Episode # 28

E-Learning at the College Level with Janet Hurn

January 19, 2023

About This Episode

Janet Hurn, senior director of the E-Campus for Miami University’s regional locations and senior instructor of Physics, was at the crux of the transition from in-person classes to virtual learning in 2020. In this episode, hear how college students – and educators – were impacted, lessons learned and her advice for high school students thinking about their next steps. She also shares some tips for educators facing post-COVID burnout, including trying things like flipped classrooms.

[00:00:47] Kara: Joining us today is Janet Hearn, who is Senior director of the regional e campus at Miami University. Hey Janet. Hey, . Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. We’re excited to talk about lots of things and hopefully maybe some e-learning things. But first I wanna know. , how did you end up in

[00:01:11] Janet: education?

I happen to be an alum of Miami University, so I went there not knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up. Mm-hmm. , I’m still trying to figure that out, by the way. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Okay, cool. Me too.

So I kind of took a medical technology road. And then I came across a wonderful mentor. His name is Dr. Bill Houk. He was the chair of the physics department at the time at Miami University. And he told me I should teach physics. And I said, what ? Really? So yes. And so trying to keep it short, everything fell into place.

I had to take an extra summer of school, but I ended. Getting a physics degree from Miami and then going into graduate school for education. And my plan was to teach physics in high school. But what happened was they needed an instructor at, during grad school at Miami Middle.

One of our regional campuses in Middletown, Ohio, and I taught night classes and fell in love. I fell in love with the students. I fell in love with the campus and I ended up being eligible to apply for tenure there, and I became a senior instructor of physics at Miami University. So, That was okay with me.

I could bypass the spit balls and some of the shenanigans and I had grade students that I. , you know, they were paying their way through college. They were doing it at night. They were doing it when they could. They had dreams of being engineers, physicists teachers, all kinds of different things pre-med.

And I had the pleasure of teaching them physics. And my whole focus when doing that is they came in the. I can’t do this. This is hard. Physics is a mystery. I said, it’s really not. You can’t walk across the floor without physics. You’re, you’re doing physics all day, every day. And it’s really not that complicated.

And my plan was for them to leave loving physics and loving the appreciation of the world around them through kind of the physics. I promised them all they would have a physics dream before they finished my class. And they all said they did. Sometimes it was a nightmare. But you know ? Yeah, . And I promised they would have a meal with friends or family where they would all look at them and go, what?

What are you talking about? Why are you telling us about? , this, that, or the other. They usually said that happened too. And so . Mm-hmm. That was my whole, you know, goal was to, to turn attitudes around a, a hard subject or a seemingly impossible goal was made, was made possible. And they looked at the world differently when they, they got done with my class.

So that was. . That was my goal. Yeah. Which

[00:04:03] Kara: is a good goal when I, you teach a subject such as physics that’s specialized like that. I

[00:04:10] Janet: mean, yeah, it’s just, we don’t talk about physics a lot in K K-12, so people just think it sounds, . Fancy. It sounds fancy.

[00:04:18] Kara: Yeah. Well, it sounds scary. No, not

[00:04:21] Caryn: accessible. Right? I love physics is one of my favorite classes in high school.

Yes. Because I mean, I, I love math, so, but we had a teacher that was just so engaging and excited about it that it

[00:04:34] Janet: was, we had a lot of fun. So, yeah, I, I, I get excited about it and we did have a lot of fun and it. . I did that for about 23 years, and then I transitioned. I really liked technology and teaching, and so I transitioned into how can you teach better with technology or how can you enhance teaching with technology?

I did some flipped classroom work and then moved into developing online courses. And Now I am oversee the online programs and, and course development and marketing and support for online students at the regional campuses of Miami University, which is also a super fun gig.

yeah. Is what does

[00:05:15] Kara: that entail in itself? I’m kind of

[00:05:16] Janet: curious, like, well, yeah, there’s a lot to it, right? Yeah. So there’s we have kind of four arms to our team. We have an arm, the original arm was, you know, develop online classes. So I started instructional design and working with faculty to put their courses online.

And then there’s a faculty support arm. So, you know, you have trouble, you need a help desk, you. Support while you’re teaching the courses. So we developed that arm and that arm has grown to where they do research in online education. They do professional development for the faculty. They do articles that people access nationally.

So that’s grown and really cool. And then the interesting piece was we hadn’t developed a student arm, and a lot of e-learning offices don’t develop a student arm. But when you think about. We’re here for the students. So we developed a student arm that has grown to be kind of our they’re the liaison with all the student offices to make sure you can get tutoring, advising, admission support, all of that online.

If you never come to our campus. So we had to make sure those were in place. We kind of oversee the marketing pieces of all the programs to make sure everybody’s aware of us and how can they get in touch and how can they engage with us. And then finally we have our latest piece is kind of our outreach.

Community piece where we are working with industry and different partners to develop micro-credentials. So we’re trying to do bite-size learning Yes. With, with two or three courses to let people kind of sample college if they’re not sure if that’s something they need or want, but it’s based around skills.

So rather than. have some mystery kind of degree. I’m not sure what that is. It’s based around skills. And so when you go have that conversation with your EM employer and say, I have some college credit, you can actually show them digital credentials that list all the skills and list everything that they got out of those credentials.

So now you’re having a conversation about skills rather than, I have some college. Yeah, you can show them what you, what the skills are. Yeah. Right. So we’ve grown, we have about 20 employees within our team and, and we’ve grown to, to do a lot of different things at Miami and, and we’re, it’s, it’s a super fun thing as well.

Like I love it. It’s different every day, so that’s cool.

[00:07:43] Kara: Why do you think Keeping it fresh

that’s important in

[00:07:46] Janet: education? Well, education, I think we’re all aware now is changing the, the face of education is changing.

Covid kind of shined a light on that and said, , you may have to do things differently sometimes, or you may have to look at education differently, and that’s kind of what our team likes to do. So honestly, our focus is access and equity. So how can everyone access education? College doesn’t have to be that thing that, oh, I’ll never do that, or I’m not supposed to do that.

I can’t afford that. Everybody should have access. So we’re trying to make it accessible with our online opportunities. So, you know, if you’re, if you’re place bound, if you have family, if you have work and you can’t access the, you know, typical residential college experience, we’ve got options for you .

If you are um, you have super. Dyslexic blind heart of hearing deaf, you need to have access to education in higher ed and we wanna make sure you have that. And so we really work hard to make our online courses accessible as much as we can. How do you make

[00:08:57] Kara: those things happen, those accessibility pieces,

[00:09:02] Janet: I think a lot of people don’t know, and so it, it’s kind of intimidating, right? Just like physics. Yeah. Yeah. Just it all comes back to physics. It all comes back to physics, , I like those hard problems to solve. That’s, mm-hmm.

Yeah. Ultimately, you know, when people say, why’d you go into physics? It’s not physics per se. I like hard problems to solve. I like to get paid to play with expensive toys, so I kind of look for opportunities to solve hard problems in different ways, but, It, it’s really not that intimidating. So you have to look at the course materials videos.

You have to make sure they’re captioned and they’re caption properly. They have transcripts. Some of them they need descriptions. So if you’re blind, you can hear the video, right? But you may not see what the action happening or you see the PowerPoint slides or whatever they used in the video.

So you have to provide a description of what’s going on in those, in those videos. Make sure. printed material, printed right, quote unquote like that you might download or that you access digitally is friendly with a screen reader. So you have to be able to do that. You have to make sure that colors have good contrasts.

So if people are colorblind, they can see the contrast. . So there’s a whole host of things and there’s a lot of great organizations out there that provide guidance to make materials accessible. We also use an a learning management system that we, that has plugins that a student can click to get an accessible version of.

Pieces and parts often so that it’s easy for them to grab it the way they want it. We like to give choices. So if you wanna watch the video, great. If you’re like, I hate watching video, I can’t be that attentive, maybe you wanna just scan the transcript. So can we provide that?

So it’s just being aware of kind of those different, different ways you can make materials accessible as well. provide choices to students so they can access the material that works best for them. There’s whole conferences about accessibility in education and we send people to those and we, we, we’ve actually started providing some workshops for companies or places that do instructional design so that they , be up on the latest greatest with accessibility. But we try to make every course, we complete every course before it’s offered. We don’t just start teaching it. And then, well, the next module is not due till next week, so we’ll just do it now. The whole course is complete. It’s peer reviewed and it’s checked for accessibility before it’s ever offered the first time.

Wow. That’s

[00:11:34] Kara: really. . What kinds of numbers of people are taking online courses now?

[00:11:41] Janet: So for, for us we’ve got approximately. About 75%. About 3,500 students take at least one online class at the regional campuses, okay?

And we have about 1400 right now that take exclusively all online classes. They’re not taking any face-to-face. And we have students in Columbus and Cleveland in all. places, participating and taking our online classes. So it is a, it, we have about 50 50 credit hour generation online versus a, a face-to-face version of the classes.

So it’s pretty significant at, at Miami regional campuses. That’s

[00:12:22] Caryn: huge. Yeah. I wouldn’t have expected

[00:12:24] Janet: 50 50. Yeah. Well part of that’s due to Covid, so Well, that’s why

[00:12:29] Caryn: wasn’t, but the next question is . Did you notice an

[00:12:32] Janet: increase in that? Well, so for Covid we had to develop some remote courses. So the ones that weren’t developed as online had to go remote and mm-hmm.

remote classes are different from online. Online or planned out before they’re even offered remote. You’re. doing the same thing you did in class, but you’re now broadcasting it. So Everything was remote or online Right. During Covid and then as we’ve started to transition back the percentage of online has, has been dropping back. We were about 40% of our credit hour generation. Was online prior to covid. Now it’s, it’s a, it’s 50 50 and may drop a little bit back more towards the 40.

So as we get more and more students back on campus, but I feel like the students that experienced some remote or online during covid went, wait a minute, this is kind of good. I kind of like the convenience. I kind of like the opportunity and I think more people are, are more open to the possibilities.

Yeah. It’s not as intimidating. Right? I guess we just have to explain to people you may have done remote in high school, which was an emergency. Yeah. If you do online with us, trust me, there’s a plan. The course is all there. Yeah. It’s all ready to go , because some people are like, I’ll never take remote again.

Okay, well that’s different. So yeah, , it’s,

[00:13:52] Kara: yeah, not survival

[00:13:53] Janet: mode. Right. Right. And a lot of faculty have a new appreciation for it as well, so Oh, I bet.

[00:13:59] Kara: As students are, , looking at their future journey after K-12, is there any advice that you would give to people as they consider their options.

[00:14:15] Janet: I would say explore all the options and opportunities but also think down the road. It’s very hard to think down the road. So when my parents, when my mother was like, you can do anything you want after you get your degree, but by God you’re getting that degree.

So, I was like, okay . So one of my dreams was to be a firefighter paramedic, but she’s like, no way. You’re gonna go to college. So as soon as I graduated with my, and I got my job at Miami, I was a volunteer firefighter paramedic, so I did it anyway, but I had that foundation and I, I had choices. So I always say, have an A or B plan so that you have options.

Higher ed doesn’t work out for me. I do firefighting, paramedic, firefighting, paramedic. I get hurt or something. I do teaching. So try to have options is what I would first say, but, but look at all your opportunities if you get a good job right outta high school and you’re like, why would I go to college?

Consider taking college classes while you’re working that job, because then you have a B plan if that job doesn’t work out and they paid for it so you don’t have a bunch of debt. . If you get some scholarships and opportunities to go to college, do that. If you can, do study abroad, do travel on the school’s dime or on as part of that package, do that take advantage of the opportunities before you keep doors open.

I feel like a lot of young people close doors and you may today say, I don’t need college. I don’t want college. Great, but keep your GPA up. Go get a good job, work hard, and keep that door open so that you have that opportunity later life. Or you can get a, like I said, an employer to pay for it. That’s like super bonus.

] keep the doors open. Maybe that’s not your choice today, but don’t get that door slammed. Don’t blow your senior year, blow your gpa cuz you’re not going to college. And then in five years you’re like, oh my God, why did I do that? I can’t fix that now.

So it’s just about keeping doors open to me and, and A or b plans and. really talked to a lot of different people in your life that took different paths and, and find out was that, was that good or what do you regret? What would you have done differently so that you don’t walk the same bad path potentially.

Yeah.

[00:16:45] Kara: Yeah. I think that’s good advice. It was hard when we were getting ready to go to college, but I know it’s even harder now because there are just like so many. Things that you just don’t even know exist.

Like we meet people all the time that you hear what they do and you’re like, that’s real. Right.

[00:17:03] Janet: Right. That’s a thing you can pay for. Yes. Like

[00:17:05] Kara: that’s a job. Yeah. You know? Right. So

[00:17:08] Janet: yeah, I was just curious. What’s your Yes. Explore. Yeah. You gotta explore. You gotta Google, you gotta a YouTube, you gotta check all the different things out.

So, yeah. And

[00:17:18] Kara: what a better time when you’re young and,

[00:17:19] Janet: and you have

[00:17:20] Kara: options. Yeah. Cause like we said, we’re still trying to figure out what we wanna do when

[00:17:24] Janet: we grow up. I know. I can’t wait to figure it out. . Oh gosh.

 

 

 

[00:17:43] Janet: Well, if you wanna talk fresh and new in education, I think teachers K-12 are, are, are burnout.

They’re tired. I think COVID took a toll and I think. You know, I, I hope the teachers out there can figure out ways, you know, change it up maybe do a flipped classroom or do something new. But if teachers can find ways to. Mix it up. Because I don’t, I don’t wanna see all our teachers leaving K-12, our, our great experienced teachers, but I also know they’re tired and they’re getting some students that maybe have some gaps in holes cuz of covid in their education.

So just trying to keep it different. Keep it real, you know, start playing, playing music during study times or mix it up a little with your students. Cuz it’ll mix it up for you too. Yeah, just trying to, I think that’s great advice. Just trying to do something different because we need you teachers, and I know you’re tired and I know it’s hard, but we really need those great K-12 teachers to hang in there and, and I hope.

I hope a lot of people look at, at subbing if, if you’re interested in the classroom or interested in checking that out, you know, trying to get some good subs in there right now while this, there’s a shortage and helping out with that.

[00:18:59] Caryn: What a great way to explore too. Cause I’m, I, I stepped for a year.

and I loved it and it would, it’s, you know, it’s such a great way to like dabble in different areas and different grade

[00:19:12] Janet: levels, different schools, and they’re all different. So I’ve done some groups where I’m like, I’m never gonna teach again. Yeah. And then I’ve gone just a couple levels up or down and I’m like, whoa, I, I can do this.

This is awesome. . So I just think totally different world. Yeah. Check it out and try it out. Yeah. And we have to appreciate our teachers and. Raise ’em up and give them support and so that they mm-hmm. , they can hang, hang with us. We need you. Yeah. And higher ed is, is changing higher ed is the face of higher ed’s changing?

Not everybody wants to spend four years. Not everybody wants to spend two years. The research is still there. You, you should get a better paycheck at the end of the, of that journey, but, you know, maybe you don’t take it in four years. You take it in six, or maybe you take a year off and explore your options and then come back.

I, I think as long as you don’t close the door, you’re in good shape. , but there’s, there’s still a lot of value in higher ed, but I think we owe it to our students to kind of innovate and look at some different ways they can access higher education and realize there’s a large group of people that can’t access higher education, and we need to fix that.

That’s unacceptable. So we need to figure out ways that everyone has. . Yeah, for sure. Because

[00:20:28] Kara: really honestly, it is like a experience not only educationally, but it’s like a personal growth opportunity. Cuz I feel like my parents wanted me to go to college. Not really for the academics Hmm. But for the experience of being around.

the world. I mean, you know

[00:20:50] Janet: Right. All different types of people, right? Yeah. Yeah. And really that was, yeah. What

[00:20:55] Kara: was kind of most important for them was just the exposure and like the life experience, because it doesnt changes you and you are, you know, you, you are different and you have different experiences

[00:21:08] Janet: than others, man.

Agreed. Well, you, it’s a, it’s a. Yeah. You meet a lot of different people in a short amount of time, in a small amount of space, and that really makes you appreciate mm-hmm. and, and makes your world, I think grow quickly. So I, I agree with you. That’s, that’s interesting. That was their focus though. Yeah. She didn’t tell you she never graduated, but she had a great time. Yeah, exactly. Tough secret, .

[00:21:35] Kara: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think too, because I grew up in such a small town, I mean my, I’ve said this before, but like my graduating class, there were only 79 of us and we were the biggest class in the high school.

Wow. You know, so I think that was also, yeah. Part of

[00:21:53] Janet: it was we gotta get her out. Yeah. , let’s get her out. . This is not good. She needs to be out in the world. Yeah. .

[00:22:01] Kara: So, but they were also really good at You know, traveling, like we traveled a lot when I was little cuz both my parents were teachers. So our,

[00:22:09] Janet: everybody’s, I was like you Oh, for the summer?

Yeah. You thought

[00:22:12] Kara: everybody’s parents were off for the summer. But yeah, so anyway, that’s a side note. Okay, so back to it. Flipped

[00:22:19] Janet: classroom. Yes.

[00:22:21] Kara: I was curious to get your take on how. a flipped classroom works and how to make it

[00:22:29] Janet: successful. Great stuff. Okay. So at least at at the higher ed level, we tend to stand in front of our students and talk.

Mm-hmm. or lecture? Lecture, quote unquote. . . So, But I can do that on a video. Like I don’t, and I can do it. So I, what I discovered was the 50 minute lecture was like six minutes when I just did it straight up on the video or 10 minutes and I’m like, wow, what am I, that’s interesting. Why am I telling them for the other?

Yeah, 40 minutes ,

[00:23:00] Kara: they’re,

[00:23:01] Caryn: they’re trying to sidetrack

[00:23:03] Janet: you or something? No, I’m probably telling bad jokes so that that’s really not necessary. So, so I would, I would do this content in like you know, like I said, seriously, 10 or 12 minutes and I’m like, holy cow. So, . They don’t need me for that. I mean, they need me, but they don’t need me to be there.

Mm-hmm. . I would record the videos and I, and you can do even audio if you don’t wanna be on video. But now it’s so easy. When I did it, it was like a kind of a major thing, but now you just boom go. Yeah, yeah. Do it. And so they can watch that content. They can get your wisdom. Out of your head pretty quickly, efficiently, and they can replay it so it’s more accessible.

So if you are a processor, if you have h d, if you are, you know, you’re back on my first sentence and I’m five minutes down the road and you haven’t heard anything I said. So you can go back and listen. You can take notes, you can stop start. You can eat your lunch if you want to. Whatever you can.

You’re, it’s more flexible for. So I did that. I posed to those, but then when they got in class, we went over examples of problems and or they worked on their homework, quote unquote, their homework. So most of the time people need me when they’re at home at night trying to do. S quote unquote scary physics problem, and, and they’re frustrated and they’re mad and they took 45 minutes and they still don’t have an answer, and they give up and they quit.

So I had them bring that, I had them come and do that in the classroom, and they worked in groups often. Or they could work alone, whatever they preferred, but they worked through the problems. And then if you get stuck, you just, Hey, I’m stuck and I can come show you the way, or I can give you hints, or we can ha talk it through.

But when you’re at home by yourself, at your desk, in your bedroom, you just get frustrated and mad. But if I can answer your question quickly, then you’re on your way again. So that was just so much better for my students and. It was interesting though. Sometimes they would be like, you’re making me think, I’m like, ,

[00:25:15] Caryn: yes.

Hurts

[00:25:17] Kara: goal

[00:25:17] Janet: achieved. But they would get, so usually I just sit here and listen to you. I’m like, well, you know, those days are over. So yeah, , they actually had to think and work together and, and problem solve. And what I, what I would let them do is , well, they listened to the lecture. They could take as many notes as they wanted at home.

You know, they listened and then they could bring those notes in. And then I would do a, like a, just a quick quiz at the beginning of each class to make sure they watched the video, but they could use all their notes. So if they took good notes, some would come in with volumes of more notes than they ever took when I was lecturing.

And then they would interesting. And then they would rip through the quiz and be like, all right, let’s, let’s go. Let’s move on. So, , that’s what I would suggest. You, you have to have some, you know, accountability. So either have the, a little quiz or have it let them take notes that they can use later in, in some other effort.

And, and now it pays off for them, right? It pays off for them and pays off for you. And then, then they get stuck in class. I can help ’em, I can move ’em along and. at home, they’re doing things they don’t need me for and now they’re doing the work they need me for in front of me. So, and I’m there available.

So once I started thinking like that, I kind of thought, why are we teaching the other way? Cuz that’s kind of dumb. Yeah. , yeah. Makes so much sense. No offense, I know, to the people that don’t use flip classroom. Yeah.

[00:26:39] Kara: But no, I mean too success wise, do you think like they were taking away more.

[00:26:46] Janet: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think they took away more.

I definitely think they, they had to think more, they, mm-hmm. , you could see actually were getting frustrated a bit because. They were now having to be active participants in their learning educational processes, learning instead of, I can just sit here and she doesn’t even notice that I’m doodling and that I’m not listening, and which, you know, I said, that’s your choice.

You don’t, you don’t wanna listen. I’m not gonna make you listen, but. . Yeah, that’s, and I didn’t waste their time. I didn’t, they were like captive audiences to listen to. 40 minutes of, I don’t know what, because I was already done in 10 minutes with the real learning. Yeah. The . And the other piece we could use that for was demonstrations and lab work and like hands-on type of activities, which.

You know, I can’t hand them a kit to a whole kit to take home every night to play with these things, but I could let ’em play with stuff in class. So it just worked out better, much better for me. And I, I think for them they seem to enjoy it. And, and it was a little hard though, cuz Right? It’s a, it’s a change, it’s a mm-hmm.

Sure. It’s not what they’re used to. And they, they got, I heard about it sometimes . Yeah. There’s

[00:27:58] Kara: a little bit of training I’m sure involved.

[00:28:01] Janet: And, and trying to have an open mind to a new, new way of doing things, so, yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:06] Kara: Well, and I think it would be good just to start with like a single lesson, see how it goes and Exactly.

You know, because it’s, it is, I mean, for you to sit and make videos

[00:28:17] Janet: it’s a commitment. It’s a commitment and it’s a lot of upfront work for the instructor. Yeah. But , it also kept me from, I mean, you’re doing the same lecture, right? Like mm-hmm. year after year.

Mm-hmm. after year after, yeah, after year. And once you can, can that, as long as it’s not a topic that change, you know, Newton’s laws, gravity still gravity, things are still falling, so, right. , I was good there for a few years. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:41] Caryn: Well, I, I like the idea of it too, because like, if you’re teaching multiple sections of the same thing sometimes when you are.

Reteaching that lecture, whatever. You kind of don’t say the same thing every time. Or you’re like, feel like you already talked about that with this class, but you didn’t. And, and it’s just also, it’s like kind of. for me, like sucks the energy out of me if I haven’t doing things on repetition, like Exactly.

We always say our fir first takes our best take and everything after.

[00:29:07] Janet: That’s just kinda . Yeah. The jokes got worse later in the day. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, no, I agree. And, and it keeps it, if you do your best, take your freshest work in that, in that video. Everybody’s getting the best of you. , you’re exactly right.

Instead of the class at the end of the day getting tired, Janet, that Yeah. Thought she already told you all of this. And I’m skipping that, skipping that. And then they’re like we never talked about that. And you’re like, oh, yeah, we did. But yeah, you didn’t, and you did, but they didn’t , right? Yeah. So it’s, it’s much more consistent.

It, it’s much less, less taxing for you to Yeah. Remember everything and repeat it for the end time. And then after, you know, like I said, I did that for about 23 years, so, whew. That gets old, so. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

[00:29:52] Kara: Yeah. Keep it fresh. Keep it real. Well, real ,

[00:29:55] Janet: keep it new, keep it fresh. Yep. So that, that was it, I think it’s a great model.

Yeah. And I encourage like you said, you could try it with a lesson. Try with a couple lessons. If you and the students have a good reaction, then over the summer you can, you can do a bunch of videos and get it all set up and ready to go and then launch it next year. Yeah.

[00:30:17] Caryn: What would you say to teachers that are hesitant to flip their classroom because, Of all that upfront work or they think it’s not

[00:30:25] Janet: gonna be as effective anytime you try something new, one step at a time but Right. New also helps you freshen things up.

Mm-hmm. and if you’re kind of feeling. Like I said before, if you’re kind of feeling a little down with teaching and things are feeling a little rough around the edges, it could help renew you to maybe try mm-hmm. a different technique or a different tactic. And again, you could do it just one time.

One. Mm-hmm. lesson, like you said, the other piece that comes in handy Yeah. Is if you are out for some reason you can actually just have the mm-hmm. the sub or whoever’s taking your class, just play the video for them if that’s the easiest thing to do. Or you can, you are, you’re still, if you’ve posted it in the learning management system, it’s out there and they can watch it and, and they should develop a habit of.

Yeah. We just get in our groups and start working and we’ll, we’ll let you know if we need ya and . So you still know your lesson is being taught consistently cuz you taught it, you recorded it, whereas if someone else teaches it for you, you hope they said everything and you hope they did it. But oftentimes in my experience, you just reteach it anyway, just start recording a couple of them. And again, you’re gonna be surprised. You’re gonna have your notes there. You’re gonna go through it and you’re gonna go, wow, that’s my 30 minute lesson I just did in six minutes. Holy cow,

[00:31:44] Caryn: which is ideal, really, I mean, because you don’t want it to, you don’t want it to be 30 minutes. Can you imagine watching it? 30

[00:31:51] Janet: minutes. And they’re used to learning online now. They’re used to learning from videos. They learn all kinds of stuff on YouTube. TikTok, they’re, they’re, they learn everything from videos,

Yeah. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Yeah. You’re meeting them where they are. Right. It’s kind of meeting them. . Yeah. Yeah. Great. Doesn’t have to be fancy.

[00:32:06] Kara: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, and honestly, really you can do it. I feel like you could do it with any grade

[00:32:11] Janet: level. Absolutely. You know, K, all the way up. They all know how to watch the phone, so they’re good.

Yeah. They’ve got it. Yeah. ,

[00:32:20] Kara: well thanks for talking

[00:32:21] Janet: to us, Janet.

Well, this has been, this flew by. This has been a pleasure. Yeah, I, I love all these topics, so I appreciate you having me. Yeah,

[00:32:31] Kara: anytime

Guests

Janet Hurn

Janet Hurn

Janet E. Hurn is the Senior Director of the E-Campus for Miami University’s regional locations and is a Senior Instructor of Physics. Ms. Hurn got her Bachelors in Physics and M.A.T. in Education from Miami University and has been an employee at Miami since 1990. Janet leads a team of educational designer/technologists and oversees the development of online and hybrid courses for the Regional Campuses which now number nearly 300. She puts her 25 plus years of classroom experience and her love for learning together into a passion for emerging best practices in education. Her research interests include learning analytics, academic integrity in the online environment and online student retention. She is a Google Apps for Education Certified trainer and a Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. Outside of Miami, Janet was previously a volunteer Firefighter Paramedic for Fairfield Township Fire Department and now enjoys woodworking, vinyl crafts and travel with her family.

Miami University E-Campus