Over the past two years teachers have taken on new roles as they try to present information to their students. As we have witnessed a move to the online classroom and watched our students become our audience, the need to create a more engaging and interactive atmosphere has become more important than ever. Just opening a laptop and turning on the camera and mic is not enough to keep our students engaged in our lessons or lectures, we have had to find new method that were not needed in a traditional classroom or could be accomplished using other techniques. I believe that we must venture outside of our traditional areas of expertise and look to those that have been doing what many of use are attempting to do for the first time - stream to an audience over the internet. In this article, I will outline and summarize the various pieces of software and hardware I have come to use (and rely on) over the last two years.
There is single piece of software that I use that drastically changed the way I presented information during Synchronous Classes while teaching during Covid. I had tried many options to provide an engaging class and nothing seemed to hit the nail on the head. I was browsing YouTube had been somewhat interested in making tutorial videos for my main Learning Management System (LMS) - Canvas. I needed to find a way to easily transition from one piece of information to the next with ease. I stumbled upon Open Broadcaster Software or better known as OBS. OBS is a free piece of software designed for streamers and Twitch broadcasters...or for the remote instructor.
The software allows you to organize your material into "scenes" that are presented in the main window which are then broadcasted out to whichever meeting software your LMS uses, or something completely separate such as ZOOM. This is done within OBS through the use of a virtual camera. The virtual camera is recognized by other pieces of software as a "real" camera. As a teacher you can create as many scenes as you like and move through them in whatever order you choose. Transitions to the next scene is seamless and can be tweaked to you own liking. OBS is able to accept as many video sources as you can attached to your computer through either USB or a capture card such as the Elgato Camlink Pro - my personal favorite, as it allows for up to 4 different HDMI based cameras on one card.
In addition to the video options, OBS is able to handle multiple audio sources, provide screen capture, browser capture, individual window capture, and a multitude of other sources. There is a large library of plugins and add-ons that allow you to customize it as far as your imagination can take it. If you would rather record than stream or broadcast, OBS has plenty of options that make your video look crisp, clean, and appealing to your students.
You can utilize it to record lectures, overviews, or whatever else your students would benefit from throughout the duration of the semester. OBS has become the go to piece of software for me when creating videos for my classes and training sessions (either live or recorded).
To go along with OBS, there are several pieces of hardware that have made my instruction much more engaging and efficient. I use the Camlink Pro by Elgato to capture video from a DSL Camera - which provides much better quality and provides more control over what our audience sees on screen. This card allows any HDMI enabled device to act as a plug and play video source including audio if the device is capable of sending it through HDMI. It allows for all 4 sources to be broadcast simultaneously or independently. It allows for the instructor to show themselves as well as any material they wish to present at the same time (if setup correctly in OBS). If you do not need 4 inputs, there are other options such as the USB Camlink (external device) or Camlink 4K (internal device).
Stay tuned for Part II of the article for the remaining items I use to create a more engaging interactive class.
Comments