The Digital Learning team have been involved in developing Open Online Courses, in collaboration with various faculties, for the past four years and have successfully completed approximately twenty courses during this time. They are hosted on the Futurelearn platform (www.futurelearn.com/) which includes courses from many other educational institutions.
Last week (26th October) saw the end of a successful fourth run of the ‘English as a Medium of Instruction for Academic’ (EMI) Open Online Course with over 2000 learners enrolled on the course.
Each week, course facilitators, Mary and Rob record an ‘end of week summary’ video to review the main topics for that week and discussions amongst the learners. This direct approach is also to encourage new learners to join in the debate with their classmates.
The final week (week 4) was a ‘Live’ session using YouTube ‘Live’ broadcast where learners have the opportunity to interact with Rob and Mary via messaging.
This year, I was involved in setting up the ‘Live’ broadcast and since this was a new experience for me, it was both an exciting but nerve-racking occasion. Thankfully, the stream took place smoothly without any major problems, so I decided to share the knowledge that I have gained from this event in case anyone wanted to reach out to their students in the same way but wasn’t sure how to start.
My colleague who was previously involved in the live broadcasting suggested that I use YouTube Live with a video camcorder connected to the laptop rather than using the integral webcam. I investigated this further and found this video very useful.
The above video uses the Beta version of Live on YouTube but gives some very useful information on what settings to use for live streaming.
This second video is more up to date than the first video, although it suggested using Open Broadcasting Software (OBS) which is a free software to stream and record programs, but I found that this was not necessary.
I have written downloadable instructions on how to use YouTube Live stream based on a Zoom Q8 camera and a laptop which I was using. We have these Zoom Q8 camcorders to loan out should you need to borrow one, please contact digital-learning@soton.ac.uk to find out more.Problems that I encountered:
When I set up the live streaming for a scheduled time/date, it seemed to lose the camcorder connection and revert back to the webcam.
To resolve this, I signed out of YouTube and restarted my laptop, set up the Zoom recorder and signed into YouTube again. Repeat this process until you can see the Zoom Q8 options in the Edit Stream Panel, this may take several goes but will eventually show up.
Setting up for live streaming without a scheduled time/date worked perfectly.
I am happy to demonstrate should you be interested in doing a live session email me: mimi.lee@soton.ac.uk.
