My Use of the Lightboard in the Classroom

By Tom Mahoney, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

At its core, a Lightboard is a piece of glass mounted in front of a camera.  Using lights around the glass and a black backdrop, I can write on the glass with neon markers that glow brightly, all while looking into the camera.  The writing that the camera sees is backwards, but software reverses the image to correct this.

Already, this setup provides a way of making great instructional videos.  I can show how to build solutions step-by-step, use my eyes, facial expressions, and gestures to direct students to the most important concepts. My goal is to draw students in and hold their attention by being more than a disembodied voice, which is common in other mathematical videos (such as Khan Academy).  I frequently record minilectures and create quiz solutions to post on Canvas.  This helps solve a common problem where part of a class does well on a quiz, while the other part doesn't.  Normally, I'd have to choose between boring part of the class by going over a quiz they already did well on, or let the other group fall further behind by not going over it.  By posting a solution video online, students who need it can watch them at their own pace.  Even the students who did well benefit because now it's something they can go back and rewatch to review before exams.  When I taught Calculus II in Spring 2018, I recorded about thirty 5-minute videos, one before each quiz, of problems similar to the quiz problems.  For the whole semester, there were 570 total views and over 70 hours of video that were watched (including rewatching videos).  On average, each student watched about 220 minutes of these solutions videos.

One of the things I love the most about being at a smaller school is that I feel much closer to the students.  Instead of being in a large lecture hall with 500+ students, I get to know all the students' names and faces, and they get to interact with me one-on-one.  However, creating this kind of intimate classroom online is difficult.  Placing a camera in the classroom means that students mostly see the back of the instructor's head, and rarely receive eye contact in the same way that on-campus students would in the same lecture.  I wanted my online courses to have a greater level of intimacy.  That is why I have been using a Lightboard in all my online courses since Fall 2017.

My online courses have a weekly live video conference that I host to answer questions about that week's assignment.  It's part lecture, part virtual office hours.  By using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS; free, open-source, and cross-platform), I can reverse the video, as well as add in other components (slides, live chat, web browser windows, etc.), all in real-time.  Below is a picture from one of the conferences from Mathematical Proofs in Spring 2018.  The chat on the right comes from Zoom, and students use the chat to ask questions.  By including the chat in the final video, students watching the recorded version also get to see the chat unfold in real time, which is not a feature of other Zoom recordings.

Mathematical Proofs is often the first course graduate students in the math department take at ESU.  By using the Lightboard, they are seeing me face-to-face in real time, and the feedback I received was very positive:

·         "I also really enjoyed the chatroom and especially when it was linked to the Zoom video.

·         Thank you for being a professor who tries innovative approaches to teaching with technology - it made the class much more worthwhile."

·         "The see-through glass board you used to write on was really helpful because you were able to write and also give us visuals using hand gestures at the same time."

·         "The ability to communicate live - face to screen - Is a huge advantage.  Also the light-board was probably the best tool that I've ever had for a course with respect to presentation."

·         "The lightboard was fantastic."

I’ve really loved the engagement and student excitement surrounding the Lightboard since I started using it. I will continue using it in future classes while experimenting with OBS to use even more features, like streaming conferences directly to YouTube.