Instead, we employed a blend of online, interactive technologies simultaneously. First, a YouTube live stream for the real-time lecture was combined with a live chat stream monitored by GSIs for questions and comments in real-time. Second, students watched the live stream in small-group Zoom breakout rooms where they used an iClicker system to respond to quizzes together. Finally, a custom and immediately available video review suite afforded an opportunity for asynchronous learning. Students felt safe and welcome in small Zoom-bomb-proof groups within this environment, just like sitting with their friends in a lecture. They participated in the flipped classroom from their breakout rooms – guided by GSIs and myself, who could pop into individual rooms – while the entire class joined up in watching and chatting on the live streams.
The entire process may sound complicated. It was, especially at first. But our decision to use a large-format touch screen as the focal point and command center for live and interactive components eventually made the entire online course run like clockwork. We settled on an 86-inch Promethean Titanium ActivPanel touch screen nearly the size of one of the eight chalkboards in Pimentel Hall (where we intend to use it when we resume teaching on campus). There is no software subscription or ongoing contract we had to sort through, and the company and distributors worked closely with us to meet the aggressive timeline we had to launch the course. Because many of its features are built-in and ready out of the box, the ActivPanel is a welcome change from overhead projectors and chalkboards. It’s essentially a giant tablet, and the intuitive interface immediately lent itself to delivering and managing the online course in real-time.
With the help of a pair of student instructors, we moved the touch screen into my spare bedroom “studio” where we broadcast the live streams. Our students joined real-time lectures from time zones all over the world. Because the live streams and asynchronous video are openly available, viewership far exceeds enrollment. The panel’s built-in Android OS makes the process feel more like teaching from a tablet, and the touch screen allowed us to seamlessly switch applications and keep students engaged. With the swipe of a finger, we could run and annotate the PowerPoint presentation, show video chemistry demonstrations, run well known interactive chemistry apps in a large, full-screen format, manage the interactive concept tests, and zoom rooms from a single platform.
We pushed the limits of the technology and the panel, and there was a great payoff. In their evaluations, many students commented on how helpful (and cool) it was to show a video demonstration, pause it, zoom in, and annotate to really explain what was going on. We’ve also had tremendously positive feedback on using the ActivPanel in the studio, where students could see me use the panel just as it would appear in the classroom. The overall learning experience was very similar to our live classroom. We commonly heard from students that, in this case, online learning wasn’t isolated learning, and this course made up for some of the disappointment they felt over not being able to come to campus for their first semester at Berkeley.
At UC Berkeley and beyond, I do not doubt that interactive flat panels will continue to spark innovation in the higher education space. The number of instructors employing interactive educational applications and flipped classrooms are skyrocketing. An interactive flat panel amplifies and enhances these and many other educational experiences in the classroom and online; they are a near-perfect marriage of pedagogy and technology.
Mark Kubinec is a graduate of UC Berkeley (Ph.D., 1994) and is an Instructor in the College of Chemistry. He has worked in online education for more than 20 years and is co-creator and instructor of UC Berkeley’s eCHEM 1A: Online General Chemistry course. He is active in educational research and development and a pioneer of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in quantum computing.
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