Bridging Traditional Teaching Practices into the Digital World – Use of Glass Light Board

Abstract

We are living in a modern world of an education system where education is being transformed by the new digital environment. The smart digital technologies have grown exponentially over the past few years. Use of traditional teaching practices might be considered outdated in the modern digital era of technology, or even might not be possible in asynchronous online courses. One such teaching practice is writing on the board, which may not be possible for the asynchronous courses where recorded lectures are provided to allow students to learn on their own schedule. But integration of traditional practice into modern technology can be effective and useful in today’s education, such as the use of a glass light board. A Glass light board is a transparent glass surface, educators look through the glass directly at the camera and write with a neon pen, the image is then flipped and video recorded or live-streamed. This has been a very engaging and powerful tool for video presentations. Students can see an educator writing on the board, explaining the concept while talking and drawing and therefore, makes it more personal and connects learners to educators effectively. In this study, mini lectures were developed in a pathophysiology (PSIO230) unit in T1 2024 at UNE using a glass light board as an additional teaching resource. These lectures were created in UNE‚ media studio for the light board, and pathophysiological mechanisms were explained on the light board using neon pens of different colours. These lectures were only 20 minutes long, recorded videos, and all the students in that cohort loved these lectures, which made a profound impact on their learning of difficult concepts and engagement with the unit content, as per the student feedback and unit evaluation data. These will be utilised again, and a formal study will be conducted in 2025.