, that's been a challenge. But the remote tools can be adequate. But they're not ever going to ever be better than having a face-to-face with a professor, who has good chemistry, good rapport with the students.
And going back to this idea of an energy exchange, there really is an energy exchange in face-to-face interactions, that does not happen or happens much less in remote interactions. I never realized how important that was to keeping student’s attention and renewing my own energy.
Question 5. How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
Well, I think that sometimes videos are appropriate. And, I think Carl will be making some regular appearances, via video. I've even thought of a way to have him kind of Skype in as a pre-recorded thing, but I think we can review concepts while also keeping it humorous and interesting with that.
I'll probably keep writing and using songs as part of the teaching process. Again, it's a good way to review key concepts and it seems to break up the monotony, and the students have liked it a lot. And it's been, I think, enjoyable for me.
So, those are the insights I've got. I hope it is resourceful.
Original Format
Audio recording
Duration
8 minutes, 11 seconds