BEFORE: 

My main thoughts circled around: 
Timeframe: how do construct an experience that fits exactly the time frame I have?
My sessions are usually not timed very well and rather open ended and I wanted to create this time that just fits right. 

What are the main takeaways I want to pass on?
I know from experience that students get more involved in the session when they can directly apply knowledge. Usually, my sessions are structured in a way, where theoretical knowledge is presented first (20min), practical presentations follow (15min), and only towards the end students get hands on experience. This time I wanted to merge all 3 sections into 1. 

How much time do I give for ‘freestyle’ conversations? 
A 20min freedom/freestyle might lead to a dead end: I experienced this with students before. Once, for a practical assignment, I didn’t give student a specific enough task: they ended up uninspired and unmotivated. It similar or even harder with conversations. As a facilitator you might provide certain angles you want to have discussed, but it’s not a given that the conversation will spark. 

So, to create the session it was a bit of a puzzle: engage students, make them have something tangible that they created and can take away with them, get all this content into a very specific time frame, not loose anyone on the way. Find the right level of making the session engaging enough, but not tiresome! And all of this with an object on Teams, while I’m a moving image technician! Luckily, Tim allowed for a digital object, for which I chose a snippet of a video piece by Mika Rottenberg. 

THE SESSION: 

1. I asked everyone to re-draw this drawing onto an A4 sheet of paper. 
2. STEP 1: We watched Mika Rottenberg’s video snippet. I introduced it as the digital object that I want to work with today. I asked everyone to write down in 5 sentences scenes that they have seen. 
3. STEP 2: I asked everyone to write down in 5 sentences how they prepared and eat dinner the day before. This could have been a certain aspect or the whole experience. 
4. I briefly explained what ‘shot sizes’ are.
5. STEP 3: We watched Mika’s video again. I asked the students to assign the correct shot size to the scenes they chose to describe. In the presentation, Mika’s video is next to the ‘shot sizes’ images, as reference.
6. STEP 4: I asked everyone to assign shot sizes to their ‘dinner preparation’ story.
7. I introduced ‘shot angles’. 
8. STEP 5: We watched Mika’s video again. I asked the students to assign the correct shot angle to the scenes they chose to describe. In the presentation, Mika’s video is next to the ‘shot angle’ images, as reference.
9. STEP 6: I asked everyone to assign shot angles to their ‘dinner preparation’ story.
10. STEP 7: I asked everyone to fill out the boxes on the bottom with little drawings that sketch out their ‘dinner preparation’ story.
11. The END! I reveal that the students just created a ‘shot list’ and a ‘storyboard’. Now they’re ready to go and shoot their first film! 
12. I left some space for anyone who wants to show their storyboard, to show it and discuss it with the rest of the group. 

AFTER:

My thoughts: 
Unfortunately, I had of course a powerpoint catastrophe, which didn’t allow me to upload my file. This meant that I had to do the entire session without being able to see the students or the chat. That was annoying, because I wanted to give the students the opportunity to be able to chat to me directly if they have an issue. Other than that, I felt throughout like it was going well. I knew that to complete the session, I had to be very strict with timing. I timed 2 minutes for each task, and I was worried that the others won’t be able to keep up, but in the end it went smooth. The other thing that I would wish for, would be to have just 2-4minutes more time, so the students and I can discuss and compare each other’s storyboards. I’m convinced that sharing the work would have added to the satisfaction. 

FEEDBACK:

Participant 1: 
Great, well timed, well planned, got to do the whole process, you’re being asked to watch Mika Rottenberg’s video which is complex, and you’re being asked what to do – and it was so simple, just write down your dinner – I didn’t get stressed about it, I appreciate that. 

This is really good to know, because it leads me back to my ‘freestyling; point from above: some people (me included) are struggling with ‘performing’ creativity. Giving pointers helps. 

Participant 2: 
I wasn’t sure what the object was? Was it the layout or the film? 
Maybe I should have made clearer in the beginning the object is a video. Maybe I needed to ease students more into the experience? 

Participant 3: 
You had an ability to create a lot of space, a lot of time you weren’t actually talking, that was really interesting, that it set up so many instructions, and then it had a lot of space, it made the time seem very very long, and it enabled a lot of things to happen. It was a very student-centred session that seemed to focus on structuring our activity very precisely and making us go through some guided steps in a very logical and sequential way. That seemed to work for the depth of experience we could then have. 
This is an interesting point, because I was beforehand slightly apprehensive of the silence, because I knew that I won’t get much interaction. It all happened in the students’ head/environment, so in that sense it was actually an individual experience, although it was in a group setting. Again, I wish I could have brought everyone together for longer at the end, for a shared closure, but the sessions’ timeframe didn’t allow for more than 3minutes. 
Coming back to P3’s point, I was thinking beforehand about how much to say, and how much silence to give, because I’m very wary of zoom fatigue and I’m fighting my own lack of focus. So, I decided to really only give bite sized info, just enough to get the students participate meaningfully.

Participant 4: 
Yes, an engaging task and you were a great facilitator. It actually felt therapeutic. 
That is a very nice comment, because I’m always trying to approach teaching in an empathetical manner. 

Participant 5: 
Very interactive and engaging. Nice video and great that you showed the video several times to remind the audience. I like the methodology and the presentation, and I liked the video, because there were interesting shots, such as a close up of a nose and the dishes. I could remember the video and that inspired my sketches. 
I appreciate the comment about the video, because I spent 3 hours trying to find a video that shows a variety of shots and is engaging 🙂

Participant 6
I missed the beginning. It was well led and student-centred, so I felt equally encouraged to do what I wanted but then at the same time I knew, that you would be there to guide me every step of the way. I thought that maybe it would have been handier to have this sent as a pdf or in an actually physical set up we would have it as a physical hand out.
It’s great to hear that I was able to strike a balance between being there but also giving the students the space to be. As a teacher, I always want to make sure that I’m eliminating any potential hierarchical structures. 

And additional point I want to make is, that it was an interesting task think about how to learn directly from an object. Usually, my teaching session are way broader, such as ‘Basics of videomaking’, in which we first go through theoretical terms. I do show examples, so I guess students usually do learn from ‘objects’, but probably never in such an active way. 
I already showed this session to my colleague in my department, and we discussed that we will both integrate this microteaching session in a slightly modified way into our next years’ teaching offer.