May 26, 2020
Wesch produces top-ranked YouTube video on online teaching, helps thousands in webinar series
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
A video about online teaching by Michael Wesch, professor of anthropology, is currently the top-ranked YouTube video about college teaching online. It is the first video in Wesch's Teaching Without Walls weekly series, which now has five episodes offering tips, advice and inspiration such as making super simple videos, learning the techniques of top educational YouTubers, and making "mixtapes" for your students.
In the most recent episode on "adventure teaching," he invites educators to think of "teaching online" as "teaching out in the world" with clips from his recent sabbatical to Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Thailand and India where he made videos for classes.
Wesch was also among eight experts featured in a webinar series reaching thousands of faculty members around the world that offered expert insights on emergency remote instruction. More than 12,400 total registrants — 5,353 unique — from 1,569 institutions in 64 countries around the world participated. Wesch and the other experts presented actionable techniques that faculty could implement immediately, no matter their discipline. Audiences engaged in real-time conversation with panelists in topics spanning from "Managing Your Online Presence" to "Planning and Facilitating Quality Discussions." Wesch was involved with the webinars on "Welcoming Students to your Online Environment," "Organizing your Online Courses" and "Recording Effective Microlectures."
The webinar series, Webinars on Effective Online Instruction, were offered for free by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, American Council on Education, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Council on Independent Colleges, National Association of System Heads and OpenStax, the Association of College and University Educators. The webinars were in conjunction with the nation's — and the Association of College and University Educators' own — experts in online instruction. The goal was to ease the burden of emergency remote instruction for faculty in higher education — all in the name of student success.