Ongoing engagement

Studio visits

Bring in external speakers into your classroom via a virtual “studio visit”, an informal discussion with one or two external guests.

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With Mia Zamora

Educator prep: None

Student prep: None

Synchronous

Video conferencing

Duration: Variable

Activity purpose

Bring in external speakers into your classroom via a virtual “studio visit”, an informal discussion with one or two external guests.

Useful for

Enriching your classroom with the practical experience of experts in the field, and encouraging students to have informal, open discussions with these experts, giving them access to dig deeper into how someone’s article or video or practice came about.

Preparation

Inviting guest(s) and setting time for meeting.
Creating a mechanism for people to sign up to join.

Instructions

Set up a mutual time in which you and your invited guest can speak with a small group or your class about shared interests and their perspective on topics you are covering.
Confirm with the guest that there is no preparation needed, that the time will be sent chatting somewhat informally about topics of mutual interest. Let your Studio Visit guest know the time frame you have in mind for the engagement (typically 30-60 minutes).
Request a brief bio from your guest or a link to a bio description and/or some work they are engaged in, so you can create a brief announcement of the event. The Studio Visit can be more private (only for your students in class and unrecorded) or it can be public with both students and open participants, shared on the open web). *Please be sure to confirm these details and request permission from your Studio Visit guest when extending the invitation.
Create a sign up sheet (google form or doc with name & email addresses) in order to confirm who will be attending the SV.
Send hangout link invitation to all participants a few days before the scheduled SV, indicating they should arrive a few minutes early in order to make sure their set up is working.
If you plan to record and archive SV, be sure to indicate to everyone in the hangout when the recording starts and stops. As a follow up, distribute the link of the recorded SV and post to your course materials archive.

Duration

A studio visit can be as short or as long as you like, but 30-60 minutes is probably ideal. It will take some time to set it up, such as inviting the guest and finding a time that is suitable for both the guest and your students, signing students up to join (if it is not during class time), etc. Avoid post-production editing if you record it.

Adaptations and examples

Any video conferencing tool that allows you to invite external guests from outside your institution will work.

You may choose to record or not to record, depending on the value of the discussion, how important it is for your class (and whether students can all make it or not as it is probably difficult to have it during class time).
You may choose to keep it private within your own classroom, or allow other people from around the world to join and make it an intercultural conversation.
Using something like Zoom that livestreams and records to YouTube can be helpful if you want to make the recordings public, and you won’t have to spend time uploading a recording later.