During a course I co-taught at the start of the COVID pandemic, when we were forced to teach entirely online, the other instructors and I, had an idea of incorporating a new technology for facilitating and simplifying online presentations for the student’s final project. In the end it was a success, but it initially hit a stumbling block due to some students’ resistance. I was reminded of this situation when reading Watt (2014) and the need for empathizing with your stakeholders.
If teaching in class, as instructors, we’ve typically asked students to prepare and present their project as an in-person, 5-7 minute presentation including a demonstration of the game or website they created; followed by a short 2 minute, question and answer session. To do this completely online for the first time, seemed like a daunting task for us. How could we coordinate 200 students and their presentations? This seemed impractical to do using Zoom, as students would be undoubtedly unprepared and the environment would likely be distracting with multiple people forgetting to mute themselves and fiddling with settings to share their screens.
One of our students in the class, has his own Twitch account and has a number of subscribers to his regular broadcasts. “Twitch is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers and the things we love” (Twitch.tv, n.d., Introduction section). This student offered to host the presentation on his account during presentation day and queue up the all the student presentations if students pre-recorded their presentations and posted them on YouTube. He had the skills and was confident he could coordinate the video presentations and handle the question-and-answer period which was to be done through his personal Twitch account using text chat. As instructors we really liked this idea – it simplified a lot of things for us. However, when we presented this as the proposed solution to the class as a whole, one group of students were strongly opposed.
When some of the other instructors heard about the student opposition, they moved to abandon the idea completely and attempt another solution. Although I was unfamiliar with the specific writings of Watt (2014) at the time, I wanted to hear from the opposing students to hear their side before giving up entirely on the idea. Watt (2014) explains it is important to “Understand their expectations: Nail down stakeholders’ specific expectations. Ask for clarification when needed to be sure they are completely understood” (p. 50).
I started by having an online video call with the instructors and the opposing students. I presented the purpose of using Twitch and how it would simplify the presentations. I next asked students why they felt they did not want to be a part of this solution. They responded that they did not want to be associated with this other student’s personal account and have their videos seen by his many subscribers.
This is when I proposed a compromise. I proposed to create a brand-new Twitch account, with no subscribers, and whose live stream would be visible only to those who had the link. This way, these students who were opposing did not have to be associated with another student’s live account and the live stream presentations would only be seen by instructors and the students of the course.
I learned a valuable lesson during the discussion with those opposing students that empathizing with them, asking the right questions to discover the root of their resistance was a crucial first step to coming up with a solution that would work for all stakeholders involved.
References
Twitch.tv. (n.d.). About Twitch.tv. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/about/
Watt, A. (2014). Project Management. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/
Featured Image: “Collaborate” by Duke Innovation Co-Lab, US from the Noun Project
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