STLHE 2016 SAPES

Many universities have adopted the Lightboard since 2013 when Michael Peshkin at Northwestern developed the technology and made its design freely available. The Lightboard is a glass dry-erase board on which an instructor can draw or write with fluorescent markers while facing a camera. When recorded with a high-quality video camera, the images and words appear to float in mid-air without any post-production. This allows faculty to write, sketch, or annotate images all the while engaging with students by facing them. Writing is corrected by recording the image from a mirror, using cameras with in-built image inversion, or in post-production. Once set up, the Lightboard empowers faculty to rapidly develop engaging learning resources with minimal support needed from production staff.

Lightboards represent an innovation in e-Learning that has rapidly spread in higher education, but the potential effectiveness of the innovation have not yet been examined in detail. The potential benefits of this simple and elegant tool include providing an easy way for faculty to produce engaging video-based lectures for use in online or flipped classroom approaches. The ease of use from the instructor’s perspective may help to overcome uneasiness about engaging with video production, and also reduce some of the challenges that alternative solutions like digital screens, drawing tablets, and expensive post-production cause. Because the instructor faces the camera, students can see all the non-verbal cues that good instructors use in their classrooms, and can get a sense that the instructor is speaking directly to them. This session will describe the Lightboard recently commissioned at our institution, including technical details of the construction, improvements over previous designs, and how it is being used. Participants will be able to identify strengths and weaknesses of Lightboard use, reflect on how it can improve their online teaching, and facilitate construction of a Lightboard.