Blog Entry about teaching online

How do I feel today? Well, I feel quite strange, but I am also very excited. Today, I’m going to have my first ever livestreamed Market Research class. I’ve been thinking about it all morning and I realized that there is a life lesson I have to learn: at the beginning of the semester, I politely, but kind of strictly asked my students never to write to me on Facebook or Instagram, as they are not the appropriate platforms for communicating. And as you see, now we are approaching the end of March and I am teaching them via Instagram. This is how much our world has changed in a matter of months.

I believe that this current situation teaches us many things. We cannot take everything for granted. If something was a very strict rule yesterday, it can easily turn into an irrelevant and minor issue today. For me, the most important thing is to transfer the knowledge I would have transferred in the classroom online to at least the same quality as it would have happened in person.

The world has taken a 180 turn for me too. When I receive an Instagram message from my students (and I do receive them, more than one a day), I feel happy, but at the same time I also start thinking about whether I should have adapted to online platforms earlier.

Several hours later...

Now I can say that I have held my first online Instagram live session both in English and in Hungarian. A quick summary of the Hungarian event:

• I have 99 Hungarian students signed up for my course on Neptun
• I have 81 followers (as of 26 March 2020) on the Insta account dedicated to teaching purposes (minus 3-4 colleagues, who follow me too)
• My live was viewed by 71 people (both live and recorded video views included)
• In average, 50 people were watching the live session

Personally, I extremely enjoyed the live. I could of course record videos here at home without being live, I could also record my voice while I am showing only the PowerPoint. But I think that would not reach the desired effect, and most of all, I would not enjoy it so much, as I did today.

One enormous advantage of Instagram Lives is that if I ask a question, students can react, and they do react. It was great that I could see them (at least their numbers) there and it was great that I was not talking to the empty room.

All in all, it was a great experience for me. I’ll definitely continue this semester via Instagram lives. Now I am off to edit my videos and upload them to IGTV.