(13) Microteaching session

Initial Idea:

For my Microteaching session, I have initially envisioned work with Mokuru desk toy unfortunately due to the Pandemic and digital space this was impossible to achieve in a manageable way. However, do enjoy this mesmerizing video of Mokuru (Fund My Campaign, 2017) in action:

A new concept (My Teaching Plan):

I have decided to critically re-evaluate the way I deliver my presentations by making them more compact and visually appealing. This was based on:

• the feedback received from observation by Iestyn (my group Tutor) on the 23rd of January 2020 (details available on my Workflow page)
• recommended reading of 53 Interesting things to do in your lectures (Gibbs et al, 2012)

As a result, I decided to shift my subject to something tangible that comes from my profession of Games Design but that can be widely understood without necessary know-how. The subject was: Game Design Basics Visual Communication.

I have decided to break down my presentation into several pieces that would complement each other and can be understood and interesting for people with or without knowledge of the Games and Games industry and its pop-cultural impact. I have done so by doing the following:

• Introducing a briefing of what the presentation will be about in highly conceptual and abstract terms
• Grounded it in reality by providing a quick activity based on basic geometrical shapes, flagging their everyday usage incorporation, as well as within the game environment.
• This has been expanded by creating a buzz around an optical illusion using the same objects.
• Next, I wanted to present a problem, that would be focused on personal experiences with the concept of danger, which was later visualised by GIFs from selected video game title
• Next, I used the audience to discuss the opposite end of the experience by using the same objects to visualise intent as both literal (body language) and meta-physical (Pop-culture movie titles)
• Finally I wanted to conclude and demonstrate how those aspects go together with my specific field, and how they are implemented in various highly praised industry titles.

Planning for the delivery of experience:

As this was my first presentation delivered online (as the whole of term 3 is workshop support on my course) I have focused on technical aspects behind the delivery of the session to provide a seamless experience to myself and all participants. This was before I participated in Peter Beare training session Teaching with Video, and I was glad to see some of the similar approaches undertaken in that training.

I was doing delivery through Mozilla Firefox using Blackboard Collaborate as a student and using newly added over Easter period Share Camera option. The camera of my choosing was an OBS virtual camera a plugin for Open Broadcast Software (OBS) that allowed me to create a streaming setup.

Setup was relatively simple – Displaying full-screen presentation and in the bottom right corner a small picture frame and live stream from my front-facing camera all at the same time as a singular video stream that was output into Blackboard Collaborate.

To record the session I was also logged into Google Chrome on a separate screen in newly created Blackboard Collaborate Room (as staff) and recorded the Firefox window to be able to then present the presentation and chat at the same time (as some activities took part within the chat space).

I have decided on this rather elaborate setup to have a feeling of being in the same space as students (seeing presenter and talk at the same time, real-time participation in chat activities) as well as to be able to focus on the quality of delivery rather than distractions of managing multiple windows at the same time. Also instead of a single image of the session, I was able to create a moving image of the whole experience.

The session recording (September Update):

Initial thoughts:

I managed to run the presentation within given 8 minutes time limit with all the slides and activities I have planned which on its own was a success from an execution standpoint. Looking on my colleagues’ active participation in the in-class interactions as documented in the recording, I was confident that I have achieved a goal of them feeling to be a part of the same session with me and that there was no interruption in the stream as all activities were incorporated in the platform that was used for delivery (Blackboard Collaborate).

Feedback received:

This has been confirmed by the feedback from my fellow students that is rather positive highlighting some key areas of my delivery:

• Using well-known real-world shape and examples as familiar objects introduced into the unfamiliar subject of games design
• The simplicity of re-using and re-purposing the same objects over and over again to explain a variety of related concepts.
• Using a simple tech – presentation for presenting materials and text chat for quick interactions
• High engagement and quality of examples throughout the presentation

The only critique provided was a fact that I have not provided any examples from my own practice, which I understand as games (co-)created or (co-)designed by myself, which is a fair argument. This is due to the fact that many of my games are very outdated hobbyist projects and over the years my roles within the industry shifted towards community building as well as design consulting. So the presentation is and creation of this shapes activity is based off conceptual conversations with fellow designers to teach principles that we do not think about but have a strong gut feeling coming from our experience and expertise, rather than practical artefacts of my own.

Technical perspective:

Above is a visualisation of how my Microteaching session was delivered on 3 separate screens:

1. Left was Livestream as a student (with the presentation running in the background)
2. Centre had presentation notes up with OBS in the background
3. On the right, I saw my screen as recorded in other Collaborate space.

It was the first time that I have been delivering:

1. Very short and timed presentation – usually my speaking windows were from half an hour to several hours depending on the event.
2. A presentation about game development to non-game dev folks – due to this I had to rethink my delivery of basic examples and flow of presentation of real-life objects and concepts rather than games themselves.
3. Using OBS as a presenting tool with a digital stream setup – I wanted to explore a potential usage for Camera Share option and the Micro-teaching session appeared to be a perfect opportunity to do so.

The delivery of this presentation was informed by the feedback I have received through my observers:

1. Make presentation less text-heavy and more visually appealing
2. Discussing concepts and engaging participants rather than just broadcasting information to them

The feedback that I have received from this presentation is very appealing:

1. All participants did enjoy the session and provided positive comments
2. The shorter delivery form can help to build engagement in-class by:
   1. A shorter conceptual delivery
   2. Then a series of practise exercises and activities
   3. Followed up with discussion and break
   4. Repeat steps 1-4
3. Once OBS set up is done I can re-use it for my other in-class presentations

Thoughts on other presentations

I have really enjoyed a variety of presentations offered by my colleagues, each of whom took a different approach, which only shows the beauty of the diversity of teaching and learning:

• Strict presentation
• Presentation with external videos for emotional influence and discussion
• A mix of physical and digital (pictures) artefacts
• Padlet and Breakout rooms discussion

Presentation slides:

Due to the presentation size, I cannot embed it into this post with animated GIFs, but you can download original from my OneDrive. The cut-down version is provided below.

References:

Fund My Campaign, 2017. MOKURU: The Amazing Desk Toy That You Can Take Anywhere!. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKZNZyblpS0> [Accessed 26 July 2020].

Gibbs, G., Habeshaw, S., Habeshaw, T., Haynes, A. and Haynes, K., 2012. 53 Interesting Things To Do In Your Lectures. Ely: The Professional and Higher Partnership.