Introduction
As recent pedagogical research suggests, successful integration of video-based conferencing software into online courses can lead to a greater degree of interactivity, instructor presence, and student engagement (Knapp, 2018; Lyons et. al., 2012; Hale, 2019). It is a tool that facilitates the creation of interactive learning opportunities, spontaneous and authentic discussions, and collaborative problem-solving activities, often allaying the feelings of disengagement and isolation that can come about in virtual classrooms (Lyons etl. al., 2012; Knapp, 2018). In fact, recent empirical data even suggests a direct correlation between effective implementation of web conferencing software and overall student success (Stover, 2013). Tools such as CarmenZoom can also be leveraged to promote more democratic, student-oriented interactions and learning activities, as the multi-window format can potentially destabilize the traditional top-down power hierarchies of F2F classrooms (Knapp, 2018). This in itself can lead to students taking greater ownership of their own learning and performing at a higher level throughout the semester.
Over the past year, I have become staunch advocate and proponent of integrating CarmenZoom into our online courses. In addition to guiding faculty in its use during regular course developments, I have also co-lead multiple iterations of the Virtual Collaboration with CarmenZoom online workshop and created numerous CarmenZoom resources for the ODEE Resource Center and Keep Teaching website. Additionally, I have acted as a CarmenZoom consultant for our numerous stakeholders across the university, instructing them in best practices and imparting onto them some of the technical know-how needed to better utilize this tool. When assisting faculty in its implementation, I generally seek to guide them toward more productive, forward-thinking uses that better tap into CarmenZoom’s seemingly limitless classroom potential. This usage extends beyond synchronous class meetings and more into the realm of roleplaying activities, student-led conferences, and other authentic assessments. Below are some examples of activities and assessments I have developed with faculty.
BIOETHC 6020: Ethics Committee Practice
Instructor: Ryan Nash
Course Description: BIOETHC 6020 (Clinical Bioethics) explores the major clinical ethical issues confronting the practices of medicine and biomedical science. This course familiarizes students with common legal and institutional positions, and includes consideration of multiple sides of key debates amidst the various topics, especially: medical indication, patient/professional preferences, futility, end-of-life, palliative care, substituted judgment, killing vs. letting die, autonomy, capacity evolution, and pediatric decision making.
Assignment: The Ethics Committee Practice assignments are a set of collaborative roleplaying activities conducted and recorded via CarmenZoom. On a semiweekly basis, students meet independently in groups of 5-6 (which change on a rotating basis) via CarmenZoom. Each group discusses two case studies from Robert Orr’s Medical Ethics and the Faith Factor, both of which detail medical cases that pertain to that week’s module. These are highly formalized and professional discussions meant to simulate a “real life” hospital ethics committee meeting. Students adopt the role of clinicians conducting an ethics committee meeting (with one student being automatically assigned the role of committee leader), examining and identifying the various ethical dilemmas of each case. Through constant negotiation and compromise, students must conclude each meeting with their formalized recommendations for the patient and their families. This meeting is recorded, uploaded, and submitted to the instructor. Students then reflect on and provide feedback about each person’s performance within the group discussion via an anonymous survey.
Rationale: For this assignment, Ryan Nash and I sought to find an alternative to traditional online discussions, dissuading students from the sort of programmatic and insubstantial case-based discussions they had been having in the course’s previous iteration. Our goal was to require students to think about the cases from Orr’s book not as thought exercises, but as “real world” matters of life-and-death. We also wanted to give them practice working in small ethics committees–a basic expectation for professionals within the field–and provide a framework through which they might practice the language and rhetoric of ethics, medicine, and biomedical science. This required us to relocate student discussions from the CarmenCanvas discussion boards into CarmenZoom.
By rendering these regular peer interactions into student-led simulations with life-and-death consequences, the instructor and I transformed these discussions of the case readings into a more substantive and authentic ethical dialogue. The discussions became less abstract and hypothetical, instead stimulating the sort of robust ethical debates that students will be asked to engage in as professionals within their field. We also provided students a lower-stakes space to practice some of the argumentative and negotiatory skills needed for leading and conducting ethics committee meetings, particularly as the committee format could lead to a more pronounced diversity of opinion and greater opportunities for compromise and cooperation. Essentially, Dr. Nash and I abandoned the traditional modes of web-based discussion and used CarmenZoom to moderate a more direct, impactful, and authentic mode of student interaction.
Link: Ethics Committee Practice: Ethics and Brain Failure
HCINNOV 7460: Storytelling Improvisation
Instructor: Dana Wade
Course Description: HCINNOV 7460 (Enhancing Communication in the Innovation System) develops leadership behaviors that facilitate constructive conversations, interactions, and outcomes through communication and coaching techniques. The course explores the role of relationship and communication in healthcare innovation, and challenges the traditionally negative view of conflict, by reframing it as a valuable and normative behavior in high performing organizations.
Assignment: This breakout activity—an example of the types of “improv activities” that recur during synchronous meetings—tasks students with practicing and employing some of the improvisation skills they have learned about up to this point. In this activity, students break into small groups and collaborate on the creation of an improvised narrative using as their basis an image depicting one of the core communication strategies from the healthcare system. Students must use “yes, and…” principles to craft a cogent and coherent narrative in their breakout rooms, reconvening to the main room after ten minutes have elapsed to share their improvisations with one another.
Rationale: This improvisation activity originated from a longer conversation I had with Dana Wade about how we could make the seven mandatory synchronous sessions in this course more interactive and student-oriented. Throughout this revision, Dana and I strategized ways in which students could further hone and employ some of the principles of improv, particularly in regards to conducting large-scale group negotiations within the healthcare innovation system. We developed these breakout activities as a means of providing a set of lower-stakes practice exercises where those principles could be applied. Based on the types of comic exercises often performed by improv troupes, these gamified learning activities functioned as brief moments of “pause and play” that also gave students practice using the transferable skills of improvisation, negotiation, and communication. By basing it on the communication strategies that are at the core of this course, we also further underlined what students had learned through more passive means up to this point, further complimenting that understanding with an activity that demands increased active engagement.
Link: Storytelling Improvisation: Building a Story — “Yes, And…”