An Experiment in Teleconferencing and Shakespeare

Just what could be done by combining teleconferencing technology with an undergraduate course in Shakespeare?

What could be gained, what put at risk, by splitting a course in Shakespeare between two locations, mediated by telepresence?

These are the questions I'm posing myself today, after receiving an invitation from  the BYU Salt Lake Center to pilot a hybrid course split between there and BYU-Provo. As explained to me by the center's director, Scott Howell, the Vidyo telepresence technology will be available for distance learning for the first time for a humanities course. It makes sense to try this out on a very common course like Shakespeare.

Such an opportunity is great news, in my book, and consistent with recent efforts by our college to promote the digital humanities. Digital humanities is all the rage in my discipline right now. A leader in this field, Mark Sample, recently pointed out the numerous sessions on digital humanities in the upcoming conference of the Modern Language Association in Seattle. Most digital humanities projects tend to focus on archives or corpus linguistics -- objects of study in the humanities, rather than methods of research or pedagogy.

I'll have to do some connecting with others who have done more with distance learning and hybrid courses and see what I can come up with. I'm especially interested in learning from those who have already worked with digital Shakespeare projects, like Christie Carson, part of a very interesting workshop ("iShakespeare") at the upcoming Shakespeare Association of America's annual conference in Boston.

I believe the idea here is probably along the lines of what is common at Full Sail University: students physically gather at a location where they can interact via video with an instructor at a distance. Using the online video environment makes it possible to have unique guest lectures and interactivity among students.

Screenshot from a Full Sail University promotional video

In other words, even though there might be individual work assignments, the main idea is using online video to connect for a vivid and interactive learning experience. We are not talking about isolated students working their way through online materials asynchronously. (This does raise the question for me, however, of taking advantage of both synchronous and asynchronous online learning).

What are the prospective benefits of using teleconferencing technology / telepresence, or of a course that is a hybrid of onsite and online?

• Freeing up classroom space.
• Servicing otherwise unavailable students. 
• Relieving students of having to commute to campus as often.
• Developing improved pedagogy.

I can imagine some other benefits, as well, such as creating productive relationships among students not physically local to one another, and getting traditional students to be aware of and make use of various online learning tools less apparent otherwise.

One idea that I talked through with Scott Howell was using the "flipped classroom" model to some degree (see the excellent infographic about that model here). This model makes use of asynchronous, recorded lectures to deliver content, saving the present or tele-present instruction for more interactive and collaborative work. I've embedded an example of a mini-lecture that I created for another course (on British Literary History) about the sonnet. Students in that class responded positively to watching this video lecture before doing their reading and coming to class:

By the way, I created this video by using an inexpensive and highly versatile screen capturing and video editing program, Camtasia for Mac. (Some great case studies of using Camtasia for distance education are also on their website). It took me 30 minutes to make the whole thing.

How much would I use pre-recorded lectures, and how would I use the live, synchronous classroom time? I'm not sure yet. But I do know that lots of ground can be covered through a recorded lecture and students can review these at their own pace. So I want to keep doing more of that sort of thing.

But I'd like to brainstorm some other possibilities, especially with respect to the study of Shakespeare.

• Presentations
  Students in one location could make presentations to students at the other location.
• Interviews
  A prior Shakespeare student of mine, Cara Call, organized a group interview with Utah Shakespeare Festival founder, Fred Adams (transcript). Once you realize that you can reach out and contact experts, actors, or others involved in Shakespeare, suddenly you have some exciting teaching and learning possibilities you wouldn't have dreamt of within a traditional, local classroom.
• Performances
  I've often thought it would be great to do a staged reading of Shakespeare with people in different locations. And of course, there is also the possibility of a miniature stage production that could be transmitted online.

Looking at the promotional materials for Vidyo, it gives me further thoughts:

It looks like this software makes it possible to show presentations or view media while simultaneously seeing others who are each at their own private computer. What are the possibilities of coming together as a group where the gathering part is completely digital?

If Vidyo can be transmitted across mobile devices like iPods, iPhones, or iPads (etc.), what does this mean in terms of a highly mobile classroom experience? Are mobile devices just for consuming pre-recorded media, or can one interact on-the-go (maybe within Wifi range?)?

I am assuming no one will be required to have an expensive mobile computing device. But for those that do have such equipment, would using Vidyo be limited or enhanced by having some students in two connected classrooms, while others could be anywhere their device takes them?

Some fun things to consider...