Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Making Hybrid Mainstream for Higher Education

28% of UK University Courses Include Hybrid Learning

- Source BBC January 2023

Whilst an increasing number of undergraduate courses are now incorporating what many refer to as hybrid learning into their programs, students remain dissatisfied with their out-of-class elements, and a culture that embraces the benefits of hybrid learning for both students and universities, hasn’t yet been established.

The true meaning of hybrid learning is one where students in different places learn together at the same time.? This could be with a tutor leading the session, or as a self-directed peer group coming together.? The reality is somewhat different, with many students reporting that the ‘hybrid element’ of their course simply requires them to access learning materials at a time and place of their choosing, in isolation.? This is actually blended learning.

Students appreciate the flexibility of hybrid participation, but the value of hybrid learning is held back by a reliance on technologies that were not designed for synchronous delivery and offer little more than the passive viewing of recorded lectures, videos and slide decks.?

The correct design and delivery of hybrid learning would improve learning, make teaching more enjoyable and effective, raise student satisfaction scores, and open up the potential for new income streams for life-long learning, especially with a revival of the almost distinct part-time adult learner.

Transform Learning Design to Engage and Satisfy Students

Instead of passively consuming remote learning in isolation, hybrid learning sessions must incorporate a range of contextual information that challenge students to be active together in their own learning.? Video platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, were never intended to offer anything other than connectivity, and their necessary overuse during the Covid pandemic created as many problems as they solved.? ‘Zoom Fatigue’ and ‘Teams’ Tiredness’ crept into our language as the emphasis of session after session seemed to be more about the ‘gallery’ of disengaged participants with their cameras off, rather than the content and active participation.

And with talk of ‘the content,’ therein lies much of the problem.? With these video-centric platforms, the content is only ever from a single person sharing their content to everyone.? There is no opportunity for anyone to add their own content alongside existing content so learning can be scaffolded with contextual information that allows connections and comparisons to be made, thereby allowing students to discover learning for themselves.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

This might coincidentally be the title of a film with 11 nominations for the 2023 Oscars, but it’s also how we need to connect students for effective hybrid learning.? Zoom and Microsoft Teams just don’t provide the all-at-once that creates the lean-in engagement we must enable instead of lean-back passive viewing that causes much of the dissatisfaction students’ voice.? However, a low-cost, intuitive and effective solution does exist, and more importantly, one that provides the everything, everywhere all at once experience that will drive student engagement and greater satisfaction.??

You just don’t know about it yet. So let’s put that right.?

Introducing ThinkHub Cloud

ThinkHub Cloud, from T1V, provides a canvas [the one in the image at the start of this post] onto which many different learning objects can quickly be placed.? A canvas can be built in literally minutes with O365 and Google documents, including slide decks and PDFs, images, videos [including YouTube], websites [multiple browsers] and live feeds, such as the visualiser.? The Canvas is a large working area, much bigger than just your initial view, and with a single click any piece of content becomes full screen so we can direct attention to it.

To compliment these objects, you can add notes and sketches [mini whiteboards] and, if you have a touch screen, you can annotate on the Canvas or any individual piece of content. You can also ‘write’ with a mouse - but that’s a challenge!

Sharing is Caring

An academic, or any registered user, can share their Canvas with their students in two ways.??

Firstly, it can be the window that is shared in a Teams or Zoom call.? But rather than the next slide, next slide of PowerPoint or the linear progression of a PDF, you can quickly and effortlessly move between all these different learning objects in any order, quickly resetting engagement, or adding a note or diagram to a piece of content that requires more explanation, or to record student feedback directly into the Canvas.

Secondly, Canvases can also be shared with anyone [students!] who are also registered users of the ThinkHub Cloud software App.? With ‘editor’ status, other participants from their own laptop, either in the classroom or located in a galaxy far, far away, can now co-create learning in real time together.? Anyone can add content, move objects, annotate and work together.??

Small groups of students, irrespective of their location, can work together in real-time on developing their Canvas which can also be shared with their tutor.? Now the tutor can see the content of each group and quickly move between the different groups.??

This is the true power and engagement that is possible for Hybrid Learning.? We can move on immediately from passive viewing of one-dimensional content in isolation - which is really blended learning - and leverage the power of real-time active collaborative learning, but without the need to be co-located in the same space.

If you’ve given students access to your canvases, either as Editors or just Viewers, they will be able to access them even when you're not online.? This allows them to re-visit a canvas, and all its content, for review or revision.

Learning Design

ThinkHub Cloud offers a simple interface that is intuitive and therefore quick to learn, and one which students will master in minutes.? If you already have your content in many different places, you can bring the learning objects together on a single canvas in a matter of minutes.? The next time you open your Canvas, any live content, such as YouTube videos, visualiser images, websites, etc, will re-open so long as the access to them is still correct. i.e. the website URL hasn’t changed or the visualiser is still plugged into your laptop!

You can have different Cloud Canvases open simultaneously, perhaps one for each of the individual student groups, and move between them instantly just by clicking the tab at the top of the screen.? Or, with multiple Canvases open, you can quickly add or move content as you prepare for different modules. i.e. one Canvas per module or for each individual lesson in a course.

Professional Learning Designers located anywhere, can now create Canvases for faculty, share them with academics and transfer the ownership for those academics so they can? use the Canvases with their students.?

Campus and Connected Hybrid Learning

The value of ThinkHub Cloud for hybrid learning is for academics to gather their material [learning objects] onto a single canvas and have the power of contextual information for students instantly available.? The transition, for example, from providing information to opening a quiz is just one-click, creating a digital fluency that not only engages, but which powers the self-acquisition of knowledge and, more importantly, understanding.? Having contextual information allows comparisons and connections to be made, which is powerful in any academic or vocational discipline, and helps to scaffold learning.

ThinkHub Cloud provides academics with a versatile platform that will make their teaching enjoyable, providing a flexibility of delivery that is engaging and motivating for their students.??

Using ThinkHub Cloud for Student Assessment?

In exactly the same way that their tutors can gather learning objects for teaching, students can create their own Canvases for digital assessment.? Canvases can be shared with their tutor who can go online at any moment and monitor their progress and, if required, External Examiners can be added.? A student could narrate their assessment in real time with the examiner, demonstrating further their knowledge and understanding, and the examiner can add their feedback to a Canvas.

A group of students working on a team project can use a ThinkHub Cloud Canvas for their assessment, and any Canvas can be brought onto an interactive screen in a teaching space for a dynamic lesson with students in the room and remote.? It’s that perfect hybrid thing again.

Not Just For Students

With a Site Licence, ThinkHub Cloud can be used in every aspect of campus life for dynamic hybrid participation that gives a parity of participation regardless of location.? Estate planning, financial modelling, HR, faculty and SLT meetings.?

It’s not only students who appreciate and now demand the flexibility of hybrid learning.? ThinkHub Cloud, supporting a hybrid working strategy that employers increasingly offer, would free up office space to create new group working spaces for students - and provide learning engagements in aspirational spaces that benefit from being on campus together.

Supporting Different Learning Needs

Can’t get to class?? ThinkHub Cloud brings a dynamic active class to you, one that you can interact with and play a full part in.

Need assistive technology to magnify or read screens?? ThinkHub Cloud runs on YOUR laptop or MacBook now, and will shortly run on iOs and Android.

Summary of ThinkHub Cloud Benefits to Learning and Teaching

• Puts Active Hybrid Learning at the heart of student-centric connected learning

Tutor to Student, Student to Student, Campus to Campus

• Enables a rich mixture of contextual learning objects to be scaffolded
• Can be used in real-time or on-demand for different purposes
• Intuitive technology adoption that underpins your Teaching Excellence Framework objectives
• Enables new pedagogically-driven Learning Design
• Perfect for the submission of digital assessment portfolios???
• Removes the isolation of remote learning and provides students with a sense of community
• Consigns one-dimensional slide decks, videos with no additional explanations, and the inability for the curious to ask questions in real-time, to the history books.
• ThinkHub Cloud could unlock the potential for new income streams from remote-based students, including part-time adult learners, and the ability to offer true life-long learning.?

Dispelling the Myth of Digital Disruption Transformation

We hear a lot about digital disruption and best practices that for many are changes they fear.? But just as the workplace won’t return to full office occupancy, hybrid learning is here to stay.? For many institutions and academics it’s an unwelcome disruption, mostly because we haven’t figured out how to engage effectively with students who, for many positive reasons, want the flexibility that hybrid provides. ? That flexibility is increasingly a significant influence on their decisions where to enrol.?

So, if you want to inspire and engage off-campus students in a way that they haven’t experienced before, please contact me to arrange a 15-minute demonstration of ThinkHub Cloud and to start a conversation.

And Finally….

In my opinion, technology shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement to the many wonderful on-campus learning engagements that take place, but rather as both an enhancement, and as an opportunity for a university to expand its expertise into other areas.

International:

Online learning already plays an important part of maintaining continuity for international students unable to travel because of Covid, whereas others are looking to expand into this part of their reach.? Some executive education and postgraduate studies already have far less on-campus presence than traditional degree level students, and some of this could end up completely online.

Minimise Future Disruptions:?

Covid caught us all unprepared and should another pandemic or an enforced response to global warming or geopolitical unrest limit campus participation again, then we should be prepared to offer students a more viable alternative than the video platforms we relied on before.

ThinkHub Cloud offers Higher Education many possibilities in many critical areas.

Contact me now for your 15 minute demo.

Duncan Peberdy

Territory Manager - Europe

T1V Inc.

[email protected]

+44 [0] 7887 628567

@t1v; #thinkhub, #hybridlearning, #hybridwork