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I spent quite a bit of time preparing for this as it was in a subject that I was still getting familiar with. So I prepared my slides put them in Blackboard in preparation. I, also, included an example activity to encourage students to think about creating concepts and identifying keywords in their area of research, that they could use for searching for resources on our online databases, the area I chose was a crime scene. I was going to suggest that the students get themselves informally into small groups and choose an aspect of a crime scene e.g. evidence collection and identify keywords and concepts in relation to this.
In reality the lecture was a bit of a disaster "darling" right from the start. The microphone did not work in the lecture theatre, which meant I had to bark so that the top row could hear me. I introduced the activity but the students did not appear to be engaging, so I did a sweep of the room to see if the instructions had been clear, only to find that most had already started their research project and wanted to focus on their own area of research, rather than participate in an activity that focused on a hypothetical unrelated area. There was, also, a mix of science students and social science students to add an additional complication. I quickly cut the activity short and decided to focus on developing search strategies and the online databases, when the technology froze completely and I had to abandon the lecture.The student rep happened to be in the audience and came up to me afterwards and said I think this session would have been better hands-on, I agreed and he said he would report this back to the module lead.
I was due to take a part 2 lecture the following week but instead of subjecting the students and myself to the same ordeal I decided to take a blended approach. I set-up a discussion board in Blackboard where students could post questions with respect to their research, I also provided my contact details if they wanted to speak to me directly. I made it clear that the discussion would be open for two weeks. In addition, I cancelled the lecture and replaced this with an optional drop-in session. I had covered all bases and the lecturer appeared happy with this.
So what was the resulting engagement by students? Well the answer is zero, I got a high attendance at the lecture but despite the students being present they were obviously not engaged as many had already started their work and appeared to want something that was specific to them. For the online discussion and the drop-in it was equally zero engagement, but I did not feel quite as frustrated as when the students were present because at least they had the flexibility to use the time how they wanted and hopefully that was doing some self-directed research - I had also had no to time to provide an induction into the discussion forum, so lack of confidence or familiarity may have an impact on engagement.
After spending 10 years developing staff in the arts of effective elearning this was quite a learning experience. It is very rare that I am in an situation where I have little control over events and I cannot turn things around, in fact I think this is the first time I have had to abandon a lecture or presentation. It, also, taught me that there should be more dialogue between those that teach on modules and the module lead with respect to delivering learning activities. For example, somebody had presented an overview of referencing early on in the module and after my sessions there was a large posting in Blackboard on Web of Science which does not even have the best range of resources for this subject, and if they had looked in my area in content they would have seen I had already provided an overview of all the online resources which they could have linked to...rrr!
