S06E03: Untethered in the Classroom

Teaching from “among” students rather than teaching “to” them is one of the core concepts behind Academic Technology Services & Innovation’s “Untethered in the Classroom” project.  Faculty are free to roam throughout the classroom while teaching instead of being chained to the podium at the front of the room. Using an app called “Explain Everything” on an iPad, faculty have a whiteboard at their fingertips and no wires or cables to keep them locked to one spot. They can draw, annotate, and highlight onto any slide on their iPad while the entire class can see what they’re doing on the big screen.  Better yet, students can review all of the class interactions anytime they want — everything is recorded.  Because they’re not furiously taking notes, students feel less stressed and more focused.  That’s the feedback so far, says Dr. Lorretta Krautscheid, Associate Professor in UP’s School of Nursing and our guest on this episode of Tech Talk.

“Live-time drawings with live-time narrations that students can review later is one of the biggest strengths [of the Untethered Lecture Capture project].  Because it puts the narration with the visual, that enhances learning because it eliminates extraneous processing”, Dr. Krautscheid explained. “What the students said was this is much better and more preferable.”

The analytics show that Dr. Krautscheid’s video recordings are getting some heavy view time, especially before midterms and finals.  This podcast is full of unique ways Dr. Krautscheid has springboarded her class to the next level, transforming even office hours into something with more reach and effectiveness.  Sit back and take it all in.

Complete transcript for this episode

UP TechTalk is a bi-monthly podcast with cohosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb of Academic Technology Services and Innovation at UP that explores the use of technology in the classroom, one conversation at a time. Visit the podcast archives for previous episodes.