I GET MANY of my best ideas from creative thinkers such as Gillian Barry who works in the Hartnett Acceleration Centre on the main campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology. Today, I thought it would be worthwhile to quickly blog three thoughts arising from our short phone after asking my hosted graph of Roam Research about topics we discussed. I think Gillian would consider this an exercise in reflective journaling.
Getting Live Audio Transcipts
I pay to use Otter.ai for transcripts of online learning sessions because I want the in-app ability to directly import spoken content from my handset to Otter. I told Gillian this functionality allows me to participate in a Zoom conversation through my laptop's pinhole microphone while simultaneously recording a separate audio track on my Note 9 to better than 90% accuracy. My Samsung handset has two sets of microphone inputs which always renders exceptionally clear audio results. Zoom and Otter also work well together through the Zoom dashboard.
When I asked Roam about transcripts, I was reminded about something I wrote a month ago. Otter helps me find exact time codes for my recordings and that allows me to use different shades of colour for audio waves and unique text plugs for clips rendered as audiograms.
On-boarding for remote employees
We plan to help our students to perform as remote interns in the months ahead. However, we need to improve the process for remotely on-boarding these students. I've learned best practice about this remote on-boarding process from Simon Monger through a LinkedIn post that attracted the attention of denise cox. I've also heard how some companies in Ireland are handling remote working through the Grow Remote Ireland Slack channel. This sort of information will be invaluable when placing our Creative Media Design students into meaningful positions during the next nine months.
I dove into my Roam collection of thoughts about remote work and was reminded of the Makespace "shared browser where your cursor is your face and you can host meetings, 'go to events' and use sound that travels the same way real voices would. If you’re near people, you can hear them. And you can 'travel' to places you last saw certain documents or photographs."
Active Whiteboarding
Lack of live interaction is biggest weakness of my current online teaching practice. I don't think it's good enough to present 45 minutes of a lecture to students during a scheduled hour on my academic timetable. I need to know people can see and hear what I'm doing so I'm exploring various whiteboard solutions. There's a whiteboard inside Microsoft Teams. And several of my past students have recommended Miro.
A note I made inside Roam underscored why students need to practice their whiteboarding skills. "Researchers conducted technical interviews of 48 computer science undergraduates and graduate students. Half of the study participants were given a conventional technical interview, with an interviewer looking on. The other half of the participants were asked to solve their problem on a whiteboard in a private room. The private interviews did not require study participants to explain their solutions aloud, and had no interviewers looking over their shoulders." The survey showed applicants called to whiteboards did worse than applicants who showcased their skills during interviews.
I'll be writing about each of these topics before we begin the fall semester 2020 because whiteboarding, remote on-boarding, and live transmedia production remain core skills worthy of improving.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology.]
