Case Study: Making Instructors “Zoom Wizards” With The Haskayne School of Business
Who Are They:
The Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary is ranked among Canada’s top 20 business schools and among the top 10 undergrad programs on sustainability. They support 4,000 full-time and part-time students across 13 programs. We were approached by Leighton Wilks, Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning.
Why They Called:
As the school transitioned to digital-learning in 2020, Leighton was looking for ways to help instructors to engage students more effectively and capitalize on “the buzz of experimentation” among instructors. Leighton felt instructors were confident in-person teachers but were lacking digital facilitation skills and awareness of tools.
What We Did:
A 6-hour program spread across 3-weeks called Increasing Online Interactivity (which we now call Leading and Learning Online) with 10 instructors from a variety of business school courses.
We covered digital facilitation best practices and concluded with a session of “test-flighting”. This is where participants put their new skills and ideas to the test, by leading a new or adapted interactive activity of their design for the group and received feedback.
What They Said:
“A lot of professors are scared of this Zoom environment, because they don’t want to fail or look like they don’t know what’s going on… You created a space where people were more free to be open and honest and that’s more challenging in an online environment. But all of these activities got us there. It’s a very high value program and I’d be willing to offer this to people again.”
- Leighton Wilks, Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning
We asked the group:
Do you feel equipped with tools and ideas to increase classroom interactivity? (1 = least, 5 = most). Average answer before: 2.75. Average answer after: 4.33.
Do you feel inspired to try something new in your classroom? (1 = least, 5 = most)
Before, their average answer was 3.88. After, their average answer was 4.50.
What Happened as a Result:
In our post-session call, Leighton continually referred to The Making-Box as “Zoom Wizards”. He wanted to offer a compressed “tips and tricks” version of the program to all interested faculty. We said yes to that idea and developed a session for 40 instructors called Zoom Wizardry: Ten Tools and Tricks for Online Educators.
Since then, we have also been resourced by Haskayne’s MBA and DBA programs.
What We Learned:
For academic instructors and faculty, there is often hesitation in trying something new.
Also, we learnt how to use Snap Camera to animate wizard hats onto ourselves during sessions.