A Simple Guide to Hybrid Classes for Teachers

This is a guide to setting up audio and video for hybrid courses, especially seminars. This based on some research I did this summer: I asked friends who have genuine expertise in the area, and with my partner Carrie Rentschler and our friend and colleague Darin Barney, we ran some audio experiments with Darin on the other end a Zoom call. I am posting the results here, but I want to emphasize that although I have run blended seminars in the past, I haven’t run one on Zoom and am not teaching on campus this term. However, I do plan to use this method for my working group.

What is a hybrid class:

The nomenclature is confusing, so this is what I mean: a class where some people are in the same room, and some people are connected remotely, like through Zoom or WebEx or some other software.

In some contexts, people refer to this kind of class as “HyFlex” and use “Hybrid” to mean multiple classes connected via digital link. I’m using “hybrid” because most academics don’t know the term “HyFlex” and I want this to show up on search engines.

Why run a hybrid class:

Let’s say you’re teaching in a pandemic and some of your students are high risk. Or you’re high risk and you’d rather have your classroom less crowded. Or your students have disabilities that make getting to campus more difficult. Or they can’t get into the country. Or.. or.. or..

Running hybrid classrooms is both a technical and a logistical skill:

You need to have a technical system that works, but you also need to think about how you will facilitate.

The most important thing is sound:

I am not saying this because I “do sound studies.” I am saying this because if students can’t hear one another, or you, it’s not going to work, no matter how well they can see what’s going on. This is the number one thing I learned when co-teaching with Emily Dolan across two campuses and two countries.

SEMINARS:

The simplest technical method:

Everyone brings a device to class and logs into Zoom. Assuming the classroom has a basic A/V setup and wi-fi to handle it (not all do!), plug into it and project the remote participants on the screen. Every member of the class is logged in on their device. When you call on them, they unmute, and presto, they have a microphone in front of them. The teacher also needs to watch the Zoom feed to catch when remote people raise their hands. Make sure transcription is enabled. (I hear tell that Teams and Google Meet have better automatic transcription; Teams, however, does not work well with external hardware as in the scenario below).

ONE THING: Feedback can be a problem. It helps for everyone to go into their Zoom audio settings and have echo cancellation enabled. It’s also important that everyone except the person speaker has their microphone turned off. If you get a weird echoing sound welling up in the room, have everyone mute their mic.

Zoom audio settings showing the “echo cancellation” option enabled. People should not need to enable “original sound” in the meeting unless they are streaming music.

ANOTHER ISSUE: not all classrooms at McGill have good wi-fi. Everyone being online at once can be glitchy. In this case, the first step is for people in the room to turn off their cameras, and have the prof’s camera aimed at the class, and then have people turn on their cameras to speak.

A slightly more complicated technical method:

For this method, you will need a USB microphone. I recommend the Blue Yeti because it has the two features you need: an option for an omnidirectional pickup pattern (check the manual — many USB mics only pick up sound in one direction), and it is mounted on a stand that absorbs some shock. But any USB mic with those features will do. You’ll also want a long USB cable.

The Blue Yeti Nano microphone sits on a stand

Back of the Blue Yeti Nano microphone. There is a big button in the middle and two choices for patterns. The circle on the right is what you want. The other pattern is heart shaped and called “cardioid” (cardio, get it?) and only picks up sound in front of the mic.

Plug the mic into the computer and place it at the centre of the seminar table. Use your computer to project the remote participants on the screen. You’ll need to watch for raised hands. The mic will pick up the sound of the room.

Issues: if you use a mic that doesn’t have a stand of some sort, any vibrations on the table will be VERY LOUD — eg, putting down a coffee cup, typing. If the room is very boomy or echo-y this may not work work, but we tried it out in our apartment. We also tried a pair of mics, and thought that a single source was better.

Logistics and Pedagogical Considerations:

You have to be more thoughtful about turn-taking; I keep a speaker’s list and call on people in order. I always have students end what they’re saying with “and that’s my question” or “and that’s my thought” so we know they’re done. People can’t just jump in.

You also have to check in with the remote people regularly to keep them engaged, and to make sure they can hear–conditions can change. It’s hard for people to keep piping up to say “could you please repeat what you just said” and “I can’t hear you.”

I also got some good advice from people with more experience than I do, which I am reproducing here.

From Cathy Davidson, who thinks a lot about these sorts of things:

(1) Shared agenda that everyone either contributes to or signs off on;
(2) written notice on the agenda if someone will be available only hybrid;
(3) roll calls and check ins that include the names of the persons onscreen so they respond;
(4) written name for each point discussed so person onscreen either contributes or verbally, publicly says they have nothing to add;
(5) everyone is visible somewhere, in the room or on the screen. For privacy, if someone doesn’t want to be “seen” on the screen they come up with an avatar or image or icon but something distinctively there. Also, they are addressed and answer in the chat. Silence is not contribution. The “cost” of not being in the room is having to verbally be present to the room, even if it is to say repeatedly, “nothing to add.” Otherwise, people get lost. Also a number of active, engaged inventory exercises–TPS, entry, exit tickets, for both f2f and online, inc some pairings b etween a f2f person and an online person in the “pair” part of the Think Pair Share …. (Now, are we always perfect at doing this? Nope. But we try.)

From my friend Jane:

We did hybrid meetings at work all the time before mandatory work from home. Suggestions are: 

* have either one large screen or multiple smaller screens so that folks at home can see who is talking in the room
* summarize questions before answering them so folks at home and in the room know what has been asked
* pay attention to the background noise level in the room; it can easily drown out the speaker 
* make space for folks at home to ask questions; don’t expect them to yell over the folks in the room
* if at all possible, have someone monitor the chat and share questions/comments from there (may not be possible in a classroom, I know)
* occasionally check in with the folks at home throughout the meeting to make sure they’re not having any difficulties hearing, seeing what you’re sharing, etc. Don’t just do it at the beginning and then assume all is okay (cf background noise)
* if at all possible, don’t whiteboard. If you have to whiteboard, set up the camera so that it shows what is on the board and don’t write in tiny letters

Those were our main learnings. We’ve been doing it so long that it’s pretty much ingrained at this point.

What about lecture courses?

If you’re doing a hybrid lecture course, I’d recommend always recording it. If it’s mostly you talking, you could have your laptop at the front of the room with you, the mic on to pick you up (even if you’re also using a mic for the room), and the people from outside class again up on the screen. If you’re using slide ware (powerpoint, keynote, etc) then present through Zoom and everyone gets to see it.

If you run it more dialogically, like I prefer to, this is more complicated.

The first thing is, even when students aren’t wearing procedural masks, I always repeat questions in lecture if students aren’t amplified, because not everyone can hear everyone. This also solves the problem in Zoom. You could also employ some of the techniques Cathy and Jane discussed above.

The simplest technological scenario. You could have people log into Zoom and unmute themselves as in the seminar scenario above.

You could, if you had the resources, set up a mic in the middle of the room and see if it picks people up. Or people could walk up to the mic to ask a question, though this will discourage participation, especially if your classrooms are like ours where people would have to climb over rows.

If you have a teaching assistant, you could have them run the Zoom session and powerpoint on their computer (or use a remote to change slides) and then they can focus on making sure students on Zoom get called on if they have questions.

Other Ideas?

If you have had other kinds of success, that don’t involve expensive tools, then drop me a line and I’ll add them here.

A Former Chair on The Chair

First, the best thing I’ve read on The Chair is Karen Tongson’s piece. Go read it now if you haven’t.

We finished The Chair last night and since every academic in my social media feed has a take, here are my hot takes. No spoilers.

1. I still think the most interesting campus drama would be written from the perspective of graduate students and part-time faculty. The in-built possibilities for drama, narrative arcs, and backstory are great. I also think they, as well as the university staff, are the people whose stories most need to be told right now.

2. That said, it’s nice to see professors represented as human beings on TV. I probably enjoyed that fact more than the story itself. For me, Dear White People was probably more entertaining even though it got pretty silly by the end.

3. It doesn’t depart too much from the standard formats of campus drama and workplace dramedy. I did like some of the subtle backstories for characters. TV is pretty much the only format where character development interests me at all. There were some nice, small touches that could have been much more developed in a longer series, especially in terms of Jie-Yoon Kim’s family, as well as her career. They probably tried to pack in too much. Yaz MacKay is sadly underdeveloped and felt more like a foil for the other characters.

4. I am not any more concerned about the realism of the show than I am what lawyers have to say about The Good Fight. I have been on campuses that look like that; mine doesn’t. American TV is where working and middle class families live in multi-million dollar homes; anyone expecting different hasn’t watched much American TV. The cancel culture narrative is cheesy and easy but then so is every other one on TV (and in the press, for that matter).

5. As to what department chairs actually do, a reality show about different juggling challenges would probably be the closest TV could get. It’s middle management: a lot of responsibility, very little power.

Mixed Pfeelings on the Pfizer Shot

So today I got the first Pfizer shot, and an appointment for the second one on my birthday in August. I’ll take it as a present. When I learned I was eligible Monday and called to make an appointment, it occasioned an actual adrenaline hit to my system. This morning, I woke up like a kid on Christmas and bounded out of bed (actually I didn’t as Tako came up for some petting as I was getting up), and it’s been a very happy day. I am profoundly grateful to all the people involved in the long chain that got the vaccine into my arm, including the many staff at the Jewish General that made getting a shot fast and easy, and the nurses who came out of retirement to guide and handle the process. I’m even grateful to the bureaucrats who are overseeing a process in Quebec where we do not yet have enough vaccines.

But at the same time, I must conpfess to some mixed pfeelings.

For one, Carrie is not yet eligible despite being my caregiver and a type 1 diabetic. I brought her with me to the Jewish General on the hope that there would be spare vaccines and that we could sneak her in as my caregiver, but there was no luck (though it was still a rare outing for us, so it wasn’t all bad). We were told that sometimes there are extras at the end of the day, around 7:30 or 8pm. Montreal currently has an 8pm curfew and the Jewish is about 30 minutes away by car. We both knew it was a long shot, and also believe in prioritizing the people who most need limited resources in a pandemic, so we’re not outraged, but it would have been nice to both get vaccinated today.

For another, I got lucky to even learn I was eligible. The Quebec government’s messaging about who, under 55 or 60 (depending on where you live) is actually eligible changes multiple times a day. By the end of last week I was convinced that unless I was actually hospitalized, I was ineligible. Thanks to a couple friends, I found out on Monday, and called oncology, and they had appointments that day. But I had to defer as I had to go off my cancer meds for 3 days before getting the shot. So today was the day.

And pfinally (sorry/not sorry), we have to understand how much better things could be if things were just slightly different. I’m all for compensating people for the labour involved in getting the vaccine developed, tested and distributed. But after that, I don’t see why intellectual property rights (which remember, is nothing more than a temporary trade monopoly) for something as essential as a pandemic vaccine should be allowed or respected. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. States, including Canada, dismantled their pandemic warning and preparation systems as a cost-cutting measure, despite SARS being a recent memory and despite the epidemiology being quite clear on what to do. Decades ago the Canadian government sold off our domestic vaccine production capacity to a private company, which then eventually closed it down because it wasn’t profitable. All of these decisions were the effects of prioritizing money over human life.

In other words, it’s a pretty great day for me and for everyone else who went through the vaccine centre at the Jewish. But multiple things can be true. Today, and last week, and last month, and the month before that, could have been equally great for many more people. Remember the toll of unnecessary suffering from Covid next time you hear someone talk about efficiency or intellectual property as inherent organizational, social, or economic goods.

On Resistance to Better Academic Writing

A recent Facebook post by John Sloop asked why academic writing isn’t better–more creative, more varied, more polished. This has been on my mind lately, as I spent a month in March with the copyedits to Diminished Faculties. On one hand, the book is very intentionally academic. With A Political Phenomenology of Impairment as a subtitle, you’re not going to get an airport bestseller. On the other, I view copyedits for books as the time to really refine the writing; to make it as “good” as possible. “Good” in this case means didactic–getting my point across. It also means avoiding cliches, using purposeful metaphors (and a lot of them), having good “hooks” going in and out of chapters, and moving the stories along. But “good” also involves undoing some of my writerly tics–I have a bit too much love for the em-dash and the parenthetical phrase. And some sentences just had words in there that didn’t add anything to the sentence. I was probably typing and thinking at the same time. It happens.

So for me, this meant going through the copyeditor’s query, farming out a fresh read to an RA who hadn’t read the manuscript before, and then rereading the whole thing myself slowly and critically, editing vigorously based on these three reads (the copyeditor, my RA, me) and rewriting some stuff. I also have stylistic goals of clarity and active voice whenever possible. Basically, I would like to write like a midcentury American pragmatist who also has a sense of humour, and who has sometimes enjoyed hallucinogens. This has occasionally gotten me into trouble–one journal editor rewrote a bunch of my sentences to passive voice to make it sound more “sophisticated.” I fought back, but there are definitely things in that article I would change.

I don’t always go through this process with book chapters and journal articles. I wish I did, but it just doesn’t work out in terms of time. You often get copyedits or page proofs without copyedits back on a very short timeline. Which I suspect is one reason a lot of other people’s academic writing is unnecessarily unpleasant to read (and there are some zingers in things I have published, too).* Some of it is simply time-crunch and that style is not a priority in a lot of cases. Trade press editors edit for style and focus; academic presses do not offer that service (though I have had good advice from my editors).

And then there is gatekeeping. Journal articles are more heavily policed than chapters in edited books, which are more heavily policed than monograph books are. In a way, I am most free in my book writing, which is why I aim to be doing more of it versus other kinds of academic writing.

Well-written books that don’t conform to academic style are actually very attractive to university presses–they sell better. But it is also much easier to get a book contract if you have already published an academic book. It’s really tough for first time authors, especially in fields that don’t sell that well.

Also, some fields are more stylistically conservative than others. In my experience, African American studies is wide open right now stylistically, rhetorical studies when I was close to it was very concerned with policing its borders, but so is history (a field where there is tons of crossover potential). Sometimes it’s also ignorance: someone who’s never read ethnography will call it “anecdotal” (this has happened to me multiple times with reviewers of anthologies where I had a chapter). So imagine what auto theory or research-creation must look like to them. 

It’s incumbent on us tenured profs to sit on committees and review tenure cases and explain stuff to committees. This is a big part of my practice and I think we all–especially full professors–need to pitch in and be intentional about whose cases we are supporting and why.

Also, different people want different things out of their writing. Several years ago there was a big push towards multimodal publishing in the digital humanities, but we quickly learned that most emerging scholars in the field wanted to publish more traditionally because they didn’t have the extra energy or resources for more experimental formats, nor did they have tolerance for additional potential career risk.*

Writing style is a different thing, and I’ve made it a cornerstone of my graduate seminar pedagogy. We do better when we recognize scholars, including ourselves, as writers, and pay careful attention to the craft.

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*I am not arguing against difficulty; difficult prose is fine if the author is in command of it and the difficulty serves a purpose.

**They were also right: an alarming number of digital humanities projects from the 2010s are no longer available in any format. At least we know how to preserve books.

Locked Down Reviews: Godzilla vs Kong

So for Carrie’s birthday we watched Kong vs Godzilla mainly (I think) because it is a movie I would agree to on no other night of the year.

These are my observations. Some mild spoilers are involved.

1. CGI still sucks. I seem to prefer puppets (see: Yoda, baby.)

2. Since apes are closer to humans than lizards, you’re supposed to empathize with Kong. He’s got a friend, after all, and facial expressions. But Godzilla has a few things going for him. First, he’s got a really nice smile. Second, he has a pleasant blue glow that’s reminiscent of old monster movies or a properly trimmed blue LED and not one of those eye-searing ones. Third, he likes to swim. Fourth, he has coherent motivations, which cannot be said of Kong.

3. Which brings us to our main plot device, humankind’s hubris. Except it’s really a shitty tech-bro version where they want to replace Godzilla with a robot that looks like a shittier CGI Godzilla with no smile, but has a WAY bigger carbon footprint, and needs a secret human inside it to work plus a bunch of underemployed secret humans offscreen. This isn’t even an allegory, this is exactly how artificial intelligence actually works. So Godzilla shows up at the beginning of the movie evidently to wreak havoc after being a “good guy” in the last movie (I did not see the last movie, but Carrie filled in a few details), but only blowing up a company called Apex Cybernetics. The plot hadn’t even started, but I’m thinking “let’s see, a lizard with nice smile and a pleasant blue glow blows up a company called Apex Cybernetics. I’m rooting for the lizard.”

4. Despite being several stories tall, Kong has the genital specificity of a Ken doll but they keep calling Kong “him.” I don’t know if this is meant as an illustration of Roland Barthes’ concept of exscription or Hollywood’s inability to do gender fluidity right.

More Locked Down TV Reviews

It’s been a year. My god we’ve watched a lot of television. Here are some short reviews in no particular order. My taste barely makes sense to me, so your mileage may vary. Carrie won’t watch cringe comedy, so we have missed out on some stuff that other people really like.

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Superman & Lois: It’s hard to maintain work-life balance when you’re a superhero and a star reporter with two teenagers.

Yellowstone: It’s hard to maintain control of an obscenely large ranch and the land on which it sits, especially as a white settler.

The Reagans: Absolutely amazing documentary. Convinced me that no matter how much I hate Trump, Reagan actually did more damage to the U.S. and the world, and he did it while smiling. Ron Jr. is the star, though.

Star Trek Discovery: now outside the canon storyline. Still awesome.

The Expanse Season 6: Probably the best new sci fi right now.

The Vow: extremely disturbing but also gripping. Cults are bad. Also somewhere in here there’s a parable about mediocre white manhood and corporate jargon.

Blown Away: blown glass is extremely telegenic. Standard reality TV gamedoc.

It’s a Sin: a little over the top, but a show about the AIDS pandemic is very apropos right now. Also a good reminder of the cost of being queer before the present moment.

Resident Alien: fish out of water comedy about an alien crashing to earth. The first few episodes are occasionally hilarious, as the main character–played by a voice actor–tries and fails to be human. Then it settles into pretty standard ensemble drama and is less funny.

Nashville: It’s hard being a successful — or unsuccessful — country singer. Delectable soap opera. The music for the first season was also great, but it took a dive after T Bone Burnett left the show and they started trying to hawk hits.

Party Down: stands up well to a rewatch

The 2020 NFL Season: Meh. It’s better with friends.

The Circus: I mentioned this in an earlier entry. It’s been really good.

Brockmire: A comedy about baseball and addiction. It is very dark, very obscene, and the last season is brilliant and surreal (apparently fans of the show didn’t like it).

Wandavision: Did I mention that I am sick of superhero narratives? This one I loved because of what they did with genre. Last episode was kind of meh, though.

The Mandalorian: Baby. Yoda. Carrie liked all the Star Wars stuff but I was basically in it for the puppet and the frog.

Flak: another comedy about addiction, but this time in the PR business. Carrie says “supposed to be funny but it wasn’t.” We watched it all anyway.

The Bureau: French intelligence workplace drama. Everything goes to shit right away.

The Capture: British surveillance drama.

Treadstone: Jason Bourne goes to television.

Jack Ryan: Carrie says “it was terrible but I had to watch it.”

Comrade Detective: set in Romania, “a gritty buddy cop show” that’s a wonderful and occasionally hilarious mirror on American detective TV bullshit.

Hannah Season 2: Not as good as season one but good enough.

Good Girls: It’s hard being a suburban housewife who also deal drugs in Detroit.

Never Have I Ever: Hilarious teen high school drama.

There are many more, but this will do for now.

Pot Beans, Or: Is this now also a food blog?

Because of the general shitness of internet recipe blogs, all food entries will begin with a link like this:

I just want the damn recipe.

So, about food. Among other things, my drugs have profoundly affected my diet. When we can start eating out again, I am going to be even less fun than before. I can’t do much of anything fried, and I am pretty much functionally vegan now. I’m not actually vegan because some animal products I can still eat, but many, like cow cheese, don’t agree with me at all while on the drugs. In future instalments, I’ll post some of the old recipes for those who want to try them.

The lack of all things cheese, combined with lockdown, has led to extensive experimentation in the Rentschler-Sterne kitchen. And, like many people, we find we are working longer hours during the academic term, so it has led to Very Large Recipes that are scalable, reheat well, and can be combined with other things.

This brings us to pot beans.

Pot beans are beans cooked in a pot for a long time. After that, there are infinite variations. The keys to good pot beans are: good beans, flavouring the broth with something good (some beans just make better broth), and giving them lots of time to cook. They are invariably better the second day and they taste good for at least a week (we’ve never needed more than a week to eat them). They freeze well, they combine well with other things, they can be a meal in themselves, the centrepiece of a meal, or a side dish, as you like.

Let’s break this down into its components:

  1. Beans. Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “this is a stupid dish to make, I will have horrible, face-melting gas if I eat this many beans.” It’s possible you will. But most people use crap beans, which makes everything worse. Most of the dry beans you get at the corner shop or supermarket are very old and have been sitting for a long time. You are better off buying from a place where there is high-dry-bean-turnover, like a co-op, natural food store, etc. Buying organic is also a good bet. Now here’s an embarrassing confession: we order beans from Rancho Gordo. I am not proud of this fact. They are stupid expensive for beans. There are probably good local sources to track down. But what you get when you order from them is a) an assurance that the bean hasn’t been sitting on a shelf for two years and b) advice — they actually note which of their beans make good pot beans. Their beans cook faster, do not need to be soaked overnight, and do not produce much gas in my digestive system, which in many other ways has anger management issues. YMMV on the gas though.
  2. Flavouring. You want a combination of aromatics, herbs and spices, and herbs. For aromatics, I use onion, celery, carrot, garlic, pretty consistently. I cut them small enough that they are in the spoon with beans and liquid when you are eating it. For herbs, I use whatever is available and seems like it would go together. I’ve learned a few things: I’ve tried sautéing the vegetables to “bring out the flavour” before putting them in the pot. This does not seem to matter at all in any way I can detect. For the herbs and spices (and garlic), I like to make a bouquet garni, where you wrap a bunch of herbs in cheesecloth and tie it up with kitchen twine. Like this: green herbs and roasted spices sit on cheeseclothThis has the advantage of relieving me of the work of taking them off their stalks, and also means I can use parts of the plant I might not otherwise, like the stems of parsley or coriander. I explain how to make a bouquet garni in the recipe. I also like to make them somewhat salty, but leave the salt for the very end, and as my mom says, remember that you can’t take it out.
  3. Quantities and consistency. Our pot beans are basically bean soup, so I go with 6 cups of water for 1 cup of beans. You can use less water but you may need to add more during cooking. We have a ginormous pot and do not want to make dinner most weeknights (Carrie’s teaching two new preps this term so it’s mostly my job anyway), so we generally start with 3 cups beans, 18 cups water (THAAAAAT’S RIGHT IT’S A BIG POT!), 3 celery stalks, several carrots, a large onion, 4 cloves of garlic.
  4. I boil the water in my tea kettle 6 cups at a time. I wash the beans and make sure there’s no dirt, then put them in the pot. I chop the vegetables and dump them in, make the bouquet garni and put it in, and add the water as it gets hot. Then I turn the stove on high heat, get the whole thing boiling, then drop it to low for a simmer and come back in several hours. I have taken to assembling the beans while lunch (usually some other leftover) reheats, which means it takes almost no time. We run the exhaust fan but the whole apartment smells amazing. Hours later, when the beans are good and soft, add salt. The amount varies — we do 1/2 tablespoon at a time. I like them salty but I am also constantly dehydrated. In cold weather, we just leave the beans in their pot and store them out on the porch (this may not work for you and may lead you to not want to make something with 18 cups of liquid in it).

We have served them with roasted vegetables, or with fresh-baked no-knead bread, or as a side for veggie sausages, or with a salad.

Confession: you can skip the bouquet garni. They are still delicious. But then add the garlic to the pot.

Probably up next: adventures in sambar.