Day Two: Thursday, 22 July 2021

Roundtable 5:  Engaged through Humor? Exploring Humor to Engage Students in Online Environments

Mark Curcher & Christopher Smith (Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland)

How can we connect with our students? The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated and amplified the ongoing digitalization and datafication of higher education. Although there is an existing body of literature exploring effective implementation of online and distance education, many educators were thrust into a new reality where all communication with learners was mediated through the use of digital technologies. The aim of this session is to initiate an exploration of the uses of humor within a framework of critical digital pedagogy as a way of reaching through our cameras and screens to connect to our learners as fellow human beings.

Roundtable 6:  The Crisis Will Pass, the Material Will Remain: How to Make the Most of It?

Birgit Pitscheider & Michael Habersam (University of Innsbruck, Austria)

Many instructors have been quite resourceful and productive during the COVID crisis and produced a vast amount of teaching material ranging from screencasts and videos to written instructions and audio material. Although it is certain that the individual instructor will make use of the material after the crisis, will we make our material available and more “sustainable” by giving a bigger audience access to it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of Open Educational Resources? What do we need to pay attention to when deciding whether to do so? These are some of the questions to be discussed at our roundtable.

00:29:37 Janina Tosic: Recent example for superiority threory based joke: the tiktok of the only woman in an Engineering class where the male lecturer and the other students make fun of sexual harassment/rape… Very powerful reminder of what NOT to do with humor in the classroom
00:32:42 Chris Smith: Your own experiences of humour in online learning
What role does humour play in the professional identity of the digitally mediated educator?
How do platforms shape the potentials for humour as a tool in teaching?
00:35:09 Chris Smith: Janina: got a link?
00:36:01 Janina Tosic: I’ll try to find it, Chris. It is horrible!
00:37:37 Janina Tosic: https://twitter.com/_sysengineer/status/1415628257605701632
00:37:53 Chris Smith: Thanks!
00:39:17 Elizabeth Black: Some of my colleagues have hosted ‘watch parties’ for these kinds of elements.
00:40:19 Avraham Roos: Humour with zoom – There are MANY examples of students making fun of teachers. Are you interested in that as well?
00:40:52 Chris Smith: Avraham . YES, interested in everything, thanks!
00:40:59 Janina Tosic: I use comics and memes a lot when communicating in my class WhatsApp groups. I think ithis works perfectly to make us teachers more human for the students. Especially in the online learning environment where we are not with each other to get to know our human sides…
00:42:05 Avraham Roos: THIS is priceless: Students turn their cameras off and change their names to ‘Reconnecting…’ during online class 😂😂
00:42:11 Avraham Roos: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?extid=SEO—-&v=550603695873972
00:42:32 Janina Tosic: Humor humanizes the classroom!
00:42:52 Elizabeth Black: Love it, Janina!
00:43:06 Janina Tosic: Avraham, this is so funny!!!
00:46:06 Anna: We sing action songs in language classes. Sometimes students turn off their cameras then, but they are fine in a class-roomsetting!
00:46:39 Janina Tosic: There are so many different functions for humor. Really interesting discussion!
00:47:58 Avraham Roos: One of my students took a screenshot in zoom of my screen with the background of my room when I was away from the computer. He then shared that picture with all other students who changed their virtual background to show MY room. When I got back to the computer they all seemed to be sitting in MY room… 🙂
00:48:16 Anne Tierney: Love it!
00:48:23 Charlie Rathgeb-Weber: Hilarious!
00:48:29 Chris Smith: Avraham – that’s terrifying 😂
00:48:38 Birgit Pitscheider: Hilarious 🙂
00:48:57 Helen Stavrou: That’s actually very sweet – giving a message they want to be in shared space…
00:49:14 Avraham Roos: interesting comment Helen
00:54:40 Janina Tosic: Birgit, you mean laugh about you not with you 🙂
00:54:41 Charlie Rathgeb-Weber: At last you admit it, Birgit!
00:54:52 Elizabeth Black: I also find that being humourous requires having the emotional capacity within yourself to find things funny. I feel that for some students and for myself at times, that has been really difficult – just too stretched.
00:57:13 Janina Tosic: Completely agree, Elizabeth! If I am stressed, I am kind of in a no nonsense mode that ignores everything human and just focuses on Content and “serious” stuff…
00:58:45 Anita Campbell: Maybe that’s when we need humour most!
00:58:49 Elizabeth Black: Tricky to find the way to show that you are not using ‘superior’ humour, Janet.
00:59:27 Avraham Roos: example of virtual classroom with bitmoji:
00:59:29 Avraham Roos: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NB2z9rBkMiXuhIDMTlyG0AyYeYaavHTkegSqmL0u1os/edit?usp=sharing
00:59:54 Birgit Pitscheider: Thank you, Avraham
01:00:43 Terry Lansdown: Thanks, interesting session.
01:00:47 Helen Stavrou: Thanks!
01:00:56 janet: thank you 🙂
01:03:16 King Omeihe: Thank you
01:03:41 Janina Tosic: Very good example of the incongruity type Humor: @effinbirds on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EffinBirds
01:11:56 Janina Tosic: Oh no! I made the mistake not to divide the two sessions… Aplogies to the presenters. I will ask our IT Person to divide These two Videos. Hope he has the capacity.
01:12:35 Lucie Viktorová: It should be quite easy – one of the things I’ve learned during the past year 😀
01:12:39 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: Speaking of humour …
01:12:49 Avraham Roos: yes
01:12:59 Lucie Viktorová: YES
01:13:00 Janina Tosic: yes! short Videos instead of my normal f2f lecture
01:13:02 Anita Campbell: Ys!
01:13:02 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: YES
01:13:04 Diane Scharf: Yes
01:13:05 Anne Tierney: oh my goodness yes
01:13:05 janet: yes
01:13:09 Anna: yes
01:13:12 Russell Bisset: yes
01:13:13 Mark Curcher: YES
01:13:14 Elizabeth Black: yes
01:13:14 Maya Bitsadze: yes
01:13:14 Caren Weinberg: Yes
01:13:16 Alexandra Lehmann: depends – theres good Videos on YouTube…
01:13:22 Maria Belgrano: yes lots of them
01:14:49 janet: lots of these
01:15:02 Avraham Roos: yes
01:15:06 Janina Tosic: yes!
01:15:07 Elizabeth Black: yes
01:15:08 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: Absolutely!
01:16:58 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: love the interaction!
01:22:12 Alexandra Lehmann: Commercial use?! no way…
01:22:21 Maria Belgrano: No
01:22:22 Avraham Roos: nope
01:22:25 janet: no
01:22:36 Lucie Viktorová: weird
01:22:44 Fadia Nasser-Abu Alhija: Suspcious
01:22:49 Avraham Roos: use me and throw me away
01:22:50 Alexandra Lehmann: what About Copyright Problems?! not a good Feeling…
01:22:56 Anita Campbell: My university owns my material, I thought…
01:22:57 janet: fear for mis representation
01:23:06 Janina Tosic: afraid
01:23:09 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: only to some extent
01:23:15 Anne Tierney: we’re being taken advantage of (commercial use) I have no problems with educational use
01:23:22 Mark Curcher: Everything is a remix… really – all creative work is based on earlier work – but the commercial aspect is problematic
01:23:41 Elke Kitzelmann: i do
01:25:52 Anne Tierney: I discovered my PhD thesis being sold online by Amazon 🙂
01:26:10 Avraham Roos: wow!
01:26:18 Avraham Roos: THAT’S a compliment
01:26:43 Avraham Roos: Did you purchase a copy?
01:26:52 Elizabeth Black: and give a 5 start review?
01:26:57 Elizabeth Black: star
01:27:01 Anne Tierney: It was a scam. They had been harvested and put online via a second party vendor. They were taken down.
01:27:13 Anne Tierney: Did I buy a copy? Nah, read it already!
01:38:53 Alexandra Lehmann: We talked about Copyright Problems (international and national), and that checking the material takes time, so then you could prepare everything yourself – takes as much time…
01:39:02 Anna: This is a very useful discussion – thanks – however, I need to leave for a different meeting.
01:40:38 Elizabeth Black: And when does that become a metric that we are assessed against?
01:41:18 Anne Tierney: @Elizabeth yes we talked about that – we produce a ton of “new” materials because we are judged on being “innovative”.
01:41:28 Lucie Viktorová: …then I would really be interested in the rating criteria 🙂 (But seriously, assessing the “quality of teaching” is a big topic for me)
01:46:53 Alexandra Lehmann: I think it’s one thing to share material with colleagues at my own university, or to share it with a community I actually don’t know…
01:47:42 Bastian Mrosko: Sorry, maybe I missed it: Is there something like a review or feedback process for this oer material?
01:47:53 Elizabeth Black: Alexandra – I agree, or to share across your own networks.
01:54:18 Alexandra Lehmann: @ Elizabeth: yes!
01:54:28 Alexandra Lehmann: @Anita: oh yes!
01:55:08 Anne Tierney: This exists in the UK https://blogs.edgehill.ac.uk/clt/the-national-teaching-repository/
01:55:31 Birgit Pitscheider: Thank you
01:56:02 Elizabeth Black: Thanks Anne
01:57:00 Mark Curcher: Thank you so much
01:57:10 Lucie Viktorová: Thank you all!
01:57:11 janet: thank for a inspiring session
01:57:12 Diane Scharf: Thank you
01:57:29 Bastian Mrosko: Great session, Thank you
01:57:29 Elizabeth Black: Thank you both
01:57:29 Maria Belgrano: thank you!
01:57:45 Alexandra Lehmann: Need to go. Hope I’ll be back for Janina’s later! :o)
01:58:12 Karlheinz Rathgeb-Weber: also Need to leave – will be back …