Online Workshop Teaching: Shouting down a deep well
On Monday I taught my first hands-on workshop completely online using Penn Libraries’ new Adobe Connect room. I chose to teach Excel Pivot Tables under the logic that anyone interested in pivot tables would be comfortable enough with juggling multiple windows and handling sound problems. This was a good assumption – the seven participants handled the platform well.
I found it interesting – but difficult - to teach this way. I spent much time preparing handouts (sample spreadsheets of “before” and “after”) and worrying about pace and structure. I chose a traditional approach where I shared my screen and manipulated Excel and then asked participants to “watch and repeat” on their own computer.
The technology worked quite well and the participants all seemed to keep up, and be eager for more. But being the presenter, I had this odd sinking feeling that I was shouting down a deep, empty well. I have presented at several conference sessions online – but I have no expectation of audience participation when I am lecturing. It felt much stranger to conduct a small-group hands-on workshop completely online. We are planning to try this again in January and suggestions for how to structure the activity to be more interactive and less didactic would be most welcome!
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Comments
Hi Anu! Hope my blog post last week gives you some more ideas about designing interactivity into your online teaching with Adobe Connect. If you start thinking about how to get people involved with each other, you’ll hear lots of chatter from the well. If your primary aim is to delivery content, consider pre-producing mini-lectures on your topic. We’ll post an interesting example of this in a few weeks. 
Excellent analogy that really captures the feeling! I’d love to find ways to get past that, too, so maybe we can brainstorm it together.