Things you can not do with usual chalk
Online teaching with Zoom, iPad & YouTube

Henrik Bachmann
Graduate School of Mathematics
Nagoya University
These slides and all the videos/lecture materials can be found on my homepage:www.henrikbachmann.com

Some context

Who am I?
Since October 2019 Associate Professor in the G30 Program.
What were my teaching duties? (Spring 2020)
1.

Teaching undergraduate mathematics courses in the G30 Program(Linear Algebra II + Tutorial)

2.

Graduate course in the Graduate school of Mathematics(My first graduate course ever)What would have been the “classical” teaching method?
For mathematics: Blackboard!
••••Blackboards are terrific
The best tool to develop a thought to a class
They always work
They slow down the speaker enough to get the ideas across clearlyBut what if aclassical face-to-faceblackboard lecture is
not possible ?!

What did the students want?
SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/)

Most students
wanted to haverecorded lectures

But of course there should also be thepossibility of asking questions and have live
interactions!

What I did (there are probably a lot of other good/better ways!)
Linear Algebra II + Tutorial (G30 undergraduate course)
••
•
•
•

Record one lecture (~60min) each week (YouTube)
Have a 45min Zoom meeting (Tutorial) each week
Provide lecture notes & overview notes
Homework assignments via NUCT
Exam via Zoom

Multiple zeta values & modular forms (graduate course)••••

Give a 90min Zoom lecture each week
Record one lecture (~60min) each week (YouTube)
Write lecture notes
Grades were based on one written homework assignment

Share materials via homepage

Beginning: Recording lecture in officeThis did not bring any good new features and therefore I switched after two lectures to ahome recording. (Also at this time we were not allowed to come to NU)

Record lecture from home

Record lecture from home: Hardware
Greenscreen(~3000 yen at Amazon.jp)
Lavalier
microphone torecord audio

IPad Pro + Apple Pencil 2 + Paperlike(Feels natural to write!)

Macbook(Used for Zoom & Doing
additional things on the laptop
during video recording, e.g.
screen recording)

LED Ring Light(really improves lightingfor videos/zoom)

Older iPad used as a camera(any phone/camera would work)Record lecture from home: Software
After recording:
Combine everything in LumaFusion on IPad
(Video editing software. Can remove
greenscreen by one click)

IPad Notes taking: Notability(also good: Goodnotes)

Audio recording: Noise cancellationin Audacity (Macbook)YouTube
Why YouTube and not NUSS?
•••YouTube is fast and scalable(quality gets adjusted to the internet speed)
It supports automated subtitles and much
more features
It is just much better in every way when it
comes to streaming

But then everyone can see my lectures??
It offers the option to put your videos “unlisted”. Thenjust people who have the link can watch the video.

Live sessions: IPad + Zoom

On Macbook: Zoom
Share via “AirPlay”: Turns
Notability & PowerPoint
to “Presentation mode”

IPad Notes taking: Notability

Live sessions: IPad + Zoom•

Did quizzes during Zoom session.
Multiple choice questions & Answer via private chat from the students• From week to week the students got more relaxed and participated (andshowed their faces) more and more.

Positive things about online teaching
Of course, I missed it a lot to see my students sitting in the same room….

But there are also some positive aspects:•••

Possibility to include different media (webpages, doing a bit programming,showing pictures/videos).
The students could decide the time when watching the lecture.
Students could pause the lecture at certain points.

Onlinelecturesareinternational:
Anyoneattend!
• Anyonearoundtheworld can attend
onlinecan
meetings•

NU Students registered for my graduate course: 4•

Student attending my lecture: 15 (coming from China, Europe, Africa,
Taiwan and several places around Japan) + several people watching mylectures on YouTube and contacting me by mail.
I am now supervising two students in Germany who are writing a Bachelor& Master thesis on a topic related to my lecture.

•(teaching from the well cooled living room during the hot summer was also nice)Conclusion•Online lectures should not just be an “offline lecture” put online.

•Try to use the new possibilities!
(e.g. allow anonymous questions by using for example
https://www.menti.com/).

Open your lecture to students outside of Nagoya! Your local students will• benefit
Anyone whenarounddiscussing
the world canattend
meetings
withotheronline
students
around the world/Japan.

••

Getting used to the online setup also helped me to work on my joint
research projects with my collaborators outside of Nagoya.

Thank you very much for your attention!